Working Girl

There is a creek behind my house. I visit there before driving to work. The early morning sun shows me a silhouette of myself, high heals and a briefcase, and I can see that the wind is attempting a rescue mission with my hair. I wonder if my soul is not as loosely bound, grabbing desperately after the wind but tethered to my skull. I pull them both back into a ponytail and drive off to work. I am the hamster who loves her wheel. But I know the tether to be fickle. It is not in the animal's nature to be bound forever. If you do not value life, how can you still fear death?

Chris Hedges

"...The Empire Is Over..."

Social Service Web of Life; Survival of Outsourcing

Since I have started working, I have been asking myself, "Why am I here?" Not only why am I, Renee Smith, here at this agency, but why is this agency here? It seems to me a brain drain on the county. Once the rockstars of clinical practice, people here now sit at desks making more money than their cubicles would suggest. I often wondered why the many agencies providing the same services competed for resources rather than uniting.

Assessing our different counties, we found five that were doing extraordinarily well in one particular practice area. Attempting to capture what it is they do that they could share with other agencies, we found that all five counties use providers for this particular practice. The county calls upon a small agency that was created to do what the county essentially does in this one area.

Normally I would bemoan the separation. This time, though, I pictured the web of service providers like our broader ecosystem. Then it made sense that certain agencies would specialize, just as species have endured by specializing. And perhaps, as in nature, there is a certain (social) security to this sort of diversity.

Weight Is Not Health

I enjoy living near a college campus for several reasons. It's a people-watcher's heaven! (There are no boundaries for what you might see or hear in an environment where 2,000 19-year-olds live together, let alone where sociology professors will assign social experiments as homework). I have a free gym membership. There's easy access to shows and speakers. I have constant visual confirmation that I finally look older than 15...which, surprisingly, doesn't feel like such a good thing any more. But more than anything, I enjoy being around the energy and excitement of learning, unlearning, thinking, and that unmatched openness to being challenged.

Little insights into these awakenings are everywhere. The other day, taking advantage of my free access to the gym, I saw an article suggesting some food or lifestyle that would make you fat. Luckily, someone whose former darkness of blind acceptance has begun to be punctured with beams of light, crossed out the word 'fat' and wrote above it, 'unhealthy'.

Thank you mysterious thinker! I hate how we have glued health and weight together. First of all, this is not any healthier than this! I have heard that our culture's disgust with the 'overweight' is the 'last acceptable prejudice'. And while we will also look with pity, if not disdain, at people who appear anorexic, we all still seem to aspire to be thin more than healthy. Which is why it is so important to further separate the two.

In middle school, when my diet was horrendous, I was very, very thin. Thinner than the athletes. Thinner than the vegetarians. I could not run laps. I could not do push ups. I was just thin. Not healthy. I have lost that lovely childhood metabolism, and after six months of being unemployed with round-the-clock access to my kitchen and couch, I have become very self-concious of my weight. I have not had the same concern for my health. Who cares if I have a heart attack? I just want people to stop assuming I'm pregnant!

I hate this about myself, and I write about it only to punctuate its existence. Especially now that I have found a job. I know that when I am working I forget to eat. I get so drawn into my assignments that I can go all day without so much as remembering to drink water. This is not healthier, but I look forward to it with the assumption that I will lose weight and fit slimly into my shirts again.

Health. Before I find it for my body, I need to find it in my mind.