Double "Fuck Yeah"s

Woah. Halt. Looks like I won’t be making any plans in my near future to move to California. Seattle, I regret to inform you, I believe I’ll be around another year.

This morning I received a visit from my boss to discuss growth of my current position and how we wanted to move forward with a few ideas we’ve been discussing. I’ll spare you the details because they aren’t something anyone would understand unless one was familiar with working within the World Vision framework. However, I’ll say that I’ve been building my new position since I started it in March, and it involves taking over tasks that have been housed in other departments of World Vision.

Long story short, by boss basically verbally offered me to have my position become permanent, which would therefore involve be becoming a “real” World Vision employee, vs. a contract employee. I’m not sure if this includes a raise, but it does mean that I’ll be getting sick pay and vacation days. In addition, she talked to me about the possibility of becoming a world communicator for World Vision. This means I would write articles, press releases, etc. (more of my journalism vision) from a different country. She mentioned Afghanistan, and while that scares me, there are possibilities to do this position in other countries as well. She told me that if this is something that I would be interested in, she’d help me move forward with this as well. I’m so excited because becoming an actual World Vision employee means more job security, an opportunity to move-up in the company or to a position more in line with where I see my future and an opportunity to travel. It also means that I get to continue living life with my current salary and flexible schedule, two things I think I’d have a hard time living without. Fuck yeah.

Alongside this good news, I bought a ticket yesterday to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. It looks like me, Larisa, Vanessa, Shannon and two of Shannon’s friends will be spending the third week of June basking in the hot-hot sun. Double Fuck yeah.

I guess this is just my week.

Heal the World, Make it a Better Place…

Eye, yi, yi…busy, busy, busy I’ve been. I think about blogging during the day, but then I don’t have time to get around to it. This new position has me trudging through a long to-do list each day that I never really finish. I just end up making a new one the next day, adding the things I didn’t get to the day before, and more things that come up. I’ve been in and out of meeting all day today. While my head feels a little overloaded, I am super excited with the direction that I myself, and the project I am working on, is moving toward. It has helped me feel like more of an integral part of my writing/donor engagement, fulfillment, and development team. (JARGON. JARGON. JARGON.) Anyway, we are basically creating my position each day as we go forward. It is really exciting for me, since I get to be involved with an awesome program at World Vision. Sometimes it amazes me the direction life takes you…If you would have asked me when I was still at Western and in the midst of my journalism degree, where I saw myself, it certainly wouldn’t have been here. One of my favorite mantras though is “Things happen for a reason,” and boy do they ever. For those of you who don’t already know, or have not read my previous blog, I am now a Project Manager/Writer for a program at WV that we call Community Partnerships. A Community Partnerships is basically where a donor adopts a village in Africa. It is amazing and interesting. The donor’s money provides the village with things that they otherwise could not have. I just learned today that I get to take over the role of providing letters and gifts to the donor from the village. I am excited for this because they are supposedly awesome. The letters are all handwritten and the gifts are created by people in the village, such as last year a donor received a huge painting someone painted of the village. I’m excited to organize this…it should add some heartwarming touches to my day. All in all, I am happy that I have been given the chance to work for a non-profit company. We do incredible work all over the world, and it makes me feel that I am making a difference, however small it may be…

Currently Feeling: Sleepy. I had to wake up super early to make something for our “breakfast devotional.” If done so much praying today (weird); I’m definitely going to be doing some extra sinning tonight!
Currently Listening To: Ben Harper’s new CD over and over. Trying to learn the words for the concert…
Currently Anticipating: Seeing the Brit. He’s out of town, and I miss him!

Transition to a New Position

It’s amazing, don’t all of you fall over after I’ve admitted to this, but I actually have a lot to do at work now that I’ve transferred positions. I’m trying desperately to squeeze in blogging time now, in addition to MySpace time. God, life is rough. For those of you who don’t know, the first six months of my job were spent writing “Project Summaries” for different World Vision projects. (Click here to read page 1 of a summary I wrote about Child Sex Tourism and here for page 2). I was on my own deadline schedule, so it usually included a number of things other than writing for eight hours a day. (You take a guess at what those things were). Now, I’ve transitioned to “Project Manager of Community Partners.” Sounds like jargon if you ask me. Community Partners is a program World Vision began not too long ago where it matches a donor (a family or church) with a village in Africa. The donor pays for the village to receive life-changing necessities such as water, schools, food, clothing etc. In return, the donor gets to visit the village and receives letters and gifts from the village. It is a personal way for a donor to spend their money and get confirmation in return that they are making a difference. I would love to do it if I could afford $25,000 a year for the next five years, but then again, that would be half of my income. Don’t think that’s too feasible. Anyway, I’m now doing “Project Management,” which I guess is a fancy way to say that I am organizing all the unorganization of this new program. This of course includes a lot of Excel spreadsheets, which are amazing. (I’m actually considering laying out my monthly expenditures on a spreadsheet so I can get a grip of how much money I’m spending/need to save for bills and rent.) Basically, I have so much to wrap my head around and accomplish that I sometimes feel like I’m swimming through information and trying to grasp it as it slips through my fingers. It keeps me busy though, and I’m welcoming the break from writing Project Summaries day in and day out…after 52 it was getting kinda old.

Currently Feeling: Like I want to sleep with the new intern at my work…he’s hot!
Currently Anticipating: Of course, ANTM tonight!
Currently Listening To: Bloc Party. Check them out…tons of energy. They’re awesome!