Stress Relief...Wanted

I have come to discover that a hot shower is the only thing I really need to put me in a better mood; the problem with this discovery is that I can't always get a hot shower. In the last 10 months, I have had many stressful days and few hot showers. I'm not sure if these things are related.

Only one of the places I have lived in as had hot water every time that I wanted to use it. I lived there one month...haha. In my current apartment, I not only share a water supply with my two roommates, but also with my neighbor, which consists of the whole upper floor of my building.

Every morning I test the water to see if its bearable to shower. Sometimes my roommates gets up early and beat me to it (There is only enough hot water for one of us to take a hot shower in the morning). Sometimes I jump in anyway and just suck itup, other days I take a shower when I get home at night. Our new neighbor is in the military, so I'm pretty sure that he is the first one awake in the morning, which is why the water hasn't been hot in awhile. My landlord keeps saying that there needs to be a bigger water heater, as though she is not the one responsible for that appliance...lol.

A hot shower is quickly becoming my most longed for luxury, especially with the colder weather.

It is November.

SO I haven’t written in a very long time. Life has changing drastically here in El Paso. I’ve been accepted to Bike and Build for the summer and I possibly have a new love interest. I feel like I am making great head way at work, and my first grant that I have ever written was approved.

All in all though, I feel really uncertain and overwhelmed (Yeah, not what you were expecting, haha). I feel like I am getting answers from everyone to take it one day at a time, which is what I should be doing, but I am still stressed about everything. I am anxious about fundraising for Bike and Build, as everyone usually is; the last couple of days though I have woke up telling myself that I am going to bike across the country. I’m hoping that this will keep motivating me. I am also uncertain about the new guy in my life; he is a great guy, teaches English at a local high school, interesting, someone that I can learn a lot from, etc. The thing is that my AmeriCorps term ends in three months and Bike and Build starts in six, after that my future is still uncertain and I feel like our future goals may be very different. I still want to see the world, and I want to do it now. I want to be out of the country by the end of next year, but I feel like my dreams may have to wait with the weight of my students loans on my back.

 I for some stupid reason am waiting for everything to go up in flames and to fail. Why do I expect myself to fail? The more I ask myself what I am failing at, the more I feel like I am missing out on opportunities. I’m not sure how to relax for one second. Every time a bunch of really good things are happening in my life, I start to feel the anxiety rising. I should just be happy, but I feel like I can’t have both my traveling dreams/career goals working with refugees and a relationship. I know that sacrifices are a daily trial, but it’s really starting to piss me off.

That being said, yes, I am probably staying in El Paso until the end of May or June when I leave for Bike and Build. I still have time to apply for different things and see where this relationship goes, but I, like most of us, want to know if it’s going to work out now. I don’t want to be patient; patience sucks.

I feel like posts after so long in between should be nice and sweet, but this is not. Whatever. Please comment; remind me that I’m being selfish and stubborn and that I need to get a grip because my conscience is having a hard time convincing my hand to slap myself in the face.

Monday.

I know that I just posted something, but that was from like a week ago and I just didn't have the internet to post it.

Some good things are happening lately. I signed a lease for a new apartment, where hopefully I will stay put for the next six months until I leave El Paso. I am excited about, pictures will come soon. I am going to move in later this week and am getting pretty excited to decorate and put my pictures up as I miss seeing my friends faces in the morning. I also have this palm tree collage idea in my head that I have been thinking about doing for awhile and well...I took pictures of this cool palm tree in Chiquimula and took pictures in pieces up close and farther away so that I could kind of reconstruct it as a wall art. I'm excited to work on a project with some artsy stuff, it's been awhile. I'm currently living/crashing with two other VISTAs that are working with Affordable Housing and then I'm moving in with two new VISTAs that will be working with the United Way, whom I have not yet met. This just seems to be kinda how I roll, lol.

Two months later...

Tomorrow will be the day six months ago when I boarded a plane to start my year with AmeriCorps. It is not what I expected. Lately my motivation is lacking and my ability to focus on one thing without thinking of three to four other things is devastating to my learning, to put it plainly. I thought that it would be this great stepping stone, but I feel anxious a lot lately. My job is the only thing that I have going on now and I’m stressed about looking for another apartment. This will be the fifth move in six months. However optimistic my general mood, I feel a bit displaced. I keep telling myself to just suck it up, focus on reading and research, and take it one day at a time. My thoughts tend to drag me down with pessimism. I need to find something productive to do in my free time. A few months ago I looked into volunteering with Las Americas Immigration Center here in El Paso. They accepted me to volunteer, but it didn’t work with my work schedule. Now that I’m temporarily living close to the center, I think that I am going to see about taking one morning every week to volunteer with them and just make up the work time. I wanted to be involved with a team of sorts here. I guess I never really looked. I thought that I would just get talking to someone and find out about clubs/teams/organizations going on around town. I didn’t really do any research into the idea.

On another note, I have realized that I do not apply for enough opportunities for where life can take me. When I applied for this job I was worried that I wouldn’t get it, that they might choose someone else. It’s like I lack confidence in myself to be wanted by an employer. I now see that I just haven’t applied to a great majority of things to see what my options could be for the future. I mean even when I applied for college, I only applied to Central. Sometimes I think that I don’t try very hard for things because if I work hard and fail, then it will prove that I’m not good enough or smart enough or something. So, might as well just not go for it, lol. I know that’s not true, but I’m keeping myself caught in that repetitive mindset that disables me from focusing. It’s like I do not live in the present, but an ideology of the past and future. I know that this is not good, and I’m trying to keep a presentness about me, but it is such a difficult thing to do. In the book I was reading, The Future of Peace, one of the peacekeepers, I think Ghosananda talked about spending 9 years in the forest meditating. Yeah, I’m not planning on doing that, but I keep thinking that if a human being can spend such a great amount of time doing that, then why can’t I focus for even part of the day?

