Trinity’s World

I’m sitting at my desk at work. This is the last time I will use this employer’s net access for my own personal use. Today I will turn in my key, collect my last pay check, and leave never to return.

It’s actually really weird. I’ve cleaned out my desk. So all the pictures my students have drawn form me over the last two years, the photos, and random art stuff, it’s gone. I’ve got a black wall in front of my computer screen. My desk is actually clean for once. My laptop bag is light as a feather. It’s kind of unsettling.

I spent today filing all my final paper work and writing two things. I wrote a good-bye letter to my co-workers and a lengthy response to the question, “How was your experience here.” I’ll turn latter into HR at my exit interview, and the former I printed at put in everyone’s mailboxes for my department. It’s really interesting how different in these two things ended up being. The good-bye letter was warm and heartfelt, and thanked everyone for being such a great group of people. The thing for HR was a cautious and firm statement saying exactly what I thought of the administration and how things are heading in a very bad direction. It was actually emotionally draining to do both of these right up against each other.

So now I wait. I think my boss is taking me to lunch in a bit, but other than that I have nothing to do. I’m going to miss the work here. It’s been a wonderful ride, and I’ve found out things about life and myself that I would not have been able to do anywhere else. There is one picture I am taking home with me, and I feel silly about doing it to honest. But it’s from a girl who finally discovered herself, and was able to accept that she was normal even though her dad is in jail. There are a hand full of other stories like hers that I have had been fortunate enough to witness, but this one sticks out in my mind. So, as silly as it seems I’m taking it home even though I know that in a few weeks I’m going to throw it away.

Monday I start a new job. A new challenge, a new chapter in my life, a new start as it were. But for today I think I’ll take a few moments to reflect on why I did love my job here even though the administration sucks.

I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker when it comes to following the crowd and checking out fun links who’s purpose is to waste my otherwise productive time. For instance go here: http://www.howmanyofme.com/search/ to compare how common your name is to your friends. You can just put first, or just last, or both. If you do both, it will give you a list of famous people who share your name. It will also give you a list of other versions of your first name such as nicknames.

Have fun, I know I did.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 749 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

I got a job offer yesterday! A real, good paying, job offer. It is with a software company that needs product support people, that is only a few blocks away from my apartment. I am so excited! I get to go back into the tech support field, I get to live closer to work and put less miles on my car, I get more money per month, and I become more marketable for when I wife and I move to North Carolina in the near future.

The company I will be working for, starting in two weeks, is called LaserApp Software.

I’m so happy I can’t even begin to describe it, so I’m going to stop trying. But for now, I can scratch off one of my New Year’s resolutions.

OK, I know that I have not posted much at all to my blog these last few weeks, but life has a strange way of getting in the way of my hobbies. Take a look at these:

This is what has consumed my life of the last few weeks. I am a guitar player for the Belles of Bedlam, and my wife sings as one of the sisters in the group. The group decided that we were going to branch out form our typical Renaissance genre of show, and try our hand at another time period. There are many reasons for this, but the big ones are that it allows us to do a wider variety of shows, and allows us to be more available for corporate entities to pay us to perform for their employees. Why does this mean I spent the last few weeks holed up in my apartment? Take a look at the costumes again.

You see how Hardy is wearing pants, and a waistcoat (vest for those who don’t know the difference)? Yeah, my loving wife made those for me. She made them with no real patter to work off for the pants (she did her best guess), and a patter for the Vest that took both of us to figure out how the hell to put together. And that was the easy part. Now take a look at her costume.

The only thing she is wearing that was not made by her own two hands is the white blouse she is wearing, and the socks. She made the hat, the jacket, the skirt, and the belt. How did she do this? I cut out the fabric, ironed the fabric, and fed her various kinds of chocolate and sweets as she spent two solid weeks at the sewing machine. Every ruffle, every gather, every rose, every stitch of that dress was one lesson after another in how to sew a Victorian Period costume. You see, this is only the second costume that my wife has ever made, and only the second thing she has ever used her sewing machine for. In other words, she really has a limited amount of experience when it comes to sewing, so when all was said and done she was ready to kill the person(s) who suggested we do the Dickens faire this year.

All said and done, my wife is the most amazing woman in the world. Yes, we had moments where we were ready to just throw the sewing machine out the window and give up, but she came through in the end and did a fabulous job. She showed a lot more patience and perseverance than I would have in her position, and had a number of faire people complement her on how beautiful her dress is. And, I received a large number of comments on how cutie I looked in my costume. Both are completely her doing, as my experience with a sewing machine is limited to watching my mom use hers when I was kid. I’m learning, but my wife did all the real work.

