Tracks

I've been wearing a suit to work for the past three days. And when I say "to work" I should really say "around the city" because that's where my TFA Week visits have taken me: extreme easts, souths, centrals, and west to this place called "Alief"... some of you Houstonians may have heard of it. In order to visit our corps members in their schools, I had to take my "never leave the loop" rule and throw it out the window.

In the process of outer-looping, I crossed a heck of a lot of railroad tracks. Trains everywhere, it seems, and construction to match. On my first visit to a high school in the Heights, our guest teacher was soon interrupted by metal clanging against metal from the renovation happening outside. I could listen to nothing else, but the students seemed immune. How long, I wondered, had they been living day to day with this constant noise pollution? (Before you chalk this up to an inner-city plague, I'm reminded of my freshman year in my suburban high school and the semester of seemingly constant fire alarms.)

From high school seniors to second grade... to seventh grade... to kindergarden... to third grade... to the Rice University mansion noshing on fois gras served by hot, hot wait staffers (who ARE those guys? are they students? YUM--and i don't mean the fois gras). If I were on Sex and the City, my evening would have ended differently; as it stands, I am the only one who gets to appreciate the fine craftsmanship of my suit... which the cat is now shedding on.

Each school had a different sense of community, different rules, different layouts, but every single classroom I visited had a sense of urgency present on the walls and in the air: We will reach our goals. We MUST reach our goals. Powerful testimony to an organization I am proud to be part of, one that I've crafted a living around for four years now.

I haven't been knitting or reading or doing much of anything extracurricular except coming home and collapsing, but I have been throwing my everything into this job. I am aware that I need balance to stay sane, but I also realize that the "balance" may not be 50/50 today. Somewhere along the way I lost myself to boys and unhealthy lifestyle choices, and I'm thinking that keeping this focus isn't such a bad thing for now.

Perhaps "Write EVERY DAY" is more than 10 percent. Let's aim for three times a week.

F*ck the suit. I'm going to change into jeans, grab a notebook, and go accept an invitation.