07 September 2005

My Second attempt at a comeback

Well fuck, it's been another month since I said I'd start back up, but here I am. Major developments in the last month include an increasingly likely chance of me being sent off to California for a while to work on the AFL-CIO's anti-Schwarzenegger ballot initiative campaign, a hurricane, and me signing up to run in a marathon.

Should I be sent out to California, I will most likely be in one of three San's: Diego, Bernardino, or Joaquin. Now I don't know too much about the latter two, but I am under the impression that Bernardino is just outside of the LA area, and being that I have a number of friends in LA, my preference lies there. San Diego would be awesome, no doubt, but there is already a sturdy infrastructure there, which would mean less responsibility for me. Should I be sent to one of the other two locations, chances are I would be in charge of an office, or at least something more significant than being a minor foot soldier. Complicating matters is the fact that I have not been given an okay to go yet, but things seem to be heading in the proper direction. Labor unions, as I've learned over the brief period I've worked for one, move slower than the slowest bureaucracies one might imagine. It's like walking in a quicksand pit. Perhaps it's just the setup of my, and some of the other, older unions, but it seems to me that there are more layers of caution tape than is imaginable. Things move so slowly from the top-down, it's a headache to get even the most minor of initiatives approved. I am amenable to power and working with the old boys' club, as it is, but sometimes there has to be a change in the machine, an adjustment to the cogs. Instead of having a legislative/political department without authority to develop their own legislative/political initiatives to further the purpose of the union, sometimes I think we are just here for the slightest possibility that we might be needed to oppose legislation from the White House. While this is understandable in the type of anti-labor government we are facing, at some point, one has to cease being solely re-active, and pro-actively work for their core beliefs while fighting against the anti-labor initiatives: in other words, a fight on multiple fronts. When a union has the type of talent in its legislative/political department that we do, doing anything less is a waste. IE, what we are doing now is essentially a waste. Am I grateful to have this job? Absolutely. Do I feel like I could be doing so much more in this position? Absolutely. I've been given a great responsibility of being in charge of a region of this country, but I could do much more with that responsibility if given the opportunity to enact some of my own initiatives or at least work towards them. I feel bottlenecked by the immovable structure of the union, the fear to fight our own battles and start some campaigns that don't relate to the singular issue that we are wokring on. Ahhhh well. Guess I wouldn't have as much time to work on important things, like blogging.

Next, the hurricane. I'm going to devote a full post to this later today, but at the moment, I have something to get off my chest. The hurricane's aftermath has been beyond the worst handling of a natural disaster by this country's government. If we were unable to protect our own people in a time of crisis, if we could not so much as bring in buses, planes, trains, cruise ships, and mother-fucking cars, to evacuate those people that would willingly leave their homes; those poor people without their own cars, without the means to afford a plane ticket out of town; we should not be sending a dime to another country to support their rebuilding process. Why in the fuck should we be rebuilding Iraq's infrastructures, and Afghanistan's infrastructure, when we cannot even protect our own nation's infrastrcuture; when we cannot protect our own indigent? Our own people are now commonly being referred to as mother-fucking refugees. In this, the supposed most advanced country in the world. I will save the political, partisan view of this for my later post, but initially, it seems prudent to view this as what it was: a disaster. On the natural level and at the governmental level.

Finally: I'm planning on running in a marathon. Yes, I know, shocking. I have never run competitively; in fact, I've shunned it. I never wanted to play soccer because I thought it was too much aimless running around. I guess as one grows, their views change. I am in need of motivation. I need to better myself both physically and mentally. Challenging myself mentally is sometimes difficult, due to a variety of reasons, but challenging myself physically is something I've hardly ever been able to accomplish. Simply because I typically quit if it gets to be too tough. The closest I've been to a properly trained physical specimen was during my freshman year of college, during which I rowed for the crew team. I managed to force myself out of bed at 4:45 in the morning, and run 3 miles down to the Gtown boathouse by 5:30, and then rowed for an hour or two, all before the sun even came up. Since then? I quit after one semester, for a variety of reasons, not all of which were of my own choosing...due to family circumstances and other issues, I was unsure of my ability to afford a club sport. Nevertheless, the very next year, my sophomore, I joined a fraternity. From that point on (and honestly, a bit before then), my social life improved at the cost of my physical one. Instead of working out, I'd lay about, watch tv, drink beers, or who the fuck knows what. Four years later, here I am. Oh sure, I've tried working out on my own; in South Dakota, Jason, Scott and I even joined the Rapid City YMCA; we worked out in the Travis Tritt gym for fuck's sake. And, since I've moved back down to DC, I've been on-again, off-again working out on my own; mainly off-again. I decided that it was time to motivate myself and figure out a way to get myself in shape. When the AIDS marathon came up, it sounded like a good idea. Basically, I've got to raise $2,700 for the Whittman-Walker clinic, all the while, training to run 26.2 miles. The irony? The marathon is supposed to be held on February 5, in New Orleans. As of now, that is still the set location, but I would not be the least bit surprised if it's moved within the next month. We've already been told that there is a possibility of us running in another alredy scheduled, undetermined marathon. However, I love the city of N'awlins, and will be sad if it's not held there. There are a million other things that have to happen in the city before ours comes up, but I certainly hope the city has regained at least some of it's old shape in the next few months, and we're able to go there. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem the least bit likely, but I'll hope, both for the residents of the great city, and for selfish reasons. I'll be getting a marathon packet soon, and probably have to start raising $$'s soon, so I'll certainly be posting information on here soon. If you do know me, I will likely be personally emailing or writing you, soliciting you for $$. Be assured that it's a good cause, because you'll be both helping people with AIDS and motivating me to lose some of this beer gut I've developed over the past 5 years. I'll even show it to you if you want to see before and after pictures.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home