Moving...finally

Hello Everyone

It has been a long time since I have written you all (I hope I stop needing to start these emails like that). It’s hard to believe that half a year has gone by, and such an eventful six months at that.

I’ve moved (yes, again) to what I hope will be an address I stay at for a long time (which in twenty-something time is a couple of years). What an exhausting process moving was. You really do start to think about how much stuff you own when you need to pack it away and move it. I’m not a person resistant to change. I actually find myself to be rather good at adapting to new situations. However, living in transition for months on end gets to you. And by the end of our long search for a place to live I was well over the whole process. I’ve moved my lot of things six times, having slept in four different places on a regular basis in the past six months or so. When I was young and strong, I could shove myself in the larger part of a walk in closet and still feel like I had a patch of grass to call my own. But now that I’m old and crotchety, I guess I need more space, places I can act out all my patterns and rituals that I’ve picked up along the way. And if old me could go back in time and tell slightly less old me about the future, he probably would leave him with a couple of warnings. Not to stop him from moving forward, I do like where I ended up, but just to help him know what to expect.

Duncan and I had talked about living together in September of last year. I was living in Pomona at the time and Duncan was living in Tustin. Both of us were making a commute we were growing tired of. The past summer the community house that I was living in was informed that our house was being foreclosed. The landlord owned two homes, one that she lived in and one that she rented to us. She was borrowing against both of the houses to pay bills off for her business – a financial time bomb. We decided to move before we were forced out by the bank and found another much more fitting place that was also in Pomona.

Being that we were already moving, I felt that it was a good time to share some feelings I had been working through. When I had first come into the community house, I really felt that that is where God wanted me. That this house was a stepping stone to learn about what it meant to live in community and be part of a people of God. I figured I could end up staying there two years (which was my minimum commitment when I was coming in) or maybe ten or maybe twenty. Who knew? And so it surprised me when I started having feelings that maybe I should move. Living at the community house was certainly difficult at times: relational tensions, differing expectations, seemingly entirely separate end goals in mind – all of the good stuff that comes out of any breathing social body that tries to accomplish something. And because of how hard it was, I didn’t want moving out to be my easy answer. But I also have this tendency to drag myself through some unhealthy places because I’m being so sensitive to taking the easy way out. And on top of that, how do you explain moving away from people, especially people you’ve come together with to share life, without making them feel like they are sharing life in the wrong way? I was the first person to move out of my house that didn’t have an immediately obvious reason why. And explaining to everyone why, when I couldn’t really concretely explain it to myself, when there was so much room for misinterpretation, and misinterpretation of the worst kind, the kind that has to do with self worth, the kind that would stick with them for a long time as being the reason I left, all really scared me.

And yet I had to be honest with myself: I felt fragmented. I was trying to be fully invested in so many overlapping communities, my church and the house and Becca and work. And what I began to realize was that it was preventing me from being really invested in any. So much of life, especially life in relationships, happens in the moments between planned events. And I found myself having to plan all of the time I was spending with people. As a result, and not a surprising one, people felt like they were being scheduled in. As much as I wanted and was trying to be present in all of these different relationships, I became a shadow. And shadows don’t dig down. They are fleeting, and untouchable. All of this life was happening around me and I couldn’t stay around long enough to tap into it. And when I realized it didn’t matter what I wanted or how much I wanted it or what I did, that if I tried to stretch myself this thin, I could only just be around, never there, never fully present. As much as I didn’t want to, I had to let something go.

That night came four months later, after I don’t know how many conversations and prayers. Already there had been so many miscommunications and hurt feelings that had been navigated through, and I hadn’t even made a decision yet. The community house was having a group meeting that night and I was supposed to give everyone my final decision whether I would be staying or not. And even though I knew that I would be telling the group I would be moving out, I still didn’t know if I was making the right decision. But what else was I going to do? Ask for more time? It had been four months, and I felt like I needed to make a move (no pun intended). Another thing I’m infamous for is waiting so long to make a decision that it actually makes itself; something that I didn’t want to do here.

