I love my job. It's nothing like I expected. I was basically given a whole bunch of responsibility from day 1 (more like day 2 in actuality) and was given the reins to figure out how to bear it all. I have a lot of autonomy and feel very respected, despite being the youngest and lowest paid employee at P Project. When people ask me what I do at Polaris, I don't really know what to say. There is no box into which my job fits. I truly do a little bit of everything, but I see it as supporting all aspects of P Project in a variety of ways. This includes officially welcoming new employees, managing the fellowship program, HR, ordering supplies (so much fun!), helping to design our new office space, and more. I am doing everything I can to make our office more environmentally friendly. I've switched us to only recycled paper products, some of which are unbleached. I firmly encourage people to print double-sided or not to print at all, and to recycle religiously. It's so easy to leave a light or a computer on when you're not personally paying the power bill or seeing the effects of wasted power. I'm looking forward to moving to our new office. It will be nice to start on the same experience level as everyone else for once, and to be pretty much in charge of the new space.

I admire so many people at P Project, and have become friends with some of them. I cannot envision a job/place where I would fit in better. I feel very at home here, and I never dread coming into work. There is always something exciting going on, whether expected or not.

I've been playing a lot of ultimate frisbee lately, and have met lots of interesting people this way. One of them told me about contra dancing in the dc area. I love contra dancing! I went for the first time this past Sunday, and while it wasn't as good as Asheville's contra dance scene, it was still wonderfully fun and freeing. It was also pretty expensive...in Asheville it's very affordable.

I finished painting one of my rooms - I think I will wait to paint the second room until I feel more established in my house and decide if I want to live there more long-term. Right now, I have a six month lease that I'm one month into. It's looking like it will be all I can afford for the foreseeable future - and I haven't even started paying off my student loans! Yikes! That starts in January.

I miss my mom a lot. I wish she wasn't dead. There are times throughout each day that I imagine her presence with me and I imagine what she would say to me in certain situations or how she would act or look at me. I look in the mirror and see her more and more in my own face. I love her. Her face, her touch, her smell, her hands, her love for me. What an effing waste it is that she died.