Now that things are back to something close to normal (if there is such a thing in my life) now we can turn our attention back to other things. Things like bloging, watching new movies with our Netflix, and spending time with friends we have not seen for weeks.

If you would like to see more great pics of one of our shows, and the going on of the faire in general, one of the Fans of the Belles of Bedlam has an awesome website for all kinds of stuff he takes pictures of. Visit Rich Lowe here at http://www.renaissancefaire.net/Dickens-Riverside.htm

I was asked to write something that either told a success story from my work, or why I liked working where I do. So, despite that fact that I’m not happy with what is going on with the administration at my agency, I took some time to reflect on why I drag my ass work everyday. So, here is what I submitted.

Why I like to Work Here

I recently sat with some friends at a Super Bowl party, and after seeing a commercial someone asked the group to, “Raise your hand if you are satisfied with your Job.” To my shock and amazement my hand was the only one that went up in the air. I looked around, and noticed the whole room was staring at me. The person who asked the question laughed and said, “Yeah right! I know how much you get paid.”

While we all chuckled and passed the chips around I smiled and said, “Its not about how much you get paid.” This brought some well meaning laughs and jeers form the room. “My job has other things that make it satisfying. I don’t know anyone else here who get paid to help bring change into the lives of children and their families.”

At these words my friends, all businessmen, accountants, cooks, or employees for architectural firms, all got real quite. “Yeah, the money helps. And yes, my Job has days that suck. But I help save lives.” At this they all toasted me, and my luck at having a job I liked.

When I came to this agency as a Youth Service Center Outreach Counselor, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had been trained in crisis intervention as a Residence Advisor during my college days, but it has been a few years since I’d worked directly with kids. A close friend of mine literally bullied me into applying, and told me that I was perfect material for the job. So after I was hired I spend a week shadowing other counselors and being crash-course trained by our Director Bob Hilas. I was sent down to my first assignment, a middle school in Menifee, with the fear that I would flop as soon as I opened my mouth.

My first day on the job I was asked to see a suicidal student, who’s mother had died of a brain aneurysm the week before while the student was home alone with her. Nothing in my life had prepared me for this. I called my supervisor for guidance, but both on call supervisors were in a meeting at the time. So I did the only thing I could remember from my training and just let the student talk out what he was feeling. I listened, I repeated back what he said, and listened some more. His grief was so new that I had feeling he was not ready to do more than just let it all out.

After half an hour of tears, and a whole box of tissue paper, a family friend took the student home. When he arrived at school the next day he came by my office and thanked me for listening. Turns out no one else had let him say what was on his mind with out breaking into tears or telling him he needed to move on. I told him if he wanted to talk anymore I’d be happy to listen, and when the time came for him to move on he would know when it was. I worked with the student’s family over the next several months, connecting them with therapists, talking with Dad about how certain behaviors were normal for kids who are grieving, all the while calling my supervisor almost every day to beg and plead for advice. When all was said and done, the family did move on and did start the journey of healing. I was blessed to be a witness to that process.

Currently I am assigned to an after school site two days a week. There I met a girl who always acted very nervous, and seemed to spend a lot of time and energy making sure all the other students thought she was “normal.” The student’s mother called me and told me that the student’s father was currently serving time in jail, and that she was very afraid of people at school finding out. So at the mother’s request, I started meeting with her until mom could find a therapist. During the time that she spent talking with me about friendship, self-esteem, and other kinds of social skills, she started to realize that she was not the only student at her school that had a father that was incarcerated.

Over the next few months I saw this young girl change from a very nervous outsider who was afraid to get to know anyone, to a confidant and energetic student who had a good number of friends. This student greets me everyday with a smile where as before she shied away from anyone who called her name, a difference of night and day.

The thing about what I do everyday is that I don’t do anything. I present student with choices, talk about the outcomes of those choices, and leave it up to them to actually do something about their lives. In this, students start to see and believe that they do have the ability to shape and control their own lives. For me, changing a life is about equipping a person to in act change for themselves. If we encourage students to use this ability, in a world where students are taught that the adults are the only ones with power to change things, we give them hope. Hope that they can choose not to make the same mistakes their parents made. Hope that they can be different then what their family expects them to be. Hope that their life will be better, if they figure out what they can change and take steps to make that change happen. All I do is show students that they do have a say in how their lives turn out, and it is their choice to take action or not.

Every person comes back to work each day for different reasons. For me, I come in each day because today could be the day that I help a person change their life. How many people can say that about their jobs? I know that I can. That is what makes the Carolyn E. Wylie Center a place that I want to be.