Civic duty

Am I the only one who finds voting stressful? And, now that I think about it, a lot of civic duties are stressful. Jury duty, for example. For the record, I think I would be a horrible jury member. I sense that I would come away with lots of questions and doubts and I just don't recommend me for jury duty.

But voting. That comes around much more frequently than jury duty and there is no lottery setup, where you might get out of it. And it's just...the worst. 

I think I could handle it if I had to choose from a series of good candidates. I mean, that would be the dream. But usually, it's choosing between a series of undesirable candidates. And there's the ballots where there's only one candidate. 

The closer to the local level you get, the less information there is. I tend to resort to whoever bothered to fill out their bio on the free election website. At least they bothered to put in that low hanging level of effort. 

Furthermore, why are some of these positions elected? Why is the state auditor an elected official? Or the coroner? (Not a thing in my state, but it is in some). It's weird. Just hire someone, for crying out loud. Not everything needs to be a vote.

And don't get me started on the mail. I will vote for the candidate who opts to save the planet by not sending out a bunch of junk email telling me about how bad their opponent is. And whoever doesn't text me with dramatic warnings of doom. I'm not into drama, especially trumped up drama. 

Yeah, voting stresses me out. Nevertheless, I will do it. Because it is my responsibility as a citizen. But, I would really love it if it could be less stressful.

With great power comes...

...a massive amount of emails. 

I shifted to a supervisory role at work a while ago which I never really wanted to do. I would have been content not being in management, but what can you do. And there are several things I don't love, but one of the things that is a definite drawback to being a supervisor is the number of emails I get. I don't love it.

In my previous role, I could get away with cleaning out my inbox once a month (or less!!!). It was brilliant! And I didn't get the back and forth on things as much. One or two emails, problem solved, moving on. Now, I send out one email and get a dozen in response (and the email tool we use doesn't group them together, annoyingly). I got my inbox down to 60 earlier this week, and I'm already back at 120. 

Which may not sound horrible to some people but it is mildly panic inducing for me. A few, I can handle, but a flood of emails is too much. 

So all in all, I'll take less power. And fewer emails.

Adulting lessons

There is a ton of information about being an adult that I seem to never have received. I don't know if it is just me, or if we all missed out on that particular class but either way, I definitely missed the class on dealing with illness: how to know if you are sick, how worried to be, when to call a doctor, and basic care when you are sick.

I came down with something on Tuesday night (seriously, hit me out of nowhere), and stayed home on Wednesday. But since then, I've just been a bit queasy. And at the same time, not, which makes no sense I know. I have just felt off and not really wanted to eat anything, and have been a bit nauseous and tired. And probably some of it is just a mind game at this point but I'm still just not gung-ho about eating. 

There are some upsides, though. I haven't had to decide what to eat for dinner at all this week. Or fix dinner! Or lunch! (Which, given that more frequently than I'd like to admit, I don't get to lunch, at least now I can say there's a good reason for it). But, given that I haven't had a ton to eat, it just makes me more tired, which definitely isn't helping things. And I'm not entirely sure when to get really worried. 

And my friends keep telling me (because they are good friends!!!) to rest, and I really do try but this annoying life business keeps getting in the way. And hopefully today will be a turning point. I am feeling better. I mean, ice cream sounded great, so that's a good sign, right?! 

Anyway, I am just feeling like I should know better what to do in this situation so if anyone has any notes from that adult class, let me know. 

I get it now

Twenty years ago this December, I graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Spanish. Twenty years ago, it didn't seem like a great career move. The number of people who asked me, "What do you do with a degree in Spanish?" [Answer: Speak Spanish and hope someone hires you to do something.]

In high school, I'd actually kicked around becoming an architect. But when it was decision making time, I chose to go to a university with no architecture program and no real idea what I was going to study. You could argue that it came down to a better financial aid package, other reasons. But honestly, I just felt right about attending the other university. 

I kind of fell into Spanish, too. It wasn't really planned. I took 101 and 102. Then 201 and 202. And just kept going. I still don't feel like I'm particularly good at it, and I know at the time I didn't feel super fluent, but I kept at it. Twenty years ago, I never could have predicted how pivotal that seemingly random (or at the very least, not super proactive and determined) decision would be. 

As part of my degree, I did a study abroad, leaving the country for the first time. I look back and can't even imagine the kind of person I would be without that experience. I am humbly grateful for how it expanded me as a disciple of Christ or, for the less religious or non-Christians among us, as a global citizen. It it didn't feel dramatic at the time, but it was the little decision that made a huge impact. (Okay, maybe not little. It was a 4-year degree, which is a pretty big commitment of time and resources. But you know what I mean).

But that's not all. After graduating, I did indeed speak Spanish and find people to hire me to do work that had nothing to do with Spanish. And then, ten years ago in April, I graduated with a Master's degree in Archival Science. Now I am an archivist for a global religion and guess what I specialize in? Records from Latin America. My team meetings are in Spanish, English, and Portuguese, with Spanish as the lingua franca. A significant portion of the records we collect are in Spanish, and I then describe them in both Spanish and English. I've been to 4 Spanish-speaking countries this year, and will likely go to 2 more before the year ends. 

It's not that being able to speak Spanish wasn't useful in the years between degrees. It always came in handy. But here I am, twenty years later, seeing that it wasn't just a handy side skill, while I got on with other work. Not to minimize my master's degree--if I only spoke Spanish, I'd be pretty useless. But, 10 and 20 years later, I can see there was a purpose to the path I was inspired to take, even though at the time, it felt pretty purposeless. And I hope in 30 and 40 years, I look back and see even more how purposeful those decisions and future decisions have been.