[August] is just a day away...

Tomorrow is August 1st. It's slightly daunting. I really need to acquire new employment so I can switch right over and not have any downtime. I had a first interview with the NH Chapter of the March Of Dimes to be a community director (one of two) this past Monday. I think it went well but I'm not sure if I'd be excited enough to commit to the amount of development work they need. As the community director I would be in charge of specific events in certain portions of the state. It would be my duty to recruit event chairs and committees to do the work acquiring all the necessary supplies and spaces for the events and to gather up the people who would raise the money for the event. Meanwhile, I'd be going to businesses and corporations with specific proposals attempting to get funds to pay for the events . The director said that I would be flown out to regional conferences for mandatory trainings on the events, which could clearly be awesome, but I wonder if I would crack under some sort of pressure. However, the position could be quite simple. Just get out there, talk to people, build relationships, have great events. Though "Bikers for Babies" makes me laugh every time I say it.

The Manchester 21st CCLC, the program with which I currently work, has managed to get a position cleared that is basically what I do now. A portion of me would really hate to see all the work I've put into getting sustainability subcommittees together, sitting on community committees, and attempting to build general capacity lose any momentum I may have helped create. I'm certainly applying for the position but it could potentially, like the program as a whole, exist for only one year unless the program is successful in acquiring the 65% grant from the DOE.

Aside from those two options I don't have much else. I've applied for a Federal position in Manchester through usajobs.com (VISTA grants you non-competitive eligibility for 1 year after successful completion of your one year of service), and sent out my resume to a couple other places but so far... I'm just finishing the sustainability plan for the program.

Drawing to a close...

The afterschool program is done for this (fiscal) year. Summer programming starts July 7th and goes to August 1st but that's on the next fiscal calendar. Site Coordinators aren't working and here I am sitting in my cubicle. My cube, by the way, has steadily been filled with more and more stuff throughout the year. When I started I had a desk (that I had to build) a chair, a laptop and a phone. Now I have a 4 drawer, professional filing cabinet, a white board on an easel, a second chair, a storage cabinet, 2 broken printers, a little zen camping thing (like those zen gardens except more NH forest based) and a little 2 drawer filing cabinet that doesn't have a top. Oh, I also have the "Community Relations Office" sign David Scannell used to have, but never used. It's odd that just when you actually have all the makings of a real office/cubicle/work space you can only think about what your next one will look like.

2 months and 5 days from now I will no longer be an A*VISTA member. I'll have to be something else. What that is, I have no idea. I realized, this morning, that my year of service has given me a strong basis of experience in everything administrator related except for HR and Budgeting. However, I'm 22 and my degree is in music performance and philosophy. I'd be a more likely candidate as an Administrative Assistant than as an Administrator. I should probably put the feelers out for teaching clarinet wherever I can.

My problem - I may have waited too long to find a good position that is something I would WANT to do rather than simply can do. Right now I'm also up against all of the 2008 graduates desperately trying to find a job and move out. My best bet would have been to try and find something once the new year started, or at least before all the spring breaks. However, I think the real issue is I'm not sure what I really want to do. My experience as a VISTA have showed me a lot but due to my needing to do so much nothing has really jumped out as me as "Hey! I wanna do that!" I did just write an article for Parenting NH and I am currently writing a multi-year sustainability plan for the program but I'm not sure how to start down that road. I already write a column for the American Record Guide and I love reviewing the newest CDs but maybe that means I should be moving back towards grad school.

In less rambling matters, PlusTime NH is currently having a promotional video created for it by Heartwood Media in Manchester, NH. The video will pretty much be used for recruitment/youtube kind of stuff. I was one of the people they wanted interviewed and I really feel that the media company went about things the wrong way. If the intention is going to be a youtube video you have to know about that scene. I asked them, jokingly, if they had ever seen youtube content and one responded with "no, I only watch animal videos." Everyone who was interviewed was standing up, that creates a bit on an uncomfortable situation. The real issue here was that they had called all the people to be interviewed and asked us questions. I could hear typing happening as I talked. I imagined that I would show up and they would have taken the things I said and narrowed down what they wanted to fit a certain storyboard they had envisioned... no such luck here. I was asked a bunch of questions again and, since my dad just told me that I owed him $830 to get my car fixed I wasn't in the best of moods. I had also just realized that my family, and probably most of my friends, had absolutely no idea what kinds of stuff I had been doing for the past 8 months.

