faith and hope and satsumas

Today's sermon at Bayou Blue was basically, "Have hope, but get up off your you know what and do something."

I'm pretty good at getting off my butt most of the time. I've planted dozens of trees and hundreds of plugs of cord grass, sat in on countless meetings for countless organizations (which ok, involved sitting on my butt, but I had to get up to get there), hiked all over southern Louisiana to learn about this place, and in my spare time, do absurd things like the Color Run (even though my housemates and I walked the whole thing).

Last week was definitely a big exception. Aside from the literal difficulties of getting off my ass these days, there was also the great frustration of e v e r y  s i n g l e  p l a n  I'd made for work for the week falling through. All of them. Every day. On Thursday I went to Houma and Thibodaux to visit museums. On Friday I visited the branch of Jean Lafitte National Park in the French Quarter. I read a lot. I still fell short on hours (thank goodness I'd built up a good supply of surplus over the past few months, because I basically shot it all last week).

And what about life in general? There's the more figurative get off my butt and do something... like get a job. It's not that I haven't tried-- I've applied to literally over 175 positions in my field since graduating from college more than five years ago, most of which had multiple openings/locations. That doesn't include the countless jobs I applied to that don't involve my beloved geography degrees. That's so much rejection. The worst of it came a few weeks ago when I didn't get my ideal job at home in NJ. Even 300 volunteer hours, a personal recommendation, and a home field advantage can't help me.

Frustrating. But: have hope. Thankfully, I am doing something I enjoy right now, at least, when my plans don't all evaporate and I actually have things to do. And ultimately, this long string of not getting any jobs I've applied for except Target during the holiday season (ugh) lead me to said something I enjoy. Also thankfully: I never received the official rejection note, rather, a very kind and encouraging email from the wonderful soils mentor who let me dig all of those holes in the past year and got me correcting all of you when you call it "dirt". And, I suppose, I should be thankful that I didn't have to face any difficult decisions or hard goodbyes prematurely.

After church this morning, this sweet Cajun man was talking about shooting a possum that was destroying his satsuma tree (for those of you outside of southern Louisiana, satsumas are these wonderful clementine-like oranges, slightly more tart perhaps). I mentioned that my housemates and I love satsumas. So he drove home right then, and returned ten minutes later with a big bag FULL of them, fresh and ripe and sweet and wonderful. I may or may not have had about a half dozen of them today, and there are still several dozen left.

It's the little things that keep me motivated and remind me to remain hopeful. I'm still getting good experience in my field here, and I'm getting delicious citrus on top of it (you know, and the general support of a great community). I have no idea what's next for Mike and me, where we will be or what we will be doing, but I'm in a pretty safe position in the meantime. So I'll keep hoping, and I'll keep getting off my butt as best and as much as I can.