Being Invested

When I moved to New York City, I imagined I would work as a canvasser for a little while as I searched for and found another job. I didn't think I wanted to do it in the winter; I didn't want it to be my actual job here. It was a great situation because I could transfer from San Francisco without having an income-less period, but I didn't want it for more than that.

Then, of course, I arrived here and things changed.

For my first week or two of canvassing in New York, my average raised was terrible, I was completely exhausted every day after work, and I had no energy to even look for other jobs. I dreaded dragging myself out of bed every morning to trudge in. Things were going in a bad direction.

Of course, being the savvy individual that I am, I realized that this was no way to go about my life. In San Francisco, I really enjoyed canvassing. I did quite well at it. I liked my coworkers a lot. The nature of the beast had not actually changed, so I knew that the job itself was not in fact my problem. It was, of course, all about my attitude.

As soon as I made the decision to actually invest in my job, to treat it as what it is - the main portion of my life and what I spend my time on - things got so much better.

We had a meeting that week, the day I made this decision in fact, about the national plan of our company. I'm a field manager of the canvass, basically the bottom rung of the leadership of the company, but my boss made an effort to clue us into the vision of what we're doing and what it means for our activism and politics in general in this country.

It's pretty awesome to be a part of something that's empowering much larger numbers of citizens to actually get involved in what's happening in the government. I like canvassing for political groups because the way I see it, it's the only thing combating the fact that money talks and corporations by far have the most of that to throw around. Sure, a twenty dollar donation to a PAC isn't that powerful, but if we can get thousands of people to make those then we suddenly have some leverage.

The right tends to be so well organized through their churches. It's been a consistent problem of progressive politics that we're so concerned with being revolutionary that we can't organize behind a single goal. Canvassing may have a hope to bring us together in large enough numbers to start fighting effectively against the f*ing Christian Coalition. That is pretty neat.

Bearing that in mind as I work has not only improved my morale by leaps and bounds, but it also makes me a better worker. I personally raised around $2300 this week, which is pretty fucking cool. It just goes to show that how happy I am really has the most to do with how much I'm committed to what I do.

When I pour all my personal energy into a goal, it doesn't feel bad when I have less of it at the end of the day. It feels like I'm connected to something, like that expenditure was a gift. That's what I want to feel in all the work I do, forever. It's good to be figuring out how to do that.