If you are ever going to make a video, map it out. Pre-screen people and take that info and tell them to repeat certain things when you film. Remember your audience and tailor it to them. Make sure people are comfortable when they talk. Have familiar people talk to them while filming. Lastly, The Flip Ultra retails for less than $180 and is outstanding for creating the next viral video. Point, record, flip out the usb plug, download to your computer, upload to YouTube. BAM, video diary. The possibilities are many if the nonprofit world can start entertaining the ideal of using the internet to its advantage.

The weekends need to evolve...

and evolve so thoroughly that they completely over take the work week. Sitting in my cubicle for more hours than I care to admit every day has several ramifications. The least of which being that I get tired from just plain sitting and wheeling around. On a more serious note, I don't really talk to anybody... at all. So if someone calls me or a coworker says "hello" I tend to respond in a very small voice. People don't always hear this voice produced by prolonged periods of silence so I've actually had several coworkers come up to me asking if they had done anything wrong. If my friends or my family call me at work they always ask if I am hiding or if I just woke up. I reply that no, I'm not sleeping and that I'm just at work doing work stuff. Thankfully, only 1 of the 3 fluorescent bulbs above me works so I don't feel as oppressed as I would were they all to be functioning. A maintenance working came in one day and asked me if I wanted them replaced. I responded abruptly with "oh hell no, man. but thanks" and he chuckled to himself, picked up his ladder, and wandered to the next bulbs.

Some days I think that working is really just the best way to keep VISTA members from spending money they don't have. If you have to work full-time then there's about 40 hours (not including any travel, prep, work you take home, events, etc) where you can't really spend money - except possibly for lunch.

I've taken up running as a hobby and, once I purchased some shoes for $72 I haven't had to spend any more besides registration fees for 5k races. However, a 5k race still gets you some bottled water, maybe some yogurt or fruit, most likely a shirt, and a chance to get out there with a bunch of other people. My first 5k was on the last Sunday in April and I ran that in 32:14. Certainly not a blistering pace but, considering it was the first time I ever ran an entire 5k without walking, I felt really good about it. May 21st is the "Rock'n Race" in Concord and I've heard that it's the largest sanctioned 5k race in the Northeast. I'm pretty excited. Apparently there are live bands just about every quarter mile along the course or something.

The $50 registration fee I spent on joining the kickball league in manchester, the NHSSC, has been well spent also. Two games down and our team is 0-2 having scored a total of 1 run. That run was me and I'm currently 3 for 3 at the plate. Yet, while we may have lost on the field, we certainly win in the bar where domestic drafts flow for $1.50 and other people on the team always seem to buy the rounds. If only I could find a cheap baseball glove now so that I could carry around 2 with me at all times then I would just be completely ready for the summer. My trunk already contains a whiffle ball and whiffle ball bat, a 4square/kickball, a (deflated) football, and 3 baseballs. Were I to find a heavy frisbee my car could be the supply closet for a recreational afterschool program.

VISTA and fun are not mutually exclusive...

I know there are VISTAs out there who sit at home all day and night, in the dark, shivering, eating only ramen noodles in front of a candle by which they read. This is entirely unnecessary. Just because you survive on a living stipend doesn't mean you have to go without heat, electricity, or food that may actually nourish you. More importantly, there's no need to sit around doing nothing all the time bemoaning how you can't ever have any fun. Effective fiscal management, combined with some wheelin' and dealin' maybe, can create a situation where you can go out and do things and not absolutely hemorrhage funds.

Case in point - this coming Friday is the party for one of my oldest friends. Taner is turning 23 and, since we rarely get to see him since he's pursuing a doctorate of pharmacology, we usually go all out we usually go all out for his birthday. They key here is the sheer number of people involved. We found a band made out of guys we know who will play for free. I found a company that makes ice luges for a mere $35. Finally, a half keg is setting us back, not counting the deposit, about $130. Now, if I had to pay for all this stuff by myself... it would be the only thing I could do all month (but that would probably be worth it). However, charge $5 for admission and I'm pretty sure I can cover any expenses now... except for maybe the 6-foot party sub.

In other situations, it's all about managing... everything. You don't want to spend more than your allotment of food stamps for food so you need to manage what you eat. Exercise is a great, low cost way to not only help make your food go farther, but also give you something to do. I used google maps to figure out a loop that's 3.2 miles which exits where I live by turning right and eventually comes all the way around to me entering where I live by turning right. Other low cost fun could include getting to know your local high school or AAA sports instead of shelling out the mondo bucks for, in my case, the Red Sox or the Celtics or the Patriots. I'm attending a Fisher Cats game tomorrow night, minor league Baseball team for... somebody, for a mere 10 bucks. In May I'll be attending an arena football game for a discounted price.

