Automatic

Spin, Baby, Spin:
U2: Greatest Hits 1980 - 1990
Smashing Pumpkins: Adore
The Cure (2004)



Spinning around in the city of lights, I count down the minutes as the weekend slowly approaches. D is away for the weekend for a leadership retreat, and so I'm on my own. Somehow, the days have again become busy, crowded with the many encounters that we plan to fill up the cold moments before we return home to sleep.

I have a different outlook on life since the trip to India, though. I feel more prepared to tackle the doldrums of unsatisfying day-job with the knowledge that there is something better just over the horizon. That's actually helping me to focus more in the job, without focusing on the elements of the situation that drive me crazy. Like being the 3rd most senior person here, and not being part of a "senior staff" meeting. But it's okay. Because I can laugh off the simple stupidity and foolish insults, even as I'm counting them. Because I can laugh now at how petty people can be about their silly little fiefdoms. I have bigger things to do. No more time to waste on the lost.

I am amazed, however, at the ability of people to make working in the community, or community-related work (in the broadest and most generous sense, since many of my co-workers are not very connected to anything outside of themselves or their iPods) into a professional, sterile relationship. There's no passion in their voices about this work, or the community as a living, breathing thing. There's no real feeling for how movement continues, grows, ebbs and flows. There's nothing more than the personal ambition, the career ladder, the rhetoric thick with theories. I can't become like that. I can't become automatic.