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