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Wednesday, 7 June 06 :: maybe i don't have a right to be bitter, but i am

i'm feeling rather bitter today. about a couple of things in particular.

i'm bitter about the fact that someone as versitile and talented as me has to leave eugene in order to be paid for her work. yes. and i'm usually not one to toot my own horn, but man.. oh man. what have i done in the last few years here? i've done voter targeting; turf cutting; media work; written fundraising letters; written grants; created websites; managed projects; worked with volunteers; slung petitions; written press releases; shmoozed with the best of them; done the daily grunt work that comes with organizing, campaign work and non-profit work; have helped write legislation; lobbyed the oregon congressional delegation in their offices in dc, the state legislature, the city council and the county commission; learned to counsel adults and teens; cooked for 70 people; written employee policy; particpated in visioning sessions for groups; learned about forming a non-profit; participated in many many protests; done low-level technical support; helped write campaign plans; created campaign mailers; laid out brochures and newsletters; co-created and faciliated a succesful workshop on sexism in my community; co-created and put on a workshop on bridging the gap between liberals and conservatives and now i'm writing a technical plan. i'm sure thats not the WHOLE list, but thats all i can remember in this short time. and i'm sure i've done most of the work pretty darn well. some of it -- slinging petitions -- i sucked at, but not because i couldn't do it, but because i hated it. and most of it? the vast majority of it? i've done for free. really. so, today i'm feeling pretty darn bitter that a lot of people have benefitted from my work and i've barely been paid a cent. or when i did get paid -- it wasn't a lot of cents, or sense as the case may be.

and the other thing i'm bitter about?

the fact that there's someone in my life who've i've requested several times to have a clearing with and while they've said yes, they haven't followed through with it. problem? its my intention to be in this person's life for a long time because of someone else the two of us are connected too. it would be helpful if we could clear stuff, but i'm not as important to this person as other people because they have no intention of ever having sex with me. or at least thats my theory on why they've not done what they said they are going to to do set up us talking. and btw, i've made quite a few attempts at setting things up for us to talk, but this person kept not getting back to me, so i gave up. and, honestly, at this point i'm sick of broaching the subject, because i figure if it really were important, they'd do something about it.

so on my eve of leaving, at a time when i figure i should be surrounded by love and appreciation, i'm actually feeling the opposite. really i would love to be filled with feeling the love for this place right now, but i'm not. i would love to be filled with the feeling that at rough moments in logan i can look back to this place and just think about how much love people have for me. how much appreciation. but this morning, and for several mornings -- i've just not been feeling it. and its quite dissapointing.

posted by brooke at June 7, 2006 10:26 AM

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about
i'm brooke, born in '73. i am currently a phd student in instructional technology. this is the blog where i capture all the neurotic, and the few non-neurotic, moments that seem to come with being a phd student (if you want to read less neuroses and more professionalism go to: oer's, dl's, reuse and culture: it's about a phd student researching digital resources in a multicultural world). i have been from eugene, oregon for a long time.. 8 years specifically (its my home now, but i grew up in southwestern virginia), but now i'm here in logan, utah at utah state university. after finding my roots in eugene i never could have expected that i would leave that liberal oasis and head to utah. but i did and there are days when its a blessing and days when i'm tempted to go back to oregon and beg the folks at lost valley educational center to let me move in. but i won't leave because there are days when this process is better than any kind of high i could ever imagine. what else? i collect things, i have 2 cats, 2 kayaks, 2 laptops (i'm a geek - one mac, one pc). i can be emailed at brookesblog@rivervision.com.