Dealing...

Hey y'all. Before you all start yelling at me, I PREFACED this blog with the notion that I have a hard time keeping these things going. ESPECIALLY if I'm trying to save the world! :)

Anyway...time for the updates:

After I got back from Rhode Island, the planning for my conference in New Orleans kicked into high gear and we only hit a few speed bumps. One of them being that our local contact that was supposed to be finding speakers and local-y stuff to do bailed! So...my organization picked up the pieces and we put together a very successful conference with just about 100 attendees! I couldn't have asked for a better outcome (especially since this conference was more or less thrown into my lap by retreating ex-employees).

So...the NOLA conference was a success! Whoot!

And now it's time for some minor bad news.

Upon acceptance of this position it seemed like the perfect transition for me. I was at the end of my college career with this student organization that was affiliated with my current organization and I was having a really hard time "letting go" of the organization and finding another way to fulfill my activism requirement that I know I need. So...jumping onto the non-profit bandwagon and letting the student group serve as a starting point, the next logical step was the get involved with the organization that made my student organization possible. So I did. And I love this job. But...it leaves something to be wanted. I love that I'm working with all these fantastically influential women that are so passionate about the same things as I am. However, I terribly miss the witnessing of local change and education. Through my position, I do a lot of "keeping track of activism" as opposed to participating in actual activism.

As with any big transition in someone's life, I'm beginning to learn a lot more about myself and the things that are important to me. So...here's a small list of things I'm learning from this job and major move:

1. Local change is more important to me than national change - One of the things I think I enjoyed so much working on a college campus as opposed to a well-known national organization is that I could SEE the change happening. I had the ground connections with the PEOPLE and the issues. Here in Washington, there isn't really a sense of community change or community input because the "community" here is the whole fucking nation. I really struggle with the "broad" perspective of some of the issues I'm working on. I want to be able to see that what I'm doing makes a difference to a specific group of people. With what I do now, that group is all women every where. Kind of hard to get a grip on.

2. Things are more glamorous from the outside - From a student's perspective, this organization seems so on top of it and so plugged in, but the longer I'm here I'm finding that isn't always the case. There's a lot of bitching happening about what is wrong and what needs to be done, but no action behind it.

3. Working with a group of people that think like you is HUGE! - I've had my share of friends and family that I need to just keep my mouth shut because I know that we differ on opinions and values. I'm learning that this is definitely something that I can't just "deal with." Being around people that I can about these things with is EXTREMELY important to me since these things are such a huge part of my life. No...actually they're not a part of my life...THEY ARE MY LIFE. I live and work with such fabulous "lefty" people and I'm realizing that this is HUGELY important to me and makes my life a whole hell of a lot easier. If I'm fighting for equality 9-5, I don't want to have to fight for it when I go home or hang out with friends!

To wrap up a bit. In theory, I love this job. Daily I struggle with it because it's not what I want to be doing in the long run. Guess it's time to collect business cards and keep networking! More lessons learned coming soon!