100 Days

This past week, FEMA Corps Class 20 reached a milestone in our service year: 100 days until Graduation! Congratulations, Class 20. We've gone from 10 months (283 days) (11 months/316 days for us TLs!) to only 100 days. 2/3 of the way there!

Then I got thinking. 100 isn't a large number. There are 100 pennies in one dollar. 100 = 10 groups of 10. What can I do in 100 days? And what can I do to make sure I have my post-AmeriLife set up in 100 days? It's crunch time, folks.  

With the 100 days I have left with my team, I can't think of enough ways to show them how much this year has meant to me and how much they mean to me. I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure we all enjoy our last 100 days together and make great memories. They're the reason I'm here. 

With the 100 days I have left to plan my life after AmeriCorps, I'm obsessively checking vacancy announcements at desired agencies (thanks to all of the free time in the world at work, they established another call center and our work has slowed down by more than half) and fine-tuning resumes, drafting cover letters, obtaining college transcripts, and applying to jobs. 

With the 33 days I have left in Virginia for Round 2, I'm making the best of it. This place will always hold a special place in my heart and I'm hoping my post-AmeriCorps plans will get me back in the area or close to it, ideally working in DC. There's nothing more wonderful than the people I've met here, both at work and outside of the job, and I couldn't ask for a better location. My team's lodging site is perfect and beautiful, the drive to and from work always includes gorgeous sunrises and sunsets, and the areas around us are quaint, safe, and offer enough to keep us entertained. 

I'll never feel like I have enough time for anything. As excited as I am for this program to wrap up and move on to other opportunities, I won't have enough time with Team Green, Gulf Unit, or my G2 Beauties. I didn't have enough time with my temp group, Cloud 9, or enough time in Denver. I didn't have enough time at home for Winter Break. I don't have enough time in the day to complete everything I hope for. I know nothing is going to last forever, myself included, and I've learned that while it may never last long enough, there is a lot you can do to make the most of the moment you're in  right now, and what you DO have. I've been hearing it since the beginning: It's what you make of it. You'll get out of it what you put into it. It's true. I'm going to put my absolute best into these next 100 days, so that myself and my team get nothing but the best in return. We all deserve to finish this program strong, and to walk away feeling like we had an outstanding year of service. :) 

Mobile Blogging

I can't blog at work, or on my work laptop... Something about my ancient browser not bring supported. But this has been on my mind this week. 

If you are on any social media site, you've seen a "hashtag" which is meant to attach a post to a trending topic and make it more "visible" or something. I won't get into it too much. But on Tuesday, there is a certain one called "Transformation Tuesday" where the idea is to Instagram an old photo of you and a current one and look at how much you've changed. I haven't really participated very often, maybe once in the past. But this past Tuesday I took two very similar photos of myself, one from February 2007 and one from December 2013 and put them side-by-side. Here is the result: 

I look so much like the same person. My face has thinned in some areas and widened in others, that's what the difference between 16 and 23 is. Anyone looking at the photos would see that my hair still curls the same way over my forehead, I have red-eye because of my bright blue eyes, I have lines around my smile and my chin, and I'm happy as ever posing next to my best friends in formal dresses. Even though I look almost the exact same in the two photos, years of growing and learning and experiencing life have completely transformed me as a person. I could go on for DAYS about how I've changed and grown, and I'm sure that anyone who knows me could give you a few sentences on that, but what's really important is that we need to look for transformations in ourselves and those around us in ther actions, not only their appearance. And in AmeriCorps, my job is to help my team members grow and change and live for something bigger than their appearance. The size of your heart or the knowledge in your brain can't be reflected in a hair cut or by dropping a dress size. Don't let your inner self suffer because your outer self wants the most likes on next week's "Transformation Tuesday." Instead, think of how you've transformed yourself. Have you helped transform other people? 

And finally,

Are you a transformer?

Traditions: Can you create them?

Every family has traditions, and as we reflect upon our lives we often easily recall moments centered around these traditions, whether they be holidays, summer events, school vacation weeks, weekends... anything that was routine that we could count on happening often enough for us to remember to do it, but not too often so that we get tired of it. For some, these are things like what to eat on birthdays, or watching a movie on Sundays, or having spaghetti on Wednesdays. For my family, traditions include turkey for breakfast on Thanksgiving (and for dinner) and turkey for breakfast on Christmas. We went to the fair every year but I don't know if that was tradition, habit, or just a way to spend our long weekend. Now, I'm not sure if this is how it happened, but forgive me. I think I was eleven or twelve at the time, so my pre-teen brain was a little funky. Sometime in my late years of elementary school (I think 6th? I think I was 12?) a little cafe opened up in our town. We got up ridiculously early and went before my sisters had to go to school. They were in the middle & high school so we probably left around 6:30. And then we did this, every single Friday. Friday became "Coffee Day." There were times I moaned and groaned about waking up to go sit in a cafe with my sisters, and there were times I couldn't get there fast enough to get a chocolate chip muffin and a chocolate milk. There were times I was just too damn tired to get out of bed that early. But honestly, I loved it. And even in my senior year, my mom and I would take two cars (I needed mine after school, she had to work and I had practice, a game, or work) and we would go get coffee or breakfast (by that time, our little cafe had closed and another reopened, and we usually just went to Dunkin Donuts or a little diner instead) and enjoyed our coffee together. Sometimes it was rushed, but we still made the effort, and I'll never forget those coffee days.

Every family has traditions. As I reflect upon my year, I don't have many memories centered around these types of moments. Right now, I find myself in a new family that was just built. It wasn't built on love and marriage and the joining of two families and a bunch of babies, we weren't friends who decided to move in together, and we didn't find each other on Craigslist. We were sort of thrown into a house together and told to get along and play nice; I was told to make sure everyone gets along and plays nice, and goes to work on time. We don't have traditions yet. It's hard to establish traditions, they're usually something you're born into, and it's especially difficult to establish traditions when you're just trying to establish common ground. But perhaps one can help the other. What do nine 18-25 year olds have in common? They all like coffee. They all hate Mondays. We all have to get up early. So I decided to make the best of it with coffee. We are now leaving our house 20 minutes early every Monday to stop at the Dunkin Donuts that we pass on the way to work for our own little Coffee Day, to help make everyone's week begin with a treat. Hopefully this little tradition will stick with us through the end of the program, and help be the creator of some fond memories for my teammates. It's not an original idea (Thanks, Mom!) but I'm hoping that it will have a positive outcome.