AmeriCorps NCCC Sacramento: So it begins...

So I guess I’ll give in and do this journal thing. Or blog thing or whatever century this is. As I sit here on a Saturday morning on my top bunk a little after 9am (knowing I got four hours of sleep more than the previous day and that I don’t feel like I want anymore), I realize my life has changed. My bed is uncomfortable, I am living in a dorm-sized room with two guys that I get along with very well but would most likely never have met otherwise, I have to get up at 5 AM four days a week to workout (the other day I get to sleep till 6:30), I go to bed between 9 and 10 (not AM anymore), I eat healthy foods, I have no car or practical way to get around much, there is one bar (and it’s a dive) within walking distance, and the three hundred of us at this place all have to wear the same uniform for nearly twelve hours-a-day, five days-a-week. And I love every second of it.

It has been one week since I arrived here and I’ve laughed, sang, clapped (probably way more than necessary), stomped, walked, walked, walked, ran, done pushups, situps, legups, listened, talked, been bored, been engaged, been happy, been happier, judged people, gotten over that, made great friends from every part of the country, heard eye-opening stories, watched people come out of their shells, thought about things, but not once have I cried. The closest I came to crying was when I was at open mic night and a girl read a poem about her experience with this program last year and pretty much just about how life changes in general. I have had more goosebumps this week than a 5^th grader from the 1990s had on his bookshelf (noted, write corny rap using metaphors like this for next open mic night).

Oddly enough I’m not sad that I left. I miss my friends and family. I miss my dog. But these things are more of a formality than anything. I realize this is all part of any experience of moving on and I honestly don’t really sit around missing things (perhaps because I’ve had barely anytime to sit around). As an Economics major, I know that life is pretty much solely based on opportunity costs and tradeoffs. You can’t do everything, be with everyone, hold on to everything and honestly if you tried it would result in you having the same four or five repetitive experiences for years and years until you realize you love your friends and family but know that you missed out on so much by not being able to break-away (or maybe you wouldn’t even notice). I love it when people who have really mastered something (be it medicine or poker or drug trafficking or whatever) use the phrase “I’ve forgotten more than you will ever know about X.” I think you have to live that way. Maybe not master one thing, but realize you can’t hold onto everything and know that leaving some things behind is the only way to grow and continue to accomplish meaningful things in life.

One of Mitch Hedberg’s jokes goes something like “I was at a grocery store and I was buying eight apples and the clerk asked me if I wanted him to put them in a bag. Nah man I can juggle, but only eight. If I come in here and buy nine apples bag ‘em up.” It’s a little abstract to draw anything from this other than the “here’s your sign” idiocy of some people, but as we grow and get more and more apples we have to realize that it’s better to be less of a juggler and more of a bagger. Not bagger as in having baggage (since this term has such a derogatory nature), but more of neatly packed away memories, stories, perhaps friends and family that you can revisit later but know that we just can’t juggle it all.

I was going to write this as an overview of the week or whatever, but that’s too formal and not spontaneous enough. It really matters very little what actually happens or happened, but what you get out of it. I watched yesterday as we were playing a slightly embarrassing game where we were running around trying to stay in between two people while 20 other people were trying to do the same (I don’t feel like explaining anymore cause I really don’t care about teaching camp games to whoever comes across this blog). There was one kid who just stood in place. Didn’t move. Probably didn’t even pick two people who he was supposed to be chasing or staying away from. When the round was over he sat down. This attitude continued over the rest of the time I watched him in our group and I imagine it’s safe to assume it was pretty par for the course for him. Not trying to get too deep into why he was here or what went different (not wrong) to make him be so absent compared to the rest of the group, I really just took from this that we all did the same activity (it didn’t make a huge difference if it was bungee jumping or Scattegories) and attitude dictated 98% of what we got out of it. Be crazy. Remove yourself from your comfort zone. Rather than looking at what people are doing wrong, think about what you can do right. Learn. Laugh. Meet people. Make mistakes. Embarrass yourself. Smile.

