What is my intention?

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Trip Start Nov 23, 2006 Previous
Entry Trip End May 01, 2007

  New orleans, Louisiana
Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Hey all you lovelies,
I just wanted to update you on the work I am doing. I am the media coordinator for Common Ground now. If you go to www.commongroundrelief.org, you can see the work that I have done or facilitated the doing of. There are 3 different campaigns right now
-a hotline for police brutality/corruption
-a public housing protest that is really exciting (this is the one I am really glad to be working on)
- and a campaign about the new direction of Common Ground. Yeah!!!

Also lots and lots of volunteer coordination, mentoring, and training, fixing of stuff, talking about things, riding my bike around places(I LOVE my bike so much, it has flowers on it, like my bike at Burning Man!!), sitting in my office typing and reading and taking pictures/video. Also meetings, shit loads of meetings. Blehhhh meetings.
New Orleans is really intense. Really emotionally and physically and mentally intense. I have so much gratitude for the opportunity to be down here and push myself in all areas. Because the areas that I am being really pushed in are not ones I expected, and they feel really good to be expanding. Case in point: learning how to appreciate the people I work with sooooo much more than I thought was possible. Like I write love letters to them about how absolutely on-point, and solid and hardcore they are. They are all superheroes, I swear, capes and masks and crazy superabilties and all. The people that I work with down here give me faith that there is hope. And when you are down here, hope is a precious commodity.
I've learnt lots of neato stuff here, like how to open a combo lock with a pop can, how to fix my bike, some html(sooo cool and completely doesn' make sense at the same time), lots of learning about how to deal with conflict and internal politics, valuing silence and my own company, valuing my own integrity, the value of support given and received and the value of a hot shower(no we don't have hot water). Also lots about abundance and having faith that what I need will be provided. Every time I turn around here, people have things to give, like ice cream yesterday (and it wasn't expired or out of a dumpster!!!), or popcorn with nutritional yeast the day before, or the rawking open mic that blew my brain off with the talents of the people around me (pillows, loud grunts & 2 skinny boys = fake sumo wrestling! or the updated version of bedtime stories-so funny!!) or I make someone's life easier by the skills or things I possess, which is its own form of giving to myself. Can't beat that do-gooder feeling of "Yeah, you needed that and I can provide that and we can mutually share cause I'll probably need something from you someday and it feels really good to see you smile and be able to accomplish the things you wanted to do!" Woohoo, becoming more and more of an anarchist every day.
This might be a bit of wangle to get through-I'm tired and the brain is hitting the off switch once in a while.
New Orleans is really amazing, very picturesque, lots of color(yellow and purple are pretty common colours for houses). My office is dark pink with light pink trim. Kinda weird.
I got to meet Ben from Ben & Jerry's yesterday and do the whole "Why media rocks your socks off and you should fund us" talk. Pretty cool. I got coupons for ice cream, and I think that I was pretty convincing.

I'm also learning how powerful being completely open and sincere with yourself and others is. When you don't have any layers of bs to work around, the core truths stand strong and can't be beaten down. (thank you joey for showing me that!) Really powerful place to be because you can't be unbalanced by others, only by yourself.

Signing off for now,
love you all,
anna

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