Wednesday = Friday

I'm at work right now. I have a pretty large office. Its actually a living room with two desks (one for me and the other for the interns. My desk is currently covered in sticky notes and reminders, a stack of tracking forms to update and file, piles of children's books, school suppiles and children's artwork. My Diploma from undergrad is hanging on the wall and very conspicuously above it there is a nail hammered in waiting to be the home of my diploma for my master's. Which I will have in no less than 10 days and however long it takes for them to mail it to me.

Today is my last day of work before my time off. Tomorrow will be spent packing and working on my presentation which.. honestly.. I have not even started working on. I will be printing out copies of my portfolio and thesis, making sure everything is in order and spending some time with the boyfriend before heading out on Saturday morning. I will be gone for 8 days returning on the 14th. Justin deploys on the 20th or so. At that point I will be a very happily graduated and sadly lonely girl. It will be strange and wonderful.

I have been racking my brain all day trying to figure out what I need to have done before I leave work at the end of the day. I can't really figure it out. I mean I could file my tracking forms but its not really necessary. All my programming is ready. I've emailed everyone I need to, made the phone calls I need to confirm my presenters, reserved rooms, updated my bosses, turned in my reports early and advised my participants of my absence.

One of two things will happen as I leave the office for over a week:

Either I will have everything so prepared and ready that things will be a breeze and they will be grateful I didn't leave things a mess.

OR

I will come back to them begging that I never leave again.

I do my job well. I know it. They know it. To bad this isn't what I want to do for the rest of my life. Graduating is making the wheels start turning again about what I want to do with my life, and what God is planning for me. I am excited about my calling here at work. I have two goals:
* Gain experience working in a non-profit learning how to write grants, track info for grants, facilitate presentations and workshops, become a part of the racial justice institute facilitators
* Create a sustainable system for this job position so that whoever takes over for me will already have a system in place that works and works well. This is a stepping stone job. The pay is not good enough to keep someone here too long, and the stress is high. BUT it is great experience for entry level grads.

So those are my goals. By May at my one year evaluation. I will look back and see those goals accomplished. However. I'll start looking for other positions and work at that point as well. I am ready to start taking bigger steps towards the non profit I want to open and although I am not going to quit my full time job to do that, I am making choices and steps to get closer to that dream and vision.

I took a nap with the cats at Justins yesterday. I miss them. I'll be happy to have them back when he deploys. I will admit though that I like him better than the cats.