One Rough Day

By Caroline LaBorde, Minnesota Valley Field Crew Member / AmeriCorps Member

It always amazes me how a day, an hour can change the trajectory of life. Or, rather, the workweek for those of us less philosophically inclined. Talking it out can be tedious, and having to *gasp* interact with your coworkers means that your mood will affect others, but when you get bribed with ice cream on the company card, who’s to say no?

As mid-term creeps in on me it can be hard to understand where all that time has gone, running like sand through curious fingers. In the last few weeks, I’ve been uprooted from routine after routine, trying so many new things and working so hard to get specific projects accomplished it makes my head spin. Something that has been a constant is that one bad day; as soon as you step out the door you just know that something is waiting to go wrong, it doesn’t matter how positive or flippant you are about it. While this story is from before the term started I still feel that it is applicable to everything we are learning now as these ‘rough days’ seem to come at the worst times. This day it started before we even got out the door, with someone in my apartment getting sick and not knowing what it was or where it came from. This was only the start as we roommates then found out our landlord was having another two residents move in soon, they just didn’t know when.

Now, to be fair; having new roommates would’ve been fine on all sides except for the fact that we were all either sicker than dogs or trying desperately not to get sick. Tempers are never the best in times of stress. This continued through the day at my work, as equipment malfunctioned, lunches spilled and patrons continued to bring issues into what could have been a good day. None of us were able to focus. At the end of the day our supervisor gathered us together and brought forward everything that had gone wrong in the day (it was a lot!) and then went through why it had become such an issue that it affected the entire day’s productivity and cracked a well-oiled machine apart. We found that almost everything that had become an issue stemmed from something that had happened at home, was uncontrollable, and couldn’t be avoided by any means available to us at the time. It really only takes that one little thing to make or break everything around you.

After all this- a day, an hour; let’s agree that no matter what comes out of that one rough day, it drives us to grow, mature and put into perspective the choices that we’re making and how they all culminate as we go on.