Self-Care & Other Things

Beautiful day at Seattle Center.

So, one of the nicest things about working in social services is the complete understanding of self-care.  This word, and the idea of 'self-care practices', is entirely new to me, but I'm a pretty big fan.  It is the understanding that you cannot help anybody else if you don't take care of yourself first - so it is incredibly important to make sure that you are taking care of YOU.  After one glance at my morose demeanor yesterday afternoon, my supervisor promptly sent me home, informing me to use my favorite self-care practices, and to "just hang out" with my housemates.  (This is the same woman who, on my first day, told me to leave early and take a walk outside because I was probably pretty overwhelmed and should explore the city I moved to.  She's awesome, and quite perceptive.)

She was right - I needed a break and needed to get away from my work for a little while, even if I didn't see that right away.  So, I headed home, climbed in my bed and watched some movies, ate a delicious dinner, and took an early night.  I even slept in this morning, went for a run, took a long hot shower and grabbed a delicious salted caramel mocha frap from Starbucks (the queen bee of Seattle) before heading into work this afternoon around 1.  It was much needed, and I feel like a million bucks.  So, there's that.

I feel like I should give you all some examples of why Seattle (and my JV experience) is awesome, instead of just showing you the hard stuff.  Because, there's a lot of easy, great stuff, too.  Tons of it.  Like walking into the kitchen every evening after work to the smell of something delicious being whipped up in the kitchen.  Or, my residents shouting "hip hip HOORAY" to me as we drove home from a Mariner's game.  Or Jen, Karin and I taking a walk to the 12th street lookout and laughing at random people shouting at us from their windows.  The list goes on and on.

For example, I highly recommend to everyone the art of volunteering.  Not JVC volunteering either (although, of course, I recommend that, too.)  I mean volunteering for any local events in your city that you might be interested in attending.  One weekend, Mercy House decided to volunteer at Oktoberfest in Fremont as beer-pourers.  The upside of this was receiving free entry on a different night, complete with 7 free beer tokens (a $35 value).  Count me in!

Both beer pouring and beer drinking was a memorable experience.  Highlights include: dancing to a singer who may or may not have been the blonde musician in 10 Things I Hate About You, giving out free beers and being serenaded by drunken frat boys, winning awesome hats at the spinning wheel with Matt, an hour-long bus ride home where one of my housemates attempted to order a pizza, then ended it with "never mind, we're too poor for all that." and hung up, and learning the art of pouring a beer without any foam.

Matt and I with our awesome hats we won!

Continuing with the tradition of working minimally for free events, I volunteered to be an usher at ACT, which meant I got to enter into the theater early, hang out with the stage manager, take programs, and then sit and watch the show! It was great, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to see every ACT show for free this year by being an usher.  Why haven't I discovered this before?

Anyway all, I just wanted to let you know that I am alive and kickin', and feeling much better and very present to my job, my housemates, and the other aspects of my life. I'm off to take some residents to Wal-Mart.  Woop woop.

peace,
K