Hello

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

I don't understand life, and most of the time I don't even bother to pretend to. But regardless of how good or how bad things are going, I find that I just feel better when I roll with the punches, so to speak.

I had this urge last week to tell Fr. Bruce that so long as I got to work with my teens, I was happy, and that the rest of my job could go bugger off. It didn't quite fit into the context of what was going on though, so I didn't say it, but that's the deal. I love working with my young adults, even when everything doesn't quite work out. It's worth it to me, because I feel that even when things go wrong, still showing them a positive attitude is really doing something. A lot of them are so used to things falling apart at the drop of a hat. It's just crazy to watch their faces when things go wrong and I can still smile and say, "It's all good." I love that.

And they help me too. I don't quite know what's going on with one aspect of my job. I was put in charge without being told I was in charge. And I think that similarly the charge has been taken back from me without me being told. I told that to Edy, who's a college student I"m grooming to take over the theatre program when I leave. He shrugged and threw his hand down and said, "Oh, that's just how they work around here." And I was surprised how much better that made me feel. Other coworkers will listen, and hear me, and complain back, and we've all got stories of how it goes... but hearing someone pretty much saying back to me, "It's all good," was just what I needed. So who knows what's up? It'll be fine.

The situation reminds me of a song lyric from Liz Phair: You put in my hand a loaded gun and then told me not to fire, when you did the things you said were up to me, and then accused me of trying to f**k it up.

So I've been holding that gun for a while, wondering what to do with it, and praying and seeking advice, and sometimes just yelling out my frustrations (Michael had the joy of watching me get into the car over the weekend and then berating the steering wheel because my boss had 'done it again'. And it really wasn't the steering wheel's fault at all. Michael thought it was funny, watching me be angry.) But then someone just shrugs and says, yeah, that's what happens. And I thought, Yeah, it does. And I put the gun down.

And I don't really care anymore if she goes on to treat me like I"m irresponsible for the rest of my time here. And I don't care if she yells at me for things I have no control over. And I don't care if she messes things up and then blames me for it. Because that's all on her. It's out of my hands, and life goes on.

And dude, you know I keep saying I won't put my energy into this, but it's taken so much for me to get to this point. All these stages of letting go. I guess it's easier to let go a problem that's over, but an ongoing one will just keep rearing its ugly head. So maybe my next post will also be about how I've finally finally finally gotten over it. We'll see.

In other news, the volunteers are going to Wisconsin on retreat this weekend. Technically the retreat begins this afternoon. I"m at work anyway, cause I got stuff to do, but... well, I got stuff I want to do, but not necessarily stuff I CAN do. But retreat, yeah. We're outta here. Back on Tuesday.

And also, one of my coworkers in HOPE Program is making a documentary about HIV, and she's going to use a song I wrote! Cool huh? Did I brag about that already?

I'm famous.