Back to Work (sort of)

I am having a grand time enjoying my freedom to be artistic, relaxed, and exploratory lately. I’ve already fulfilled my goal of 2-4 creative activities for the week, and the week is barely half way over.

Sunday: I used my new slow cooker to experiment with a recipe passed on from my cousin Robin for pulled pork sandwiches. I just slow-cooked it in root beer for 8 hours (that tip I got off a website), then drained it, and slow-cooked it in BBQ sauce for about another hour.  It sounded too easy and good to be true, and it turned out even better than it sounded. My husband loves me even more now, and my cousin too – by extension. I would gladly welcome any good slow cooker recipes any of y’all have (Kerby Johnson, that especially means you!).

Monday: I spent almost an hour shopping for fabrics to start practicing some quilting blocks – holy cow there are a lot of fun fabrics out there. This new hobby is going to totally drain my allowance budget, I have no doubt! As invigorating it was to consider patterns and colors, I did have to face the reality that I haven’t quite grown out of the black/white/grey training my father drilled into me – so matching colors is a skill I just never developed. I wonder if this is something that can start growing this late in life? Does the 30 minutes I spent lost trying to get to and from the craft store count as “exploring” and therefore more creative energy? Perhaps not – but I hope I learned something about the area. Monday night I tried a new recipe for Korean meatballs – easy and YUM, again, points with husband.

Tuesday: I was happy as a clam starting to cut into my new fabric to get my little quilting pieces for about 2 hours [I am VERY slow, that was only 1/3 of the cutting I needed to do]. That night, I tried the third new recipe of the week – loaded baked potato soup. It was like mashed potatoes, baked potato, and soup all in one – triple win. Thank you Cooking Light!

So that’s already five creative activities . . . I don’t know if I set my goal too low, or I’m just extra ambitious because I only just started, probably the later, let’s see how long I can keep this up.

But as much as I’m having a good time with all this relaxing freedom, it also feels good to get back to using some creative skills that feel more like “work.” The other part of my day Tuesday was that I spent six hours actually using my professional skills, helping some folks who are starting a new nonprofit here in San Diego with some visioneering and planning around their mission, activities, funding strategies, community organizing strategies, etc. It was one of the first days since I graduated from my MSW where I felt like, “hey, I can actually put some of that stuff I learned to good use!” Considering all the time and money and heart I invested in the past two years of my life, this was a good feeling.  

In moving away from Berkeley, and having served my maximum number of terms, I just rotated off the board of Project Peace East Bay, a nonprofit I was part of helping to get started in the Bay Area. My friend, Faith Gong, is the Executive Director there, and she brought the organization to a point such that when I left, I felt really great about where the organization was headed, and therefore, as if maybe we’d done some worthwhile work in building the organization over the past five years. I did not always feel so positive about my work with the org, so it was a really nice note to end on. Thanks Faith (and Project Peace board/staff)!

I am really thankful for that last note, because otherwise, I probably would have avoided offering to help with Balsamea (this new nonprofit in San Diego).  But this nonprofit is starting a charter school for inner city kids and building a community center to provide services and raise up leaders from the local community, which is comprised largely of refugees from all around the world. I just got a credential to be a school social worker, and a degree to be a culturally responsive urban community organizer – so I’m feeling like I could be a good fit here. Furthermore, two books I’ve read/am reading recently have primed me to get excited about the specific context of this work: Shame of the Nation, by Jonathan Kozol [nonfiction about the huge needs for inner city public schools]  

and Little Bee, by Chris Cleaver [novel about a refugee from Africa] .  Not to mention, all the people I’ve met so far that are involved in the project are incredible. I’ve definitely discovered some new heroes! I feel quite a-buzz with the questions this work is raising for me as a social worker, as a citizen, as a Christian . . . but I will have to save some of that for another post on another day, as my head is still just swimming and my thoughts aren’t quite clear enough just yet. Stay tuned as I wrestle out some of those complications. Again, I am glad that I decided to step out of my comfort zone to get involved and get “back to work.”