And so out it all came. I spilled all of my mixed up feelings, hoping the group would ask me questions and allow me to sort them out, and I didn’t stop until I ran out of things to say. And then I just sat there, with my heart in my throat and my lungs straining to inhale a second breath, staring at everyone, and waiting. And after what felt like a couple of hours, Philip calmly stated, “Eric, I think you’re making the right choice. I understand what you’ve been through and what you’re saying, and if I were in your shoes I would be doing the same thing.” He said it with such certainty and sincerity that I couldn’t help but to believe him, even with all the fear that had built up inside of me. And one by one, everyone spoke up and offered their support, even if they needed to get a few questions answered first. Keith, being one of the last people to speak, and one of the people that I was most worried about misunderstanding my decision, spoke deliberately and said, “Eric, a couple of months ago I couldn’t have said this, but now hearing what you have to say and seeing the way you’ve handled this, I think this is going to be a peaceful move. I think this is going to be a good thing.” And thanks to all of them, I finally did too.

[This marks intermission. Go take a break and stretch your legs. This is a long update, but I didn’t want to split it up into two posts. So I figured I would give everyone a chance to come back to this at some later date; give their eyes (and attention spans) a chance to recuperate.]

After that things seemed to come together so nicely. Duncan was looking to move to Monrovia by January. Shortly after meeting with all my roommates I found out a good friend of mine, Chris, was going to move back to California and was looking for roommates. Another friend of mine needed a couple of roommates for the month of October. It seemed like it worked itself out. Chris and I would stay with Tricia for October, which would give Duncan and Chris and I a whole month to look for a place. Well, that was the plan anyways. It ends up a lot of landlords don’t trust young guys with renting. We got an awful lot of weighted questions.

“So, you do work don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. I actually work full-time at Habitat for Humanity.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, I’m the assistant manager at the Azusa ReStore.”

“And they pay you for that?”

I couldn’t make that conversation up. Who knew we looked so shifty? Over and over again we would go into these meetings with landlords and landladies, and over and over again they would see us, two or three twenty-somethings wanting to rent a place together, and there went our chances. There’s a distinct moment when we could tell they had made up there mind, and it was almost always early on. They would give us applications, and we would fill them out, and then nothing would ever come of it.

Chris and I needed to find a place cheap; Duncan had a dog. If you didn’t know, and we didn’t when we first started, those are on opposite ends of the renting spectrum. Nice places, the kind that have big yards for dogs to run around in, are expensive. And cheap places don’t normally allow pets. And so on this went. In the mean time, October came and went. Tricia was nice enough to allow us to stay with her until the middle of November, but eventually her new roommate was officially moving in and we had to officially move out. Chris and I moved half our stuff into Tricia’s garage and half into other friends’ houses. Becca as well as a couple of other close friends opened their doors to us (Thank God. I don’t know what we would have done if they hadn’t). As restless as I was before moving, I had now been living in transition for months. Tricia told us we needed the stuff out of the garage by December. Her new roommate would need the room (understandably so, it was nice enough for Tricia to let us keep our stuff there for even that long). And I knew if we didn’t make the cutoff, I would have to get a storage unit. And as sure as the clock ticks, December came and Mt. Olive storage cashed my check.

At the same time Chris had been thinking long and hard and had decided he needed to go back to Tennessee. A decision I supported, although it certainly put Duncan and I in an even tighter position. Things that we could afford before suddenly became expensive. And yet onward we trudged, needing to look for something, dare I say it, even cheaper. We became a little desperate. We started flirting with the idea of living in a one bedroom and having one of us live in the garage or the living room. We just wanted to find somewhere. Duncan mentioned to me that he found a one bedroom that he really liked for $1250 a month. There was an area by the top of the stairs that was certainly big enough for someone to use as a room. He wanted me to go check it out. No garage. One bedroom. $1250. Living by the stairs. This didn’t sound promising. I felt like we were moving backwards. But I promised Duncan I would check it out anyway.

And then suddenly the clouds parted. I called a number I saw on the side of an apartment building. She said they had one unit. It was a two bedroom and they allowed pets. Rent was $1250. We were desperate enough that I decided I could pay $600 dollars a month for rent (at least this place had two bedrooms). Duncan was willing to chip in the extra, and we could try to figure out a third roommate later. We scheduled to meet with the landlady the next day, the same night I had also scheduled to come see the one-bedroom.