On the more artsy side, the Currier Gallery of Art just reopened and, in order to have a really big grand opening, offered free admission to everybody the first week. Lots of towns organize gallery nights as the weather gets nicer where a number of small galleries will be open to the public in efforts to get people walking the downtown strip and such. Movies can get pricey if you like to go to those but your local library probably shows at least a couple movies every week for free. Obviously, matinées are the best bang for your buck at the local cineplex - however, the theater can also be your best friend. You can watch sporting events on certain nights on the giant screen with a bunch of your friends. At certain theaters you can even watch the Metropolitan Opera or the San Francisco Opera perform for much less than the price of admission to a traveling troupe going through your town.

Recently I joined the NH Sports and Social Club or... whatever it's called. I'm on a team to play kickball with a bunch of my friends. Basically, we get shirts and we go hang out Thursday nights and play kickball with other teams. Afterwards, we go to Murphy's Taproom and drinks are only like $1.50 or something. It may have cost me $50 to join - but I get a shirt and that's basically a wearable coupon for cheap drinks from this Thursday to the end of June so that seemed like a sound investment to me.

Moving around and looking towards August...

When I first took the VISTA position I had recently received my undergrad degree and had moved back in with my parents. I was living no more than 5 miles from my place of work and giving my dad about $500 a month. I basically had the upstairs of the house to myself though living with your parents can always be odd and awkward. However, at the end of January I moved to Concord into a condo/apartment thing with my friend Grant. Now I commute to work, about 22 miles I think, have a much smaller room, and pay only $300 a month. I also gained a community building with an exercise room and an indoor pool. Because of the car accident in December, I have a more fuel efficient car which helps keep me close to staying within my allotted $75 gas card. However, it's really the $200 savings from the rent differential that makes the move worth it (besides being able to sit and drink on the couch without my dad asking me if I'm "making the right decisions" with my life). Even with the extra gas cost and food cost I'm not hemorrhaging any money and my bank account is holding pretty steady. I do have to say that tax returns are awesome though.

Since it is now April and I have to do my third quarter report this week it is once again that time of year where you are somewhat allowed to seriously question every major decision you've ever made and become flat-out frightened of the future... especially if you have a liberal arts degree. Grad schools are increasingly hard, and costly, to break into and once you've gone through the undergrad loan situation I feel most people get jaded by it, to put it lightly. Personally, I am amongst those with the highest percentage of unmanageable school debt, meaning that I went to school in NH - a state which, if it increased its higher education aid by 50%, would still be last out of all 50 states. So, since I'm not going to grad school and I cannot reasonably afford to live at VISTA level again, nor at the level of the coveted VISTA "Leader" position, I must use this resume building experience to 1) build an effective resume that fully captures my year of service and 2) get a job that doesn't pay me with dangling carrots and food stamps.

As a VISTA, if you do your job at all, you will have met many people from several organizations that work with yours, regardless of what your work plan says. I think the time has come for me to really plant some seeds that may germinate into real positions. Currently, I work with the Manchester 21st CCLC afterschool program and PlusTime NH. It makes sense that, since they know me the best, I attempt to find a full-time position in those organizations. However, this can be tough as workers in the nonprofit realm understand that they are probably tasked with the work of what would be at least two positions in the private sector. Therefore, even though a new position may be clearly necessary to all involved it does not mean that it will become a reality. The normal option, of course, is to see if somebody leaves his or her position and snatch that up but I'm not really sure if I have the desire to be a full-time site coordinator. Sometimes it's tough to decide between trying to find something you really want to do and taking that which is readily available - especially when lots of kids are involved.

7 months in...

and I'm still going strong as a VISTA. A couple days ago the realization hit me in the face like that time I threw a piece of white bread at a friend during a party. I've been collecting a living stipend, paying for food with an EBT card, and limiting fun outings that cost money to no more than 2 a month for over half a year. To me, this means that I'm almost done - which is fantastic until I realized that it means I'm almost done.

It was about this time last year when, as a graduating senior at UNH, my friends and I all freaked out about our future. Letters from grad schools were opened with cautious care like that of a bomb squad and internet job searching took the place of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Well, it may be time for me to do that again. My few applications to rejoin academia resulted in denials so becoming a full time student clearly isn't an option once I get to late August. My living arrangements have changed and I have been living with a friend of mine in Concord since late January. I have a small commute to work, but I also have a more fuel efficient car and I pay Grant less than my dad so it is working out well. However, our agreement is only until August, at which point I need to make more money than I am currently. Of course, this isn't hard since any job you take after being in AmeriCorps translates into an automatic raise in your eyes. So now I am attempting to plant the seeds of a paying position in one of the organizations for which I work or with which I work. The good thing about being a VISTA is that over the course of a year I have engaged many businesses and non-profit organizations. Sure, I can't apply for a position with them all but I can probably get some key references depending on what I do apply for.

