Posts tagged 30 before 30

Yay! Finally! I’ve only been in AK for almost 4 years! I don’t have any pictures to show you because apparently my camera isn’t good enough to capture the Aurora. When my BFF Allison came to visit over spring break we took a road trip up to Fairbanks and Chena Hot Springs. We hung out in a heated yurt on the top of a mountain for 4 hours in -30 degree weather only to see the best showing while we were sitting in the car on the way back to the hotel waiting for a wreck to clear. Ah, life!

Anyway, the lights danced for us and it was beautiful and I’m glad it was an experience that I was able to share with a person I love so dearly.

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Joe came on that road trip with us. It’s really funny how you fantasize that certain events will make situations change. At this point, I had known for a long time that I was going to break it off with him. I just didn’t know when I would get the courage to do so. Even still, I kept thinking in the back of my mind how we would go up there and we would see the lights together and it would be this amazing experience and it would bring us so much closer together and things would turn around. Needless to say, that didn’t happen and I broke up with him 2 days after we got back from that trip.

That was a month ago tomorrow. The last month has been filled with distractions in the forms of alcohol and other men (one other man sexually, a few others just trying to get a piece.) I’m just now finally starting to settle into life on my own and the reality of the break up is hitting me pretty hard. I obviously wanted the break up and it was my choice, but that doesn’t make dealing with it any easier. It doesn’t change the fact that the man I loved went psycho on me when I tried to have an adult conversation with him about going our separate ways. It doesn’t change the way we both treated each other the last two weeks that we lived together. I now legally can not see or talk to the man I spent the last two years of my life with because he is incapable of being an adult about the situation. And I’m fucking pissed off about the whole thing. Anger is one of the stages of grieving, right?

I didn’t think that this would be one of the first to cross off the list, but here we are! I’m going to have to be annoyingly coy about this one because I can’t say that I’m really proud of where this place was. But, you can’t plan things in life and it happened and it was amazing and I’ll just leave it at that. Check!

On January 25, I did intake from 9-1 at the Project Homeless Connect event at the Egan Center in Anchorage. This was the first time that I had ever been involved with this event and I was pretty nervous about what to expect. I am used to being around homeless people (I moved from Atlanta to downtown Juneau to downtown Anchorage) but I am not used to interacting with them. I was nervous about what I would think of them and more so, what they would think of me. The questionnaire that we were required to have them fill out in order to receive services was pretty personal and I knew that if I was on the receiving end of the inquiry I would have felt very vulnerable. Before we started to check people in, one of the organizers of the event came around with a note card that had three names written on it. These names were people who were feared dead and we were asked to watch out for them. I can’t even describe how that made me feel, I’m getting a bit emotional just thinking about it again.

There were a couple of people that I interviewed that particularly stood out to me. One was a young woman around 20 years old who was living in a domestic violence shelter. She was beautiful and someone who you would never expect to be homeless just by looking at them. Her two children had been taken away by the state and I got the feeling that she was just completely overwhelmed. When going through the list of services, she couldn’t quite make up her mind about what she was interested in doing that day. It was almost like she couldn’t believe that there were people who were prepared to help her with the issues that she was facing. It was also pretty apparent that she hadn’t been “in the system” as long as some of the other people I talked to. Some people answered the very personal questions that we were required to ask with such ease, it was almost like they had no concept of privacy anymore. This particular woman seemed to recoil with every question and I felt terrible for being so intrusive.

Another person that stuck out to me was a younger guy (25ish) who had just been released from jail. He has been couch surfing for a couple of months since his release and was able to find random and unstable day labor, but not able to secure any type of steady employment on account of his criminal record. He had a previous drug charge and was therefore unable to get food stamps. I do not know what this particular guy did to land himself in jail, and I am not of the belief that individuals shouldn’t have to pay for their actions. But, that being said, the way the justice system is currently set up drives me insane. To me, what will happen to the inmates once they are released from the institution and securing their success in the outside world in order to reduce the recidivism rate should be a top priority while they are still incarcerated. I know there is never enough money to go around and all that, but I also know that corrections has become one of the biggest businesses in the country and it seems that some of their money would be better spent on connecting inmates who are coming up for release to services so they don’t become re-incarcerated shortly after being released.

One other general thing that stuck out to me over the course of my time at the event was how the majority of the people I interviewed would look to me to judge how they were going to react to the intake process.  Many times, people came up to my station with hardened looks on their faces and it was almost like they were prepared to be judged or treated harshly. I can only imagine that is the way that they are generally greeted out in the real world. As soon as I introduced myself, smiled and shook their hand it was almost like some of the people had a sigh of relief and the whole atmosphere around the interview process changed.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with the event. It was awesome to see hundreds of volunteers and many services come out to donate their time and services to assist the homeless.

I’ve seen several people make this lists, and I think it’s a good project. I’m going to try it out. I have roughly a year and a half until my 30th birthday — June 15, 2013. Let’s see if I can do this.

1. Finish my degree.

2. Drive (or ride) to Deadhorse, AK (If this trip proves to be too pricey/impossible, at least make it to Valdez, AK. Both! If I’m rich and feeling over achieving.)

3. Learn to drive a stick shift.

4. See at least 5 plays/musicals/performances.

5. Make it to Georgia for the holidays.

6. Take more pictures and log them in a Flickr stream, or something similar.

7. Learn to ride a bike. (You read that right, I don’t know how. Get over it.)

8. Volunteer somewhere out of my comfort zone.

9. Finish my back tattoo.

10. Pay for a stranger’s meal at a restaurant or groceries at the store.

11. Crochet or knit something.

12. Climb Flat Top Mountain.

13. Cook a homemade meal for more than 5 people.

14. Take a dance class.

15. Find a go-to hair style.

16. Do something substantial for my parents.

17. Read the Harry Potter series.

18. Fund raise for a worthy cause.

19. Have sex somewhere I shouldn’t. 

20. Eliminate all non school loan debt. (Unless I happen to buy a new car.)

21. Get CPR certified.

22. Get a pen pal.

23. Couch to 5k.

24. Cook at least 25 new recipes and create a recipe book.

25. Donate blood.

26. See the Northern Lights.

27. Stick to a budget and build my savings.

28. Keep better records - from finances to books read, I want to keep better documentation of my successes (or failures)

29. Take an art or cooking class.

30. Make my dream 30th birthday party (Vegas, Grand Canyon, Arches National Park) a reality.

I was going to write a note justifying how this project is totally different than making resolutions (it is, to me), but then I remembered it’s my blog and I don’t need to justify shit to anyone.