I've recently got into a fairly large Ravens and Chimes kick, in which I have youtubed my favorite track of theirs down below. They are not a flash in the pan, but their debut album, Reichenbach Falls, is a very solid one (just so you know, my favorite debuts: Mumford & Sons, Dream Theater, Aphex Twin). Anyway, it got me thinking about my neglected blog. So here goes:
I've been working more lately, which isn't bad, but I've noticed that I've never been less motivated to make the same ripples that I had done before. It's not that I hate my job, but as I had expressed to my director, I just feel lots of pressure onto me from having the stress of worrying about twenty six dudes, twentyfourseven.
-Relatedly, one of my guys, D, before he left our services that he felt he was always in prison. Naturally, in my organization, we try to not make our services feel like that but his point was well received, and though I had tried to make it as loose as possible, he was correct. Though D was more independent than others, always pushing the envelope and getting on people's nerves, he was a fresh breath of air that is well needed. He pushed me to read on my 'free' time stuff about prisons. Coupling that push with my previous thirst for information of concentration camps and now, prisons, I stumbled upon the Gulag- the Russian concentration camps.
Shittt, you wanna know anything interesting about The Gulag that you can potentially throw at people at bars or wherever social gatherings take place, feast on this one, especially as the Chicago Snow comes: many Gulager's in the Kolyma region (re: Siberia) would go to work everyday for twelve hours (not including the 3 mile trek one way) in the cold. Their only days off were when the temperature was at -60F degrees. Without windchill. -58f? You're going to work. Oh, and I should mention, that their clothing was a military tunic underneath a petty worn wool coat. The fact that people have survived that, well, that's fucking interesting. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago is one of the finest memoirs I will have read and implore people to at least read a third of it. It's remarkable that, again, people have survived the Kolyma and managed to keep their limbs, fingers and teeth intact. And minds.
Anyways, I thought of GA and D and what am I doing to stop that continual feeling from happening. I'm trying my best to get my guys get motivated to actually care for themselves, for them to make their beds, lunches, dinners and get some semblance of a decent life. But they have been served for, practically, their whole lives and know what to do, when to do, and how to do things so that they don't have to do it themselves.
Lastly about work, I'm being looked upon as a leader. As a leadership leader. Somehow, someway, I got this title from my peers. This comforts me. With motivation nonetheless.
That motivation will be hard to come by but I want to be able to continuously inspire before I leave for my microvacation to Memphis to visit Laura Lou for her birthday. This trip, with T nonetheless, excites me. Hopefully, I'll remember to bring my camera and an extra lung since I'm sure I'm gonna be huffing on Marlboros all the way. I need to recharge the batteries especially after tossing in an additional 32 hours of unpaid time a month by working shifts or just working past my 55 hours a week.
Time to work on my core and then sleep.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic_an8Kk-Og
No comments:
Post a Comment