The apartment was great. It was clean. The kitchen was big. It was in a great location, right next to downtown, and a five-minute walk to church. They would even give us half-off the first months rent, and our deposit was only $600, instead of the normal full-months rent worth. It was on the third floor, and the view outside our windows was of other apartment walls, but it was a place. We at least had an option. The landlady loved us and assured us all we had to do was apply and, save some credit checks, it was ours.

There was only one thing. I still had to check out the house. Duncan and I both decided that the house really wasn’t financially the best option. Sure it had a huge backyard and had actual character, but the deposit there was twice as much and we would have to pay full rent for the first month. Not to mention renting a one bedroom for the same price as two bedroom wasn’t lining up as a good idea. After we saw the apartment we both agreed it would probably be a better fit. And so off I went to see this place to tell the landpeople (being pc sounds strange sometimes), who actually really liked us, that we weren’t interested. We would turn in our applications to the apartment, and we could finally move in somewhere!

And, as you could have guessed, that’s not what happened. I loved the house when I saw it. So much so that I went from “no way” to “this really could be”. I made my case that night. Sure it was more money (rent was still the same. It would only be higher initial costs.) Sure it was a one-bedroom (but really the top of the stairs was big enough for a person to live there – I’m proof of that). Sure it wasn’t as good of a location (although it was up closer to the mountains, nice and quiet). But it was a home. Not just a house. A place we could live, and feel good about living at, not just indifferent to. We laughed about having to decide now between two places, after months of scraping the bottom of the barrel for anyplace that would work for us. We decided to not decide. A nights rest would be best. Decisions would happen the next day, when we had to turn our applications in. We were so close.

I had told her over the phone that we decided to go with the house. Getting our credit check fees back from the landlady at the apartment felt like a break up. In a disappointed tone she told me I could pick them up later that day. The conversation that followed was especially funny because it actually happened -- pretty much word for word.

I met her outside of the apartment complex, next to the underground parking garage. As she was walking out of her apartment I could here her shout back to someone in her kitchen, “Yeah, it is too bad. They would have been such good tenants.” She approached me with the credit check money.

“Here you go. Everything is there.”

“Thanks for all your help.”

“I’m glad you found a place.” She pauses. “Was it me?”

There was an odd sound of insecurity in her tone.

“No, no. You were great. It was just…it was a house for the same cost. And it had a big yard for the dog.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Seriously, you made this process really pleas…”

She interrupts me with a sad good luck and is back in the house before I knew it. Why was that so hard – and weird.

Come mid-December, Duncan and I could finally say we were the proud renters of 134 Grand Ave., Monrovia, CA 91016 (thought I might as well get it out there for all you address bookies). And we couldn’t be happier here. We finally have a home. I finally have a kitchen. I’m finally unpacked. It’s a beautiful thing.

For all you tech saavy people that can get on my actual blog, I’ll try to post some pictures of the new place.

For everyone else, until next time, stay well. I think this is long enough. I will be impressed by anyone that actually gets through this thing.

For my end of the email whatever I decided on an excerpt that’s stuck with me from a book I’ve been reading, Steinbeck’s “East of Eden”. Tom had just admitted to his sister Dessie that he sometimes, in his loneliness, goes to whores for comfort.

“Tom sat down by the round center table. Dessie sat on the sofa, and she could see that he was still embarrassed from his last admission. She thought, How pure he is, how unfit for a world that even she knew more about than he did. A dragon killer, he was, a rescuer of damsels, and his small sins seemed so great to him that he felt unfit and unseemly. She wished her father were here. Her father had felt greatness in Tom. Perhaps he would know now how to release it out of its darkness and let it fly free.”

With love and hope,

Eric

Our house is the unit on the right. It's kind of like a duplex, except it's split down the middle.

Grand Ave.

When I sat in the rocking chair on our porch for the first time I knew why I had lugged it around all these years. Many a good book and a good cup of tea will be enjoyed here.

Our tiny kitchen. I figure if I can learn to cook in here, I can cook anywhere.

We make the kitchen work, though. This banana bread is proof of that.

