The Black Parade

That is the song I am listening to as I write this - one of the latest released singles from My Chemical Romance. It's a great song, heavily reminiscent of Queen and David Bowie, if you like that pure, musical rock n' roll.

Orlando is an insane city. Maybe it's the heat. It seems like every day this past week at least one elementary, Jr. High or High School has been in lock-down due to gun sightings in or around school grounds. Last Friday the 42nd Orange County homicide of 2006 happened in a High School courtyard. A 15 year old and 17 year old got into a fight over a girl and the 15 year old ended up dead with 3 stab wounds to his head and torso. What the bloody hell?

One down-fall of this job is that my co-workers love to talk about all the news. Maybe it's always been like this...I've been in an extended news hiatus to save my sanity and live in ignorant bliss. Well, I've been watching Jon Stuart, but he pads the ludicrous and depressing with much-needed humor and it enters my brain in a dulled manner. Unlike the pathetic shock-value local news stations use to one-up each other with all the horrors of our world and community. My co-workers repeat bits and pieces of what they hear on TV and it sends me running to my computer to fill in the blanks and get the entire emotional account of the horrors of people's lives. It's like this "Oh My Gawd!" adrenaline rush. The need to know the inside trauma of others' lives. What is America's obsession with impending and present doom? I sometimes wonder of our society is set up in a way that doesn't allow for happiness.

People look at you funny if you say you're happy or appear to be too happy or content. We are made to always be living on edge - never actually OK with anything - we need more, need to weigh less, look better, we are never secure, can't trust anyone or anything...someone is always out to screw us so we need to hire this person or buy that product to prevent ultimate screwage.

Now I'm all for changing the world, social justice, peace, and I'm not going to lay back and let environmental and social destruction explode around me - in this way I am definitely not content...But shouldn't we aim to be happy at a micro level? Is it socially irresponsible to feel happy?

My Job

If our identity lies in the nature of our work, I suppose I would be considered a saint by the affluent that care, an idiot by the affluent who don't give a shit, and mostly the embodiment of evil bureaucracy by those who come in need of our help. The latter group is the one that really only matters and it's really not a lot of fun being a big meanie.

I am a case worker for the Family and Emergency Services program at the Christian Service Center here in downtown Orlando. We provide food from our food pantry, free clothing vouchers for our on-site thrift store, bus passes, and assistance for utilities and rent. The Christian Service Center also has Daily Bread - a hot meal at noon 6 days a week, and Fresh Start - a residential and rehab program for men who work and are committed to getting their lives back on track. The problem lies in the process leading up to the decision on whether or not the people qualify for our services.

We have a limited number of bus passes per month therefore you have to have proof of a job, a job interview, or a medical appointment to get access to the passes. We have a limited amount of food, so you have to provide proof of residence, picture ID, social security cards for all in the household, and not have an open food stamp account in order to get food. We receive only a certain amount of monetary funding we can access, so people have to be rigorously screened, provide us with copies of document after document to prove that they had a crisis in the past 30 days which caused them to be X dollars short, and that this is not an on-going crisis that would cause the same problem next month. We use United Way funding for utilities bills which also requires proof of a crisis within the last 30 days proving this is why they were unable to pay last month's utilities, they can not have a history of their service getting cut off, and they can not be in the system for receiving help from other social service agencies for the same problem within the last year.

The problem lies here: most people, myself included, would access any savings, any relatives, try and utilizes all other strategies to pay the bills, rent, utilities, etc before coming to a social service agency to ask for help. By that time they are usually 2 or 3 months past the immediate crisis and we can't help them.

I made a 59 year old woman cry silently today when it was my responsibility to tell her we couldn't help pay her utility bill, for what seemed like ludicrous reasons. One tear silently streaming down her right cheek as she nodded and got up to leave. I also had to leave the room to compose myself. I would much rather have people yelling and cussing me out than to see them walk away from me visibly defeated.

All These Things That I've Done

October 19, 2006

When there's nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son
One more son
If you can hold on
If you can hold on, hold on
I wanna stand up, I wanna let go
You know, you know - no you don't, you don't
I wanna shine on in the hearts of men
I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand

Another head aches, another heart breaks
I am so much older than I can take
And my affection, well it comes and goes
I need direction to perfection, no no no no

Help me out
Yeah, you know you got to help me out
Yeah, oh don't you put me on the blackburner
You know you got to help me out -- The Killers

I'm counting down the days until I land on that great mile-stone of 30. Of course it's this feeling of fleeting time and mortality that always make us reflect on the un-accomplished rather than the accomplished. I immediately think back to "when we were young" and bemoan "oh I was going to be married with kids by 25," or "I was going to be a famous published author by 28..." And here I am 3 days shy of 30 up to my armpits in debt without a stable job (not to mention a career), no hope of being able to pay for a wedding let alone a house or fronting the money to start a family and I still don't really know what I want to be when I grow up. But really that sounds awful and depressing when most days are optimistic. So what the hell is so depressing about 30? I've lived in the 70's, 80's, 90's and 00's. That's 4 freaking decades. How cool is that?

I have the best fiance one could ask for, two insane dogs that I love, a cute house with a yard we can actually afford the rent on, off-street parking, a Master's degree, and a job that's doing some good in this world. Oh and not to be over-looked, I'm finally feeling like the person I've always wanted to be two surgeries (that I had the privilege of being able to schedule and follow through on) and a weekly testosterone shot in the ass later! There's this obsession with finding what's perfect....what we are entitled to. The later being so loaded. Entitlement coupled with responsibility. I'm learning here at work hard-core what entitlement means: nothing, unless you can show that you won't be back next week or even next month. Even among my co-workers I feel hecka privileged. Up to what line does one have responsibility, and when does it become completely out of one's control? You get tired when you are unemployed and trying to make ends meet. I know that from experience: there were days soon after we first came to Florida where we still didn't have our furniture from the movers (after waiting 1 and 1/2 months), when I was receiving rejection letters from jobs I'd applied to and really thought I had a chance at, when my whole body hurt from sleeping on an air mattress for 40 some days in a row, when all I could do was lay on the hard floor and cry. I was maxed out with nothing to show for it. If we hadn't had a support system with resources I don't know how we would've made it.

The church Talia works at gave us a few hundred dollars in gift certificates for the local grocery store that could also be used for gas at one location, and the two pastors kept passing on job openings to me and putting a good word in when they had a chance even though they hardly knew me. It was because of them that I landed the job that I currently have. The church also helped us with moving expenses and advocating for us when the movers showed up weeks late and without some of our stuff, and it was through church connections that we got the rental house we are in.

I don't know about this whole responsibility theory when sometimes it's just about who you know and who cares about you that counts....