Ok back to what we did. There were a few practical things I learned this week that I feel I should share. First of all, everyone should take a first aid/CPR class. It is just practical. You learn a lot of stuff you knew already, but there is so much you don’t know. I’d say with pretty much 100pct confidence that that 6 hour class was more important to me than many of the semester long classes I took in college (um, add it to the college core classes anyone?). I don’t think I’ll ever save a life with the knowledge I have from Asian History 101 and I know that that is a horribly uneducated correlation to make (and honestly made me cringe when I began to type it) but sometimes saying unfair things is the best way to get a point across. Point being: go learn first aid/CPR. I don’t care who you are or what you think you know. You probably won’t ever directly save a life, but you add to the community’s overall ability to do so. And in poker you’d say that’s +EV.

Other practical things that I learned include the fact that you should wash your sponges or whatever you clean your non-dishwasher dishes with frequently. At least everyday. Easiest way to do so it just throw them in the dishwasher with every load. Second easiest way is two minutes in the microwave. Do it. Sponges get gross.

Also, obesity and eating unhealthily is horrible. I knew that, you knew that. But it is. It isn’t talked about enough. We harp too much on curing cancer and having heart transplants or whatever. People die of cancer and heart disease. People do not die of obesity. It is the indirect effect of probably more than we know though. We’d rather sit on the couch and watch “Biggest Loser” than realize how ironic we are being. It’s taboo to talk about obesity without dancing around the issue and trying to not offend people. Everyone does things in their lives they shouldn’t. Be it drink too much, do drugs, smoke, eat unhealthily, judge people, procrastinate, cheat, lie, whatever, whatever. Right now the biggest (after reasonable thought, pun intended) problem right now in our country is obesity. People are too fat. People eat the wrong stuff. Companies market the wrong stuff. Government doesn’t regulate or promote things correctly. Whoever you want to blame, most likely you can’t do much other than look in a mirror and really think what can I do. So do it. Look up some information on sugars and fats and proteins. Stop relying on whatever lazy myths you would like to believe. Stop relying on the “I know it all already attitude.” You don’t know it all, about anything. Remember, there are people that have forgotten more than you know or will know. Just do some research. Start working out and eating right. Be true to yourself. Again, it’s not that it’s not sad that people get cancer and heart disease, it is. But if a bomb goes off and destroys an entire building, you aren’t going to think about going after the bomb. It’s too late. Start early. Prevent the bombs. (eh, maybe a slightly better metaphor than the last one).

Lastly, I’ll end this long, winding, preachy “journal” entry with most important thing of the week. Open mic night. I already mentioned it a little, but open mic night was amazing. I went on a whim thinking it’d be a couple people doing guitar covers and a few more reading crappy poetry that their mom’s were so proud of that they allowed them to put on the refrigerator. I was wrong. People are talented. People read amazing poetry. The singing and guitar playing was a mixture of covers and originals, but was mostly very well done. There were a couple of good original raps. And there was even a guy who captured an audience for a comedic performance probably better than I’ve ever seen before. And I love comedy. He didn’t have the greatest jokes (they were good). He did, however, have the greatest stage presence and just knew how to use the crowd. Open mic night was an enormous success not only in that it was entertaining, but also it triumphed my (and hopefully other’s) preconceived notions about people. People in general are good-natured and talented. People love to laugh and smile and feel.

AmeriCorps NCCC has been so much so quickly for me. A lot of it has been the fact that this is just a drastically different experience, but the program itself has also been responsible for much of the learning and growing. I am so far grateful to have been given this opportunity and am excited to learn about our first six-week trip. My team is a great mixture of people and I know I will learn so much from them. I’ll definitely get more into the nuts and bolts of what we were doing from now on, but for now, I kind of just wanted to get a clear vision of where my head was at and what is going on. I miss everyone back home, but not too much. I’ll end on a quote. Let’s see…As the Joker would say “It’s all part of the plan.” Or maybe not, that sounds too set in stone. How about Rihanna’s “Live your life.” No, too cliché and preachy (and probably not Rihanna’s anyways). Hmm. Ah, how about Mr. Arnold Baker from Kecoughtan High School “Make it a great day or not, the choice is yours.” Perfect.