On Friday I will be attending a training day held at UNH-Manchester by VolunteerNH.org entitled "Life After AmeriCorps Day". I'm not really sure what I will get out of it but I signed up for job searching, grant writing, and the resume workshop creatively titled "how to capture your year of service on paper".

Personal obstacles...

I've only had to deal with two personal problems during my stint as a VISTA so far. These two issues were quite large, however, and make me realize how quickly being a VISTA can be entirely unsustainable (hmmm... that strikes me as funny) once certain events take place. Also, they occurred within very close proximity to one another and happened in the 2 weeks prior to Christmas.

The first event to transpire was a death in the family. My grandfather died. I was very close to my grandfather when he was alive so this was a pretty traumatic event. I had never really even had a family member die that I knew. He lived in North Carolina and since I live in New Hampshire travel plans that needed to be made were a bit costly. He died on a Friday so I was unable to contact my site director or the VISTA director at PlusTime, the sponsoring organization, directly. I managed to email them that I would be flying out on Sunday and returning the following Friday. Luckily, I knew that in the event of a death in the family, AmeriCorps allows VISTA members (and possibly volunteers and others) up to one week of Bereavement. Now, I don't know if "one week" is 7 work days or merely a 5 day work week, so I assumed the smaller of the two and kept my plans appropriate to that.

That whole situation affected me, as a VISTA, in much more than an emotional capacity. I now had much less money because of the plane tickets, with which my dad helped, I was, in all likelihood, way behind with respect to the tasks I was completing and who knows what could have happened just in the program itself in the time I was gone. As it turned out, I was lucky and the world hadn't fallen apart in my absence - though nothing I was doing was moved forward at all. No biggie, sometimes a VISTA doesn't always have a ton of busy time so getting behind a little can, when appropriate, help keep you busy.

The second thing that happened to me was that I was in a car accident. My poor 98 Dodge Neon crumpled all to hell and I was viciously assaulted by the driver side air bag - which then made me think my car was on fire because of all the particles it released in the air that I took to be smoke. Basically, when I left my home in the morning there were 4 stop signs at an intersection and when I came home in the evening there were only 2. There were also no signs to state anything had changed and motorists were still acting as if all 4 signs existed. Of course, lucky me, I still had a stop sign and when it was my turn to go, assuming it was still a 4-way stop, I went and was hit by a driver, my age, from out of town. Legally, I was at fault though the city, as I was told by the police officer, had no record of the intersection being changed. I have yet to hear anything from my insurance company.

Regardless... I was left without a vehicle in a town with less than stellar public transportation (and only in the form of buses). Luckily (or perhaps more unluckily), the collision happened the Wednesday before Christmas Break - a week that I didn't have to work. Of course, nobody else really works either so it wasn't really a blessing. I was unharmed in the accident though my travel plans all had to be scrapped. I was in no shape, financially, to purchase a car and really wasn't sure how I was going to deal with the whole situation. I did, however, have a week to think about it and I even had my laptop so I could work from home as well. Furthermore, since it was the holiday break, my friends who were still in college, either undergrad or grad, were all home so I could get around with the help of my friends. One of my friends could even bring me to work each morning since he lived about a mile away from me and works in the building next to me. In the afternoon I got my ex-girlfriend to pick me up and my friends all knew that they'd have to pick me up if we wanted to do anything at night.

Of course, I needed to get a car before some of these friends returned to school so I turned to my dad. I really could have dealt with the latter half of December, 2007, had I not been living with him. I think that I have been fortunate to be a VISTA in an understanding site and have family and friends that also support me - though sometimes I do get the "well... you should probably stop this whole VISTA thing and get a real job" at which point I kind of get upset due to all the good work I am doing. Just because I don't get paid or have a "career" doesn't mean that what I do doesn't have more worth than another person. Plus, I'm a firm believer that the word "career" was created by business majors, investment bankers, finance people, and doctors - since you are pretty limited, though not always, in what you can do with those and you've already used up a lot of your life just to get there.

