A Buena Vista Social Club State of Mind

Note: This post was written in November 2013, when this journey of mine began.

For the last week I have been living out of my old dorm room, the lofty island of Tower Court East 420, swapping my old bed for my roommate’s old bottom bunk. I hadn’t really made it public that I was back at Wellesley, so I have been occasionally running into old friends and acquaintances in the dining hall, and trying to explain the place I’m in my life right now. The one theme that seems to reoccur in each of these conversations is bravery. Specifically, the idea that I am brave for making the choice I did to take time off from school.

I don’t know if I feel brave right now. I wouldn’t say I feel scared or anxious (well, any more than I do usually), but more that this is a confusing time in my life. For the first time in my life, I have absolutely no idea what next week is going to look like, or next month, or even next year. 
 

We live in a society where we are programmed with 5 year and 10 year plans, where many of us hit a conveyor belt at the age of five that carries us through elementary school all the way to twenty years later, where we are dropped off into a workforce, educated and certified as having the potential for lifelong success. Along each section of the belt, each of the choices we make has the potential to land us at a different drop off point, but ultimately, we know roughly what stretch of this conveyor belt we are going to be traveling on in the next week, month or year.

For the first time, I’ve stepped off the belt, and let my peers and friends continue their journeys to the promised land of the drop-off point, while I watch them from the side, and start to explore the world beyond the belt. A land of craigslist listings, rent, and resumes, where budgets and public transportation take on a new mood, and everyone’s story follows a different, new rhythm.

This week, I’ve been interviewing for jobs and canvassing for an environmental group in the meantime. While I’ve done street canvassing before (when you see the gals on the sidewalk in bright t-shirt waving you down to support some non-profit cause or the other), this job has involved door-to-door canvassing which has been a different kind of experience. Door-to-door is exactly what it sounds like – going door to door to garner support and contributions for the organization that employs me. 

My fellow canvassers have been so warm and friendly, and I’ve loved slowly picking up their life stories from them.
My manager is a guy from Maine who moved to Boston after high school to live with his girlfriend, a preschool teacher, and has been canvassing for the last 1 ½ years, and is one of the top canvassers in the office, if not the country.

The girl who trained me is a student at Lesley who came to school to become a high school teacher, and now is a Poli Sci major with law school aspirations, who has worked with Aids Action, and started canvassing as a way to fulfill a school internship requirement while making rent, and works on a food truck on the days she doesn’t canvass.

One woman has joined us for the week from Maine to train as a director, and next week she will be moving on to the Washington DC office to be directing there. She has stories from bike canvassing Peak’s Island in Maine this summer, avoiding attack dogs on canvass routes, and advice for the best condiments on vegetarian sandwiches.

I don’t know how much longer I plan on canvassing, (probably not long), but it has certainly been an interesting introduction to this adventure. I know I’m not the greatest of canvassers, to put it lightly, but it’s a job, and that’s enough for right now.

Where are you in your journey right now?

P.S. If you are wondering about the title, check out the album I've had on repeat here