This is my reading space.

Very different from my writing space.

This is Mr Smee.

This is Mr. Smee, closer. Mr. Smee is Duncan's dog.

This is the view from my room.

This is my (and Mr. Smee's) favorite part of the house: our backyard. Although it's been a little too cold to spend much time in it.

Future Garden?

Our avocado tree.

Future herb garden?

Exploring our new home. You and me both, Smee.

Chess and food and work

Well, it seems that I am not very good at these once-a-month updates. I think I have been keeping on track with once every three months, though. Maybe as I develop more as a writer, and get a little more discipline, I will be able to keep up with the pace.

The other email updates I wrote were fixed around one subject. This one on the other hand is going to be more pockets of different things I am learning and experiencing.

Chess.

Hello, my name is Eric Bridges and I am a chess addict. There’s something about the way my brain works that falls into sync with playing chess. There’s the logic and strategy, the challenge of the game, the healthy competition, and the little social skills you need to play well. But even more so I love the things that chess cultivates in me, things that I don’t have in spades, such as critical thinking skills, foresight, patience and observation. Whenever I’m helping someone learn chess for the first time I tell them that chess is a game of patience and observation. It’s only after you’ve studied, and studied, and studied, and played, and played, and played, that you can play chess both well and quickly.

I don’t have a chess park anywhere near my house, and I don’t have any roommates that really enjoy playing chess (although I do have roommates that will play chess with me every once in a while, but that’s more to be with me, and not because they love playing), so I usually end up playing online. This is convenient because I can get my fix each week without devoting a large amount of time to it. I do need to note that my girlfriend is very good about the whole thing and puts up with, and even often pretends to be interested in, my rants about some exciting (a relative word, I know) sequence of moves that happened in one of my recent games. I think what I need is more friends that love chess (or friends that are geekier), that way I can give her a break from it all. Until then, I’ll take my chess books, and my online community, and my chess tattoo (okay, not really) and be happy with it.

Food.

Let’s get some simple truths out of the way. A lot of food is tasty. Everyone eats food. I love food.

In college we had to take this odd, but somewhat helpful test called the Strengths Test. It asked you a bunch of situational and personal questions and then spit out your top five strengths. One of mine was connectedness (so don’t worry, I can assure you this is going somewhere). Connectedness is basically the strength of being able to see connections (hence the name) between things that people do not normally relate to one another, whether that be academic disciplines, cultural practices, relationships (human and otherwise) or, in this case, food and life. Since I have graduated from college, I have grown out of some of my strengths (and probably acquired others), but connectedness is not something I have left behind. And learning about food makes my little connected brain very happy.

That’s because food connects our world – food connects the world. To learn about what people are eating and whom they are eating with is to learn a lot about who these people are. Even in the Western world, a place that is growing increasingly disconnected from the food it eats and the places and people that food comes from, to understand someone’s food culture is to understand a lot of the pieces that make up their life. Food ties people to one another, eateries are places of social gatherings, cultures are explored and shared, time is blurred as the past and present are brought together in a meal shared by one generation to another. And for a white boy who grew up in the suburbs, a life often void of real disciplined work and links to bigger things that help us understand who we are and connect us deeper with the human experience, participating in something that can be a part of such rich tradition is exhilarating.

And so food has become an active part of my life. A lot of my reading has been supplemented with cook books and food books and food articles (I actually have a subscription to Cook’s Illustrated – a perfect magazine for my personality and passion, no ads, lots of practical tips, a few indulgences). I make it a point to go to the farmer’s market one or two times a week. Almost everything that I love about food converges at the farmer’s market – fresh, quality, local food and the people that grow it. Wonderful. And, of course, I eat a lot. I’m constantly searching out local restaurants and markets and bakeries. I’m always trying to expand my taste buds, push myself to be a more adventurous eater. If I were to travel, landmarks and sightseeing would catch little of my interest -- local menus and markets would be my roadmap. You can ask any of my friends; I eat religiously (and I’m not even getting into the theology of food). So, if you ever want someone to share a meal with, or go to the market with, or even someone with whom to cook with, you know, I’m probably two bites ahead of you. And if you are ever standing awkwardly next to me at a party and don’t know what to talk about, talk about food – because I’ll jabber on excitedly about the global implications of it, or about Michael Pollan’s latest book, or about the four hundred different varieties of chilies, or maybe if that’s all too much, I’ll just make comments about the cheese laid out for appetizers, but in any case, at least one of us won’t be awkward anymore, and my connected little brain will be happy for a bit.

