Working girl

I am up at the wee hour of 10pm typing away as quietly as possible because my darling roommate is fast asleep.  Hopefully I will be soon too.  I guess we'll both see at the end of this.  This was day 3 of my organizing experience and I don't think I've been so ready to go to bed so early as I have this week.  I will attempt to rehash the past few days, but it's blurred past (although at the time, occasionally excruciatingly slow<--ooh! cruciatus curse comes from excruciating; I'm a geek...)


Tuesday
  I met Mary and Hannah, the two lovely organizers that LAC currently employs.  Hannah held my position as AVODAH organizer up until the beginning of August, but was offered a temporary staff position once the program ended.  She asked me a series of increasingly personal questions which resulted in the determination that I am sleeping in her old bed (in her old room) which was also the old bed (and room) of the AVODAH organizer the year before Hannah.  I think we must have some well developed organizer 6th sense to scout out the best rooms in the house.  I'm visiting Hannah's new home tomorrow so I'll have to test my supernatural abilities then.
   More relevantly, my day started with a very brief encounter with Jennifer, my boss.  She had a meeting half an hour later, so that was barely enough time to hand me a stack of papers to read and send me over to uncover my desk.  I was fortunate enough to have a nasty grime covering the top of my desk as well as a precipitously dangling lightbulb hanging out of my lamp.  This offered me the opportunity to take out much of my anxiety and fear of the new day on the surface of the desk.  It is now spotless.  I fixed my lamp too which made me feel rather clever, although I think it was simpler than I'd like to admit.  I now am the proud owner...renter, I guess...of a large desk in front of two long narrow windows facing the el.  I quickly learned how to hold a phone conversation as if a large metro train is not rumbling past fewer than 15 feet from my seat.
   So I read about LAC and the past two newsletters (which I get to design next week!) and who the members are and what the issues are that we are currently employed to change.  And then Mary and Hannah took me to lunch at a yummy Thai restaurant down the block.  It was a very gracious welcoming and I was relieved to find both of them so personable...which makes sense when their jobs entail interacting with people all day.
   After lunch I made some phone calls to remind members of an upcoming meeting.  Then there was more reading to do...this time the particulars of organizing.  And then around 5:30 when I was developing a headache it was time for Hannah and me to bike to a nearby neighborhood association for a health care coalition meeting.  The meeting was a blur sans the Giordano's pizza.  Then, after a 5.5 mile bike ride home, I arrived at 9pm...my first 11.5 hour workday.

Oh dear, this is long and it's getting late, so I'll hurry it up for both of our sakes.

Wednesday
   I met Linda and Jim, two more employees at the office.  Linda spent much of the morning setting up my phone and e-mail.  I now am a legitimate and contactable employee and feel significantly more like a grownup.  We had our first staff meeting, and remarkably I was able to contribute little parcels of what I had remembered from the healthcare coalition meeting the night before.  The rest of the day was spent alternately putzing around and reading more about LACs work and how to effectively organize.

Thursday
   Today was another long day.  Jennifer asked me to come in at 9 so I could listen in on a meeting she was having over environmental justice (one of our 4 main issues).  When I arrived at the office, it turned out that the meeting had been canceled, so I was left with another glorious hour to fill with self-instigated projects.  I read more.  I called the board members to remind them of other meetings.  I called board members to set up relational meetings with me.  I set up my calendar because listing dates haphazardly in my notebook was not cutting it.  I realized that I had overlapped appointments.  I called back board members to cancel said overlapping appointments.  Then, my to do list ended.  So I updated my facebook information.  I checked up on my feministing.org site (generally fantastic).  I created unnecessary spreadsheets of contact information we already have just so I could have it immediately and have something to work on and look at.  I am bored.
   Hannah and Mary have both explained to me that boredom is a normal and necessary part of initial organizing.  If you are a true and focused organizer, you are creating relationships with people.  When you have trusting relationships, you build coalitions between like-minded people and groups who might otherwise not meet.  If you know no one, this is difficult to achieve.  So, I am slowly, oh-so-slowly building my menagerie of folks and friends and other people who are good to meet and know.  I made a number of appointments and I am excited to have all these 1 to 1s (as they are called in organizer jargon)...but they are next week.  And next week is not now and now I am bored.  So I was thrilled when 6:30 rolled around and it was time for Mary and me to meet up with Jennifer and Hannah and about 20 other local organization members for the bimonthly Community Council meeting. 
  It was like most meetings.  Some people talk frequently and to excess.  This is probably because they like the sound of their voice and how their ideas are clearly articulated better (and are inherently better) than everyone else.  Oh well.  I learned a great deal about who was working specifically on which issues (I should probably mention what they are: Access to healthcare, affordable housing, youth homelessness, and environmental justice).  I was also glad to put a face to so many names I had heard at the office.  And again, I came home around 9.

I am exhausted but slightly less overwhelmed than yesterday.  I no longer am clawing at the door so I can escape and run all the way home.  I anticipate that some parts of the job will get easier--I won't feel bored and I'll be a productive member of this little society.  But I will get busier and busier and I'm going to have to learn when to say enough.  Right now I'm at enou, so I think I'm still good.