transitions (1st in a brief series).

I resigned from my job the other day. It was surprisingly painful. Shockingly difficult.

And now I wonder if everyone should quit a job here and again—I am amazed by how much more appreciated I feel after I resigned.

Or is that I feel free of this place? No longer burdened by the responsibility of it? The charge to promote this thing I’m not 100% convinced of? To pretend that I feel like we do really good, thorough work? Or that I have done good, thorough work?

It’s a good place, the Association. Good people. Good ideas. Good intentions. In fact, they might be the definition of that over-used word, “good.”

But it’s not for me. It’s too hard for me to be so far away from where we work. Juneau is miles and miles and cultures and cultures away from where and how we, ideally, work. I think I want to be more local than this state-wide organization.

Local. Location. Loca.

I told my co-worker the other day that one of the hardest things about work here over the last year has been how disconnected I feel from the communities where we work. We’re about community engagement, but I’m still not sure how meaningful it is for us to travel to the Bush for 2-3 days and call it community engagement.

It was a funny conversation with my co-worker because she really likes that we go in, deliver a message, and leave. She feels like it keeps her so much cleaner than if she were to launch a community engagement effort out her own backdoor. And I hear her; it certainly is nice to visit a place, talk, and see things happen because you trained someone or reminded someone of how much they really do matter in the life of a kid.

So maybe its not so much that I prefer the messiness to Bridget’s cleanliness; but rather that I want to be in the thick of it—I want to be that person being trained, reminded.

In college, I used to think that I could do this; I could work without knowing the impact of my work. That instinct steered me from direct service into the world of community development—somehow I managed to fool myself into thinking I wasn’t doing direct service because I wasn’t feeding someone or bandaging an arm. But, really, I love getting my hands dirty organizing people into projects, efforts, organizations. I love trying to sort through people’s worldviews and ideas to create a joint effort.

It’s just a different version of direct.