Assistant Manager.

This isn’t really a topic to expand on, just more of a short announcement. As of August, I will be the assistant manager at the Habitat ReStore. Ryan, the current assistant manager, will be leaving in August to pursue a Masters Degree at Eastern University in Philadelphia. Having seniority over the other wet-eared associates, my manager decided that he wanted me to take the position. I’ll enjoy the increase in responsibility. I think I’ll function better in a position where I won’t be so worried about over-stepping my boundaries (and, yeah, I won’t mind the pay increase either).

New Address.

I moved from my La Vita address. I’m now living at this one:

1201 S. Eleanor St.
Pomona, CA 91766

So, if you ask me for my address or don’t know I moved, I’m going to know you didn’t read this far – incriminating!

That’s all for now. I have a busy life, but not one of wide variety, so I have to save some stuff for the next email. I’ll leave you all with this:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0901469/

I can’t make all my sign offs serious, and I’m excited about this one.

With love and hope,

Eric

I'm borderline obsessed with this game

I tried to embed it, but it's not working, so here is the link:

http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq

Covering the last couple months

Hello everyone!

Not surprisingly I have missed my monthly quota of updates. I’ll just have to make this three times as long (or three times as good, whatever comes first).

The last update I gave was the story of how I got my job, so, naturally, this email is going to be focused on how my job is going (since, by far, that is the question I get asked the most). The short of it: my job is going well (really well, in fact). For a long time now I’ve wanted to work at a non-profit of some sort. And, as many of you know, Habitat is just that.

There’s a certain peace of mind that comes, for me at least, with working at a non-profit. Although I am liking my job a lot, there are plenty of hours of mundane, monotonous, seemingly pointless work that I take part in. But, at least with a non-profit I can have the satisfaction of knowing that all of that seemingly wasted energy is moving along a project that is doing something worthwhile. I understand (well, to some degree) that doing pointless, mundane work is a part of life, and that sometimes, in order to feed our families, or pay the bills, we have to work for a company that we might not necessarily agree with or suffer a job that we don’t necessarily like. But for now, while I don’t have a family to feed or a mortgage to pay, let me live in the naivety that I can somehow escape that and work in the non-profit sector with shabby paychecks for the rest of my life.

Lately, I’ve come to the surprising realization that people often have to work for and with people that they don’t like. I’ve had the luck of never (yep, never) having to work with someone I didn’t like. There might have been people at the company or in the wider spectrum of co-workers, but no one that I had to deal with directly on a regular basis (customers is another story altogether). I have always had friendly, caring, and competent bosses and co-workers. Actually, I’m still friends with (or at least in contact with) at least someone from every job I’ve ever worked (and I’m not taking the easy road, that’s excluding anyone I knew before I worked there with them). So, inevitably it seems (I’m going to jinx myself with all this pompous talk), Habitat continued the tradition. Actually, one of the things that I like the most about my job is the people that I get to work with. By coincidence or otherwise, there is an unusually high concentration of quality people at Habitat. My manager, Bill, is someone that I honestly respect, which I think pretty much says it all. He is always working, and always working hard. He pushes me to stretch my own meager work habits. He has taught me a lot about what it means to be a good manager, striking a balance between being interested, invested, and caring in our relationship, but also not afraid to crack the whip and to not let me be confused that although we are friends that business is our first, and necessarily our most prioritized relationship. I feel like my time and effort there is appreciated and that I am a valued part of the company. I especially like that I am not micromanaged. I am able to do my own thing and make a lot of management-type decisions (like how the store is run and how everything is set up and displayed). This makes me feel like I am trusted there, which is a good thing to feel at work. My co-workers Ryan and Erik are both great people. We are all relatively new to Habitat, and it has been a pleasure to work and get to know them. I feel like I could have been friends with both of them outside of work even if Habitat had never happened. We have a new driver that just came in, and it seems like he’s going to be a good fit here too. I think Bill is pretty scrupulous when it comes to hiring new hands, paying special attention to personality, and it has paid off when it comes to building relationships in the workplace.

