No wrong path

Well! I am feeling a million and one times better than my last (long) blog. If you remember, I was feeling a bit down, unmotivated, and bored with everything. If I learned anything from that time, it was that I have to keep busy in order to feel accomplished and happy. I have to have things to do that make me feel like I am contributing to not only my own personal growth, but to the larger community as well. I have found that the more involved I get, such as within Qumbya co-ops, the better I feel. I took the webmaster position on the Board of Directors at Qumbya, and have since been getting more and more involved with the organization. I am attending NASCO institute next month, as an active member as well as the Annual Meeting Rep, and I will also be attending the NASCO Board meeting. I'm drafting a letter to the community about Qumbya, doing lots of website and listhost stuff, and organizing a Bollywood Music Video Film Festival. Co-op life is awesome. I am definitely starting a house in Portland once I (finally) get there. I've already started talking to our NASCO rep about what kind of resources are available to me to do this. And there are many! I'm super excited about that, and what I'm going to learn at Institute that is going to help me in that endeavor as well.

In other news, I finally got a job! Well, I got 2! Not to mention my transcribing gig (which I think may be causing me to go a bit crazy). I'm working at a coffee shop downtown, right on Michigan Ave (The Magnificent Mile) across from Millennium Park, and also at this super nice Asian restaurant 4 blocks from my house. I had tried really hard to get out of restaurants without succumbing to a 9-5 office job, and it just wasn't meant to be. I think that I would be entirely too bored, and probably way depressed if I worked in an office 5 days a week! At least in restaurants, things are always changing, busy, and crazy. And the place I'm serving at in my neighborhood is a brand spanking new restaurant, so there's plenty of stuff to be done and it's always changing. I've been working 60 hour weeks on top of my regular house duties and board duties, and LOVING IT.

Another thing that has really helped me get out of this funk I'd been in was an amazing 2 hour conversation I had with Alex last night. It really opened my eyes to a lot of things, and reminded me of things that I once knew very strongly, and kind of let myself forget. I was able to remember who I am spiritually, and what I have to give others. It made me remember that life will always work itself out, that you are taken down certain paths for a reason, and that there is a higher purpose to everything. For example: I returned from Asia last year broke (in debt actually) and unsure of what my next move was to be. I only knew I wanted to take it really easy for a while. So when I went to the Greenroom to get Karen a b-day present, I wasn't excepting to walk out with a job. But I did! And I began working at a super chill job while (still) trying to figure out my next move. It was while I was hanging out there reading the Stranger that I saw the ad for the Academy for Alternative Journalism fellowship. Immediately intrigued, I applied, not really thinking I would get it. While waiting for word back from them, I began working at the funeral home, where I got a free apartment in exchange for working a couple nights a week. With this new sweet set up, I decided I would stick around for 2 years and save the money I would normally spend on rent and at the end of two years, take my savings and travel for a year (or more). Now, I had originally vowed to never return to this place I grew up in, to move on to bigger and better things. With this job, however, it seemed I had forgotten this vow. But then....I won the fellowship! And that meant spending the summer in Chicago. Guess staying at the funeral home for two years was out. And so, I began working on finding a summer sublet to live at in Chicago. I ended up finding a housing cooperative. I had always wanted to live in some kind of intentional community, so this was perfect. I applied, went through phone interviews, and was accepted. I came to Chicago, did the fellowship (which taught me so much, not the least of it being that I am an artist, not a journalist), and fell in love with the co-op life and community, and decided that if I didn't win a previously applied for scholarship at Pratt Fine Arts in Seattle, that I would come back to Chicago after the summer was over. Consequently, I did not win the scholarship. So, I came home, packed my shit, went to Burning Man, then drove back to Chicago. Since I've been back, I've been building practical co-op experience for starting my own co-op, realized how amazing the northwest really is, and how much I like being involved in a community. So, to make a (very) long story short, if I had never gone to Asia and spent my life savings, I probably wouldn't have wandered into the Greenroom that day and gotten a job, I would have never seen the ad for the fellowship, which means I never would have come to Chicago, never lived in a co-op, never realized how much the northwest is like home, never planned to start my own co-op, and probably never (or at least for a while) realized how important it is being involved in not only your immediate community, but the larger community as well. All of these things have had HUGE parts in shaping the person that I have grown into over the past year, and each and every thing, however trivial at the time, has contributed to discovering the next curve in my path. I can put a higher sense of trust into the universe now, because I know that it will never steer me wrong. As long as I continue to follow my instincts and to strive for personal growth and involvement with the world around me, I know that everything will turn out for the best, and exactly the way it was meant to. There is no wrong path, because whatever path you are on is exactly where you're supposed to be.