On another, another note, I just started doing this DISC personality profile that my boss gave me to do if I wanted. It’s really interesting, it kind of shows you your behavioral styles and those of others to better understand how people work and how to work with them.  It is based on the research by William Marston, oddly enough the inventor of the polygraph and creator of wonder woman comics, where an individual can perceive his/her environment as favorable or unfavorable and his/her perception of self as being more or less powerful than the environment.  This is based on 4 personality dimensions: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness.  Although everyone has traits of all the categories, usually one is higher than the others. My highest was influence.  It says that my tendencies include: contacting people, making a favorable impression, being articulate, creating a motivating environment, generating enthusiasm, entertaining people, viewing people and situations with optimism, and participating in a group. I feel like this is accurate. There is more to the description and an action plan with what I need to be effective, but this is already long.

I don’t know, here are my current thoughts laid down for now. This post I actually typed up on Word, the last few times I used my mail. More should be on its way, hopefully. J

It's Been Awhile...

So yeah, It's now July...well the end of July. I've been in El Paso for 5 months. I'm kind of in this daily routine of getting up early, walking to work, work, gym, home, bed and it's kind of getting old. I'm trying to just focus on the task at hand: providing the credit union with a sustainable financial literacy program. It takes a lot of time and communication to make this happen, so sometimes things seem to be going by very slowly.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my plans for next year. I'm really focusing on teaching english abroad for a year or so. I feel the need to travel again bearing down on me. I've looked into a lot of different locations, but I still have some time to decide. I'm going to take the TEFL certification when I am done with this year. I'm really siding with doing the 4 week in-class certification abroad, instead of online or from a different US location. I think going abroad with it would really teach me a lot about...well, teaching, since that's not my educational background. Don't get me wrong, I've done a lot of presentations and taught a lot of students this year about budgeting and credit management basics, but I need help on lesson planning and everything else that teachers learn in the classroom first-hand.

On another note, I'm visiting home in two weeks and am very excited! Virginia is getting married, and I have now been chosen as a bridesmaid, which I have never done before. I am flying in on the 6th to Detroit; Summer is flying back from San Francisco on the same day, and Kristen is picking us both up. I just might need a vacation from my vacation after this...haha. 

Migrant Trail

I feel so unprepared. I have been so caught up in work and everything else that I forgot to mentally prepare myself for the journey ahead.  Feel like I may come back with a new prospective or something. I don’t know. I am kind of excited though. Up close and personal with the border fence and the graffiti, the desert, the desolation. I want to see it, all of it. I want to feel it, to touch the sand and dig my fingers into the dry hot crystals. To remind myself that this isn’t a dream, it’s reality.

So much of the time here I walk down the street with the brick and adobe houses starring at me that I think it’s in a film, not real. Not until it’s dusk and I can feel the heat of the concrete and stone mixed fences around the houses still hot from a foot away. I have to stop walking and just touch them to remember that El Paso isn’t a dream, that I really did move here.

So, here I go. Packed. Blue bag and knapsack. Ready to go on this adventure, remembering the words from the vision statement in the Migrant Trail handbook:

The precarious reality of our borderlands calls us to walk.  We are a spiritually diverse, multi-cultural group who walk together on a journey of peace to remember people, friends and family who have died, others who have crossed, and people who continue to come.  We bear witness to the tragedy of death and of the inhumanity in our midst.  Lastly, we walk as a community, in defiance of the borders that attempt to divide us, committed to working together for the human dignity of all peoples.

La realidad precaria de nuestra frontera es un llamado a caminar. Somos un grupo diverso en cultura y espíritu quienes caminamos juntos en una jornada de paz para recordar a nuestros compañeros, amigos y familiares quienes han muerto, los que han cruzado, y quienes continúan cruzando. Testificamos acerca de la tragedia de muerte e inhumanidad en nuestro medio. Finalmente, caminamos como comunidad en contra de las fronteras que intentan dividirnos, comprometidos a luchar por la dignidad de todos.

Selfishness does not bring about change.

I'm not sure when I wrote this, maybe a couple weeks ago. I wrote it on a piece of mail when I just had to get it out of my head.

Sometimes I find myself feeling so ungrateful, so selfish. Feeling like so many other people get everything while I had to fend for myself, getting so mad at God for leaving me out. Then I just have to slap myself in the face and say WAKE UP, ELAYNA, WAKE UP! You have no idea what real suffering is. Be so grateful that God has not given you so much, that he has shown you some of the evil of this world. You understand the hate and greed and envy of others. You have felt it, but He has also showed you wisdom. The empathy that goes with understanding the sadness of others.

More and more I see why God chose the path he did for me. I would not feel the pain of others, the compassion I have in my heart, if it were not for the pain I felt growing up through the years. More things come together each day, but I still tend to forget some of His greatest lessons, that of humility and love. Love is never ungrateful.

I am one of the most independent people I know. Would I still be the person I am today if I had been spoonfed everything? Maybe a bit because I tend to rebel against the people who try to control me. I don't know. I'm just happy that God maybe about to use me. I figured out a little while ago that God doesn't need me or anyone else; He's God! But, He can chose to use me for his good works, and I hope that he does because He is my hope in this world that can be so unforgiving.