Today, nothing needs to get done first. I am in a beautiful little coffee shop in an old part of some town in Virginia (That's probably the most I can tell you). It is the exact same shape and size as a perfect little wine bar that a few Team Leaders and I discovered during our last weekend in Denver, and is just as cozy. I think I'm gonna like it here.
After departing Denver on December 17, we went back to campus in Vicksburg for a couple days, cleaning up and helping in the supply room and unpacking and repacking our belongings for our trips home for Winter Break. I was too far past exhausted and a million kinds of overwhelmed to even consider opening up my laptop, let along writing an entire blog post to summarize Round 1. Over Winter Break, I was much happier sitting with my family and cooking real food and playing with my nephews to want to be on my computer much at all. The time I spent with my family over break was what recharged me and what helped me regain enough strength to return. The thought of not returning didn't cross my mind, but I definitely needed that two-week recovery period before returning to the program.
Round 1 sucked the life out of me. I loved it, because between through every trial and all of the tears, lessons, and difficult days there were the amazing days and the fun times, a thousand laughs, and a recurring sense of accomplishment. Ups and downs are exhausting. It's like running up and down hills for 2 and a half months. No matter how happy it makes you, and how well you do, how many breaks you take, you're going to feel tired at the end of it. I am endlessly grateful for the opportunities I've had, the people I've met, and the team that I have. I've learned so much about myself and other people, and I am currently learning how to better myself and bring the best out in me so that in Round 2, I can bring out the best in others. It's not easy, but I can do this. I am practicing how I can work with each individual on my team and highlight their best qualities and find their best moods, so everyone can benefit. I don't know if I'll accomplish this, but I am hoping that just giving extra effort and trying really hard will have some sort of benefit. I guess I'll find out.
I have never been so confident in my leadership skills while being terrified and fearing that they don't exist at the same time. I know they're there. Or is it "here?" I wouldn't be here if I didn't have them, but every day I question myself. I still panic that I can't do this, but somehow I wake up the next day and here I am, and suddenly we're all going out the door and off to another day of work.
That brings me to my next point. Work. We're in Northern Virginia, at a FEMA facility. It's a million kinds of awesome. We're working with the deployment branch, and the Automated Deployment Database (ADD). We will be calling reservists to deploy them, and updating employee information in the system. We are all working on the same task, together. I'm really excited about this, because as a team we will be experiencing the same thing. We also live together in a lodge at a summer camp. It's pretty cool, it even came with two pet birds, at least one pet mouse, and a family of stinkbugs. Our outdoor pets include a few dozen deer and at least one skunk. It did NOT come with cell phone service or WiFi. So we're pretty isolated with our wildlife pets, and there's a trail behind the lodge that leads to the Appalachian Trail. It's comparable to a black hole as far as technology goes, but we are really close to nature (immersed in it, really) and it's great to all live together in a sort of house that we have all to ourselves. We have space for indoor and outdoor PT and to have team meetings after work and be able to hang out together. We've hit the AmeriCorps jackpot as far as living goes. Most people think it sounds terrible, but I would take a two hundred nights in this lodge with my team over two months in an Extended Stay Motel. We also have an awesome job, and a really awesome office team that we'll be working with. Our POCs are incredible and we're in the best location. We're in for a really awesome Round 2, and my energy is so much higher than it was in Round 1. I'm a different kind of motivated, and I honestly feel like I wake up every day with a purpose, and I know I'll be going to bed feeling much more accomplished every night.
Oh, and just to add - The Appalachian Mountains and The Rocky Mountains are both a million kinds of beautiful, but are completely incomparable. I love this area and I find it breathtakingly beautiful, but I felt that way about Denver, too. It's just a different kind of beautiful.
Which also reminds me, I'd like to leave you with two quotes today. One is what got me through this week. I have NO IDEA who said it, but I've said it to myself at least a dozen times this week. I've really had to check my own attitude a couple of times. "You can't live a positive life with a negative mind." It starts with yourself. Take some initiative and hold yourself accountable. Don't make someone else try to change your attitude, it's impossible and it's exhausting for them. Trust me, I definitely have experience in that.
The second one was an effort to explain diversity to someone who said that diversity isn't a "thing" and we need to all be equal and a bunch of negative things that I don't want to repeat or discuss on here. When my efforts to explain that diversity isn't just skin color, but is made up of so much more and why we should celebrate diversity were failing, a team member looked up and gave a perfect metaphor. It was almost too good to be true, so I asked where he heard it. He said "well, I wrote a paper on these two artists, and I was taught that if you can't explain something with words, you should try art." Which I thought was just as wonderful as the actual explanation he gave. It went like this: "Take a Turner and a Monet, they're both beautiful paintings but the methods to create them were completely different. We are all equally beautiful people, but we were created differently, and that is diversity." I don't think it needs more of an explanation. Sometimes you just need to close your eyes, but keep your mind wide open.
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