Besides the people there are a couple of other things that file under the good category when it comes to working at Habitat.

First, I really like working with my hands, much more than I thought I would. Not that I thought I wouldn’t like it, but I didn’t think I would enjoy it. I thought I would be rather indifferent about it. I did work on a ranch for a long time, and you think this realization would have come during that period of time in my life. But for some reason it didn’t. I suppose it’s because more of that job was working with animals and moving cages, and not the kind of manual labor that makes the world go round (to clarify, animals and cages do, to some degree, make the world go round, but petting zoos and pony rides do not). And maybe as a strapping young lad I didn’t have the kind foresight to appreciate what I was doing, something I’m barely tapping into now and the ripe old age of twenty-three. Anyways, I’m digressing. There is some sort of primitive satisfaction that comes with moving stuff around all day. But more than that it’s great to be learning so much about the products, materials, and procedures that has built so much of the modern world. I’m even able to do little fix-it things around the house now! My grandfather was a mechanic (I think) and my dad knows a whole lot about how to fix things, make things, and how to make things do things so that they work as if they were fixed, but sadly I didn’t seem to inherit any of that, and this job has been a good first step to being a full-fledged do-it-yourselfer (now if I can just get my dad to teach me how to work on cars).

Second, it feels good to connect with the working class. As a middle-class kid raised in the suburbs, spending time with the working class wasn’t exactly something I scheduled in. At Habitat, every once in a while we do get in the wealthy person looking to save a couple bucks (not that there’s anything wrong with those people), but mostly our customer base is good ol’ blue collar workers. At this point in my life there is just something refreshing about being around the people that work all those jobs that I so often (and very much still) overlook and take advantage of. Consequently, having a working class customer base it creates a really down to earth and low-key environment to work in.

Third, it’s great to have my work constantly changing. As I said before, and as with almost all jobs, there are moments and even days of monotonous tasks to be taken care of. But, for the most part, my job is filled with a changing list of things to do, well, in a sense anyway. Because our inventory is all from donations, what we are bringing in, and what we are having to do to pick stuff up, in constantly changing. With each different item we have to figure out how much it is, what condition it is in, how we can get it on the floor, how to keep the store organized and presentable, etc. This means that the store is constantly in flux, always adjusting to whatever new products we have at the time. This means there is plenty of opportunity to continue to exercise my analyzing, problem solving, and critical thinking skills, which means, being a person that needs to be challenged and pushed to feel content, I am a happy camper.

Lastly, and possibly not least, I get paid. And for a straight-out-of-college job in this economic climate, I get paid pretty well. A full time job with full benefits is not something to laugh at. But one were I get paid more than minimum wage in a non-profit sector job where I am developing real skills and not just something that looks good on paper is something to be celebrated. And so here I am, telling all of you, that I thank God for this job. And, also importantly, that I am more than happy working here, and working here for a while, at least until grad school, or something else big comes up, but I guess that will have to wait until another email. This one is long enough.

And here’s that unrelated end-of-the-email whatever that I said I would tack onto every email:

I found this commercial startling and moving (in a makes me uncomfortable, moves me to action kind of way)

With love and hope,

Eric

Website

A friend of mine showed me this great website, and now I'm sharing it with all of you.

http://www.betterworldshopper.com/

It's essentially a guide to the "ethical" rating of over a thousand different companies broken into different categories based on product/service (i.e fast food, gas, shoes, etc.) I put ethical into quotes because it is such a loaded word. This organization researched each company based on independently gathered data and research done by other non-profits. They then gave each company an overall rating based on its impact (good or bad) in five different categories including Human Rights, The Environment, Animal Protection, Community Involvement, and Social Justice. I know these are all pretty broad, but the website offers a much more in depth description of each as well as the research process they went through. As we, meaning we as Americans, are ranked among the highest on the consumption scale, I thought it would be great to keep these things in mind, or at least to start discussion on doing so, as we continue to vote with our purchases.

