My Escape

Today was more of the same, although it didn't get off on it's best foot. I arrived about 10 minutes after report time. Oops. Not a big deal though. My team leader just asked that I text if going to be late. I explained it was because of the bus and still getting used to when it runs, so tomorrow I'm waking up earlier and getting to the school early as well.

This week has basically been about teaching us the ropes. A bunch of fun activities, but not really to read or write about. Trust me though, I'm having a great time, even though getting towards the end of a ten hour day gets a little taxing.

Come cool stuff we did today included coming up with handshakes for two people outside of our group. Mine, along with another girl was voted as the best. I mean I can dap it up with the best of 'em. We combined groups because tomorrow City Year is sending us on a scavenger hunt on the National Mall...pretty cool huh?

Aside from that, we wrote a movie trailer about Civic Capabilities. I'm going to make a more elaborate post on that probably tomorrow or over the weekend. It's not a timely piece but one involving comparisons to super heroes so I know at least Brendan George will be excited. Oh, it was uber cool too because I got to put my creative writing and my radio voice to work. I mean it has to be pretty good. I'm a two time award winning sports broadcaster!

We also learned that City Year can take an emotional toll on us and the senior corp members and the staff recommended that we find time to escape from the program. We played four corners and you went to what ever corner corresponded with how you relax. One corner was music, another sports, the third, writing, and the last one was art. I was in a pickle between music and writing. With music, that has been my way of relaxing for the past five years. Going to symphonic wind ensemble at Marietta College every Monday and Wednesday was the best way to alleviate stress. But here, I don't have that. While I still listen to music, with some of it Classical, the best way for me now a days is to write. My group decided to write a haiku about our time at City Year...

We came as strangers

We grew through diversity

We WILL change the world

Let me pose this question to you. How do you escape the pressures of everyday life? Is it through reading, writing, running, art, music, or something different? While you think about that, try to set side time once a day as "me" time. Time where you can collect your thoughts and let all of the troubles of the world slip off of your shoulders. Writing is doing that for me. Find your writing and make it happen everyday, even if it's just for eight minutes (the amount of time it took me to write this post).