It's late here and (again) I'm super wiped, so I'll just do a quick post. Today I stayed in bed all day and vegged, in preparation for our two week campaign trip to Berkeley, where we will be working ungodly hours and trying to convince college students to care about something other than themselves or Facebook. Plus, we're staying together in a hotel for the first week. This is how I picture it going:
Ok. I know I'm supposed to go in with a positive attitude and The Secret and blah blah, but let's get real here. 15 people. Working together all day. Sleeping together. Eating together. I've seen The Real World. I know how this is going to turn out.And it's not like the stress is lessening. We keep getting more and more to do, and I still haven't had time to adjust to what we did a week ago. We do these check-ins with our coordinators every 1-2 weeks, and this week I told them I should only talk about things that happened over a week ago, because that's how long it takes me to process all this shit. But, as I mentioned before, once I do, I freaking love it and never want to do anything else. I'm probably just completely insane and I don't even know it.
This week, our added assignments included going to the warehouse and making banners (pictures hopefully to come. I wore a jumpsuit), having a book discussion on our required reading (I didn't even read when I was an English major), and writing blog entries for Greenpeace's online campaigning push. I already write two pretty kickass blogs, so I was unperturbed, but this blog thing was kind of funky. We were all supposed to write two paragraphs as our individual entry, then email them to Linda so that she could choose the best one and post it on a Facebook blog, which is actually just a glorified message board. I personally feel that each person should have been assigned a week and written whatever they wanted for that week, but hey, I'm just a student. Plus, that would have prevented me (possibly) from writing the cheesiest thing ever for my blog entry. The story is true, but I got all emo/Oprah/Movie of the Week, either because I didn't take the assignment seriously or I was so tired I lost any kind of filter for my emotions. Anyway, here it is. Barf bags are in the pocket of the seat in front of you.When you’re working with the same fourteen people for seven hours a day, in a room the size of some garages, it’s hard to get an idea of how the work you are doing affects the outside world. It wasn’t until I called a Greenpeace volunteer to ask her to attend an event that I saw how I could inspire others, instead of being inspired myself in a classroom setting.
This woman was almost in tears as she told me about how she filled out a postcard in class volunteering her time (and phone number!) to Greenpeace. She had then waited for weeks to hear back from someone, anyone, who could ask for her help. Finally she got a call from me, and it was at just the right time. This woman told me that she had started to feel exasperated by the entire environmental movement, believing that it was all talk and no action. My call brought back her passion, she told me. In turn, she also reminded me of the importance of the work we are doing, and that we can never give up.
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