In the end, I managed to get a 2000 Saturn SL2 with a mileage under 90k that runs well and gets higher gas mileage than my Neon for $3,000. Of course, I didn't have 3 grand, to be eligible for foodstamps you need to have less than $2,000 combined (checking/savings), so I gave what I could and my family scrapped together the rest for me. I suppose I need to make it clear that I am not in a position where my family can merely buy me out of jams, though I will admit that were they not there and willing to help me, I may not have been able to continue my year of service. Many AmeriCorps members drop out and after going through the month of December, 2007, I think I came face to face with the final set of issues that can cause that.

Living on the living stipend...

Everything I do is classified as volunteering. Because of this I do not receive a working wage. However, the CNCS, and the US government, realizes that they can't expect a person to volunteer for a year while being unable to hold any other position without garnering some sort of income. Enter the living stipend.

The VISTA handbook states that CNCS determines the living allowance rate, which varies according to the local cost of living. Furthermore, it says that the rate is based on the poverty level for a single individual in the area. Originally, I always thought that I was to receive 105-110% of the poverty line for my area. That seems to be in accordance with the latter statement, though not so clearly with the former. The cost of living is related to the poverty line but, recently, after doing some reading at the US Health and Human Services site, it doesn't make total sense to me. HHS says that CNCS only uses the poverty line for "foster grandparent" and "senior companion" programs. What? Where the hell is the rest of VISTA? Furthermore, America uses an absolute measure of poverty for the whole nation and not just sections of the country (it's because of this that the average person under the poverty line can own his/her home which has 3 bedrooms and 1 and a half bath). So even if CNCS uses it, a number, which is updated each year, based on a study in the 60s that states households spend 1/3 of the household income on food, it wouldn't appear to be relative to my local cost of living.

However, maybe that is just the case and I am hoping ever so much that is, otherwise it doesn't really make any sense. If CNCS doesn't use the national poverty line for VISTA, only for what I assume is SeniorCorps, but does use the local number derived utilizing the local cost of living then this situation disappears. So I'm hoping for that.

Anyways, I receive $412.83 biweekly deposited directly into my checking account. Direct deposit is apparently an absolute must in AmeriCorps, which I actually love since direct deposit keeps that loose cash out of my pocket and I don't have to do anything for it to end up in my account. Since there are generally 4 weeks in each month that means I make $825.66 a month. Oof! Time to start rattling off those expenses. I pay $400 a month for my rent and $100 for utilities. I rent the upstairs of the house in which my dad lives. Technically, I am living at home. But I pay my way. Now I've only got 325.66 left. Doesn't seem like a lot given how I have to pay my car insurance which was $72, but I was recently in an accident and that's for another post, and now may be around $108 since I will have more than just liability on it. $217.66 is all I'm making a month now but there are still more expenses. My cell phone bill, which is actually quite recent since I had been on my family's plan for the past two years, will be a little under $50 (because I get a discount with Verizon for working at a school district). So now what am I left with, just over $167.66 and I can still think of some other expenses. Gas is a pretty big deal these days and could easily sink my ship if PlusTime NH didn't kick so much ass and give me $75 in gas cards each month - which is clearly awesome. So I don't have to spend any money there.

What about food? Food must totally be kicking me into the red zone, monetarily speaking. Nope. As a VISTA with less than 2,000 in the bank (combined checking and savings) I am more than eligible for government foodstamps. And to apply for them, in NH, at least, is incredibly easy. step 1 - find your local Department of Health and Human Services
step 2 - go there and fill out the generic form to apply for benefits and give it to a DHHS worker
step 3 - go to your interview with bank statements, a couple paycheck stubs/VISTA letter/Sponsor letter detailing pay rate, forms stating residency and how much you pay for rent, and a form of identification
step 4 - get foodstamps - which now come in the form of a debit card (EBT).
alternately, I think some states allow you to apply online.

So now I'm left with just over $167.66 for the month. I can pay a little bit on my non-deferred student loans, since not all loans are able to be deferred, to keep those down and I can still go the movies or go have a couple drinks with my friends. However, I clearly don't have the cash for spontaneous trips or ritzy indulgences though I am still capable of having a good time. I just have to weigh what I want to do with how much I have to pay for it and how many other things I won't be able to do because of it. Prime example - yesterday I went snowboarding. Lift ticket cost me like $40 and I had to get a wax/grind for my board since I hadn't used it in at least a year. Bam! There goes $70. But, I hadn't really been outside in the snow and the mountains in a while and the exercise and fresh air was fantastic for me - even though all my muscle groups are oh so sore right now. It's all about budgeting.