The opportunity to have a roundtable brainstorm/discussion with various other nonprofit workers today was a little bit mindblowing. I spend much of my professional time thinking about things that have little relevance to my current position and much relevance to my devoted volunteer activities. I think a lot about how frustrating the world is, how I am having an impossibly hard time thinking about how to put my talents to work, thinking about how my favorite thing to do is make connections and then see things happen via those connections. I truly think that is my FAVORITE thing to do.
I’ve been brainstorming a way to bring it all together: my love of the arts, my wish for artists to be able to thrive and make a living, my love for my deeply flawed community, my love for this silly city I find myself devoted to, a way to make the disparate but deeply similar activities I do come together holistically…I am looking toward some very contemporary models: Etsy, Shunpike, um, I can’t think of others.
I wish I had a mentor, I wish someone other than me could help me think strategically about this, I wish I was more dedicated and could find a way to just sit down and be strategic on my own. I wish I wasn’t scared to just jump off the cliff. Apparently I don’t trust myself.
26.2.10
17.2.10
the fat and the ashes
It is a fat Tuesday, sun spilling through glass, birds fighting and somersaulting and caterwauling in the surrounding trees of my sedate urban forest. I am grinding my creative ability into dust and wishing for gods. I am answered by flowering quince and Professor Longhair and count myself lucky. It is not my custom to greet the spring with joy but this year, as I see age in my hair, on my hips, in old sprains that resist healing, I smile with the sun and the sudden shock of crocuses and snow drops. For the first time, this emergence means something new to me.
Until the fall, I had spent my conscious moments building my life, my family, my loves, and my home, making them strong and safe. I worked and worked at a deep and prideful labor and my eyes were bright. But then the dark months were heralded by dark events, by attack and dismay and grief and, try as I might to deny it as I snatch at my fleeting past self, I know I am harshly changed.
She came legion as summer faded, a swarming, quiet, utter invading plague. She pressed upon my world, flanked by a waiting, wanton darkness, and then she sank, spreading infection. She shared the end with me and with sure, relentless hands she stole my love and my work, bearing it away to a place where I had never, until now, thought to go.
I do not want to scar or heal or cover the emptiness I hold. My friends are dead but all we built together remains with me. It clings precariously to the living wounds of the new void and craves homage.
Now arrives this infant spring and the rolling world cradles its brilliant new flowers, its riotous birds, and a frantic, frolicking three-legged puppy. These vital glowing lives do not shield or distract me from the aching gaps in my fractured family - instead they circle this place where once my loved ones stood and danced and laughed and built just as industriously as I had.
So now I begin a new work: I construct my rite of spring looking to flowers, dogs, mud, clouds, and birds to find my way to befriend the dead. I search for my way to live in death.
Until the fall, I had spent my conscious moments building my life, my family, my loves, and my home, making them strong and safe. I worked and worked at a deep and prideful labor and my eyes were bright. But then the dark months were heralded by dark events, by attack and dismay and grief and, try as I might to deny it as I snatch at my fleeting past self, I know I am harshly changed.
She came legion as summer faded, a swarming, quiet, utter invading plague. She pressed upon my world, flanked by a waiting, wanton darkness, and then she sank, spreading infection. She shared the end with me and with sure, relentless hands she stole my love and my work, bearing it away to a place where I had never, until now, thought to go.
I do not want to scar or heal or cover the emptiness I hold. My friends are dead but all we built together remains with me. It clings precariously to the living wounds of the new void and craves homage.
Now arrives this infant spring and the rolling world cradles its brilliant new flowers, its riotous birds, and a frantic, frolicking three-legged puppy. These vital glowing lives do not shield or distract me from the aching gaps in my fractured family - instead they circle this place where once my loved ones stood and danced and laughed and built just as industriously as I had.
So now I begin a new work: I construct my rite of spring looking to flowers, dogs, mud, clouds, and birds to find my way to befriend the dead. I search for my way to live in death.
15.2.10
What should Katy do with her "talents"?
I am good at a few things and one of the things I am good at and actually like doing is thinking about how small organizations I like can find funding, thrive, innovate, and continue sharing their offerings with the community.
What I would like to do is this “thing” full time. That, and develop a new kind of dating service called “Date My Friend” that would be a hybrid of internet dating and community building.
Both of these concepts are hard for me to articulate in a concrete way and I think what I need is help but if I start reaching out for real help, I would need a lot of processing time and then would have to quit my job and figure out how to fund these endeavors. And then I would have more ideas and it would be even harder to manage. A big part of me finds it difficult to see how large organizations can survive (and by survive I mean find sustainability/prosperity) OR how small, entrepreneurial ventures can either. My distrust of any kind of business sustainability is tied up completely in the fantasy of capitalism and of the international belief system built on the eternal feasibility of debt. I know expecting a level of safety is too much to ask.
Why is being a grown up and trying to make a difference in my community so freaking hard? And how do I survive without money but in an urban setting? And why did I forget to develop a marketable skill? And why did the world decide to make economic survival so difficult now?
What I would like to do is this “thing” full time. That, and develop a new kind of dating service called “Date My Friend” that would be a hybrid of internet dating and community building.
Both of these concepts are hard for me to articulate in a concrete way and I think what I need is help but if I start reaching out for real help, I would need a lot of processing time and then would have to quit my job and figure out how to fund these endeavors. And then I would have more ideas and it would be even harder to manage. A big part of me finds it difficult to see how large organizations can survive (and by survive I mean find sustainability/prosperity) OR how small, entrepreneurial ventures can either. My distrust of any kind of business sustainability is tied up completely in the fantasy of capitalism and of the international belief system built on the eternal feasibility of debt. I know expecting a level of safety is too much to ask.
Why is being a grown up and trying to make a difference in my community so freaking hard? And how do I survive without money but in an urban setting? And why did I forget to develop a marketable skill? And why did the world decide to make economic survival so difficult now?
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