9/22/10

"Gonna let it rock
Let it roll
Let the Bible belt come down
And save my soul
Hold on to 16 as long as you can
Changes coming around real soon
Make us women and men"

Isn't that the truth. How many times do we tell ourselves "Man, I wish I was ___ again"? Truth be-told, this job has made me covet that notion more and more. I'm not putting up a front and I'm not being fake in terms of expression of my great job, more specifically on Facebook. I do like my job. I do like being at The Pittsburgh Project and I love the people there. I do like being part of AmeriCorps. With every "job" there comes that inevitable drag, along with all the pinnacles of the position. For me, I never got to be Jack and Diane for very long at all (if you don't know what I'm talking about by now, google it, it will make sense. trust me). Early in my venture in the 'Burgh, I did let the Bible belt come down and save my soul...err.....not exactly so much save my soul, but let back into my soul. And if the term "Hold on to 16 as long as you can" not express my wishes enough, I'm not sure what else does. Oh wait, of course, the next couple words, "Changes coming around real soon, Makes us women and men." Where have my last 8 years of my life gone? If we really do travel down that path to find the answer, I'm afraid, my friend, we might get lost in the darkness. The light switch is somewhere between taking after my older siblings and being the first of my older siblings to go to college, and perhaps somewhere along the lines of being independent and starting laundry, cooking, and writing checks at the age of 12. You would think from all of this, I would be used to being responsible and doing things independently. No. No, in fact, I'm struggling just as much as anyone else is right now, perhaps even more. I'm not ready to be a grown man. What is this woe that has robbed me of the youth life? I'm not complaining about having responsibility or growing up in general. Hell, I've gone through stuff that middle aged men don't know how to deal with.

With the ideology of being independent and responsible, comes this job at the Project. Not going to jag yinz, It's hard stuff. This is not easy by any means. I'm quickly (by force) learning community organization skills. To give you a run-down, I'm expected to create a community assessment on food security, hunger rates, health concerns, and accessibility. I am to carry out a plan of action for the local homeless shelter in order to sustain a long-term participation with the children of this community. I am to maintain the three Urban gardens and farms we operate and run the weekly farmers market. Then there are the volunteers. If there is one thing I can tell you about volunteers if you are going into anything community related----- Do Not Count On Them. They are as likely to come back to you as a balloon you set free in the sky. So this long-term Volunteer Strategy Plan of Action I'm expected to accomplish.... well, I really don't know where to start when there as much volunteers that are actually "faithful" to our program that I can count on one hand. Mind you---most or all of those volunteers are "faithful" because they are on some federal welfare program where they receive their welfare from service hours.

This is not the community for a large garden interest. It just isn't. The idea is grand, but the demographic for people to bring their family on the farm and do manual labor with dirt just isn't here. I'll tell you where that interest is----white suburban neighborhoods. And how much more true does this statement become when the North Side community sees mostly white people at the farm stand and always a group of white kids working on the farm. Oh, how so encouraging. I have nothing to say to these neighbors when they tell me they hate our program because we do is have these suburban kids work on our farms. Ok... you got us. But... if you are bitter about it, why don't you do something. I've worked my ass of this summer recruiting volunteers for the garden and nobody shows up. Gee, I wonder how we will ever get anything done on this farm.

This is just one instance where I'm sitting in my office beating myself up internally because I have no idea what to do about this. We can't have these kinds of groups work on this garden forever. So how in the world am I supposed to get these community members to plant flowers for us. More importantly, how are they supposed to take me seriously? True, I have a wonderful support from a section of the neighborhood from my work in the summer, but that section still can't be responsible for helping me get people on the farm. I'm expected to create a documentation plan of how to carry out a long-term volunteer strategy plan....when I don't even know the simplest, short-term plan to even begin. There are times where I'm sitting in my office thinking Why am I doing this? There are people much more qualified to do this job than I am. I just don't have the confidence level I need for this job. It's just not what an ordinary 20 year old is standard to doing.

Well, it's time to get ahold of the bootstraps. My days of teenage love and contemplation about my future are over. How the hell I'm supposed to do this job in this community, I haven't got the slightest clue. I'm sure I have pretended quite well to everyone else that I know how to. Don't let that fool you.