Tuesday, May 18, 2010

my office

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am -- a reluctant enthusiast ... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; you will outlive the bastards." -Edward Abbey

I'm not knockin' those of you who enjoy working in an office. I'm sure working indoors with artificial cool air blowing above you while your eyeballs burn from staring at the computer too long has its enjoyable moments. And I'm not putting down the fact that freedom comes when it's time for a lunch break or the weekends... haha I guess that was pretty harsh seeing that maybe one day, far from today, I may be doing that same thing. But today, that is the exact opposite of what I am doing and what I want to be doing to pay for my bills.
Although my travel blog has seemed to come to a traveling halt, I'd love to share with you, my faithful readers, my current job. I guess it's more or less a chance for me to brag about how rad my jay-oh-bee is.

Currently I work at a residential treatment center for teenage boys called Crossroads Academy. All of the boys that I work with are between the ages of 14-18 and they have all just come out of wilderness therapy. Crossroads is an after care for these boys. Crossroads is giving them the opportunity to continue therapy while getting their feet back into the world again, sober. They are attending school, whether it's catching up to where they are supposed to be at or even jumping ahead and graduating at early ages of 16! In other words, it's a sober house.
So you're probably wondering what the heck I'm doing there. No, I'm not a therapist nor am I their teacher in school. The thing that makes Crossroads unique is that they have special focus on board sports. Mainly snowboarding, wakeboarding and skateboarding, depending on the season of course. This is where I come in. They "force" the boys to get involved in recreational things such as these board sports in hopes that they are able to find a different kind of "high". So that is where I come in. I do the recreational part! I put in 40 hours a weekend and go with these boys to do these things. We rode and shredded all winter and now we're moving onto a lot of skating and soon wakeboarding. We do other things too like flow riding (indoor wave surfing), paintballing, community service, and hopefully this summer,
rafting and camping.
And I know what you're thinking, and yes, this is the most fun job a girl could have...except it does get pretty tough and it has presented many challenges that I never thought I'd have to face. It's not always kicks and giggles at the house (i mean... most of the time it is... but not all the time) My main challenge has been about confrontation and dealing with it. I realized when I first step foot in that house that I am and still kind of am terrible at confrontation. I avoid it and hunker down when it happens. I'm terrible at sticking up for myself when I feel the least bit of weakness. But at this job, in order to not get stepped on by 15 teenage boys and 3 male staff (yes, I'm the only female) I have to puff up my chest a little and be a bit of a, pardon me, a bitch at times. Which is very, very new to me. I'm learning to be assertive and hold boundaries while still creating these amazing connections with these awesome boys! Balance.
This job is perfect for me right now. I am really happy with it and never, ever dread going to work. It is seriously a joy working there.

And although my travels have come to a slight halt, this job keeps me outside, active, and around people and so I can't really complain much. But don't get me wrong. I am itching to get out of the states, bad. So sooner than you know, I'll be jetting off to another place...but I think I'll save that for the next blog because it has been on my mind a lot lately.
Thanks for letting me brag about my job.... Please ask me more about the boys and more about the job. I will talk your ear off I promise!
I'll leave you with a couple videos of my boys doing some pretty cool things:




I hope you readers didn't get too BOARD with this post. heh heh heh heh
I leave you all with a souvenir i took from this epic snowboarding season.
goggle tan............ until next time.. my heart,
crystal

2 comments:

hera! said...

i like it, friend!

Mamamia said...

사랑해.**
You are the best!!!