With a lot of love,

Eric

P.S. A real update will be coming soon.

Bonus blog photo op!

Only certain parts of this photo are candid. Ryan and I living the dream.

Greetings from America

Hi, y’all (that’s American for hello and also more of a joke for the college students I know)

So, as many of you may know, or for the few of you that don’t, I finally got a job! I started about two weeks ago at the Habitat for Humanity Azusa ReStore (www.sgvhabitat.org) – think Salvation Army mixed with Home Depot. The ReStore exists to help raise money for the local builds through sales of donated items, to provide the community with materials at lower prices (making remodeling and general building projects available to people of lower incomes or tighter budgets) and to reduce waste on the job site and off by collecting and reselling a lot of things that would have been trash. Our particular store grosses about $50,000 dollars a year through this process. I have always, in some vague, general sense, supported Habitat for Humanity (HFH), but now that I know much more about what they do, and how they do it, I feel like I can be a full-fledged fan! Getting an opportunity to work for such an organization is so good it is almost laughable that I got this job.

For those who don’t know the story, I will briefly recap the events that lead up to it. Since I graduated from APU in May finding a job became a very present reality (the pressure of which was there long before graduation, dating back to possibly second or third grade, maybe even further.) I’ve realized that deadlines seem to be something that doe-eyed young adults, such as myself, don’t really understand (at least not the ones with the same kind of background or upbringing I have come through). I’ve experienced deadlines. I’ve had tests and papers with due dates that cannot be changed. I’ve had applications and payments that, if missed, would have had serious consequences. But I’ve never had loan payments like I do now. And I’ve never had a month, such as the month of November, the month that my payments start, become such a looming presence in my life. So, if you couldn’t tell, finding a job was at the top of my priority list (well, maybe after the intentional community I’m living in, and my family and such, but it certainly was up toward the top and it definitely ranked high on my things-that-cause-me-a-severe-amount-of-stress list).

So, beginning straight after graduation, and a short visit to my parent’s home, I began my seemingly never-ending and relentlessly hopeless search for a job. Coming out of school, despite being asked more than a handful of times, I had no idea what I wanted to do. When I thought of my future, in terms of any sort of career or professional life, I would think of one word: non-profit. And it was that word that I continued to throw out to people when they asked me about my future plans, as if it sounded good and solid enough that they would think it a respectable position worthy of seeking out and wouldn’t be bothered that I was doing “nothing” with my life. But within that, within the word of “non-profit” there are a lot of different places to go and a lot of different jobs that one could work. And I had no idea which of those I wanted to seek out. Because, in all honesty, a career is not high on my priority list (I know, young and naïve, but that’s where I am for now). A job is something I want to have only to the pay the bills and get me by enough so that relationships can be the priority in my life. Poverty is something I want to embrace as a Christian, but I suppose I should save those thoughts for another email where I can unpack them more. All that said, I needed a job so that come November I could pay my loans and not have them default to my parents.

When I got out of school I had dreams of maybe working a non-profit (because if I’m going to be putting that many hours into an organization I hope they are helping some people on the way), but as the months went by, and I continually failed to get interviews or calls back or even to find positions that would work with my schedule and financial situation that dream somewhat fizzled. My schedule over summer became focused around working at the library, spending time in my community, and looking for other work. Part of my strategy for searching for work was to get connected (or in some cases re-connected) with people that I worked with through college that I felt knew me well, and could say some good, but still honest, things about me. One person on this list was Matt Visser, the director of the Ministry and Service office at APU. I had worked with Matt throughout my work with Faith/Activism Collective and from my unsuccessful attempts to get One Percent started on campus (if you’re unaware of what those are, let me know and I’ll fill you in). Throughout the months after graduation I would get random emails from Matt about different positions that had opened or that he was emailed about. Although I appreciated his kindness, a lot of the jobs he sent me weren’t very useful, because they were either too far away, didn’t pay enough, or weren’t enough hours. One day, however, Matt emailed me about a position that opened up at the Habitat ReStore.

It was the same store that my close friend Micah worked at. I talked to Micah about it and he told me that his co-worker was leaving to Grad. School and that they were looking to fill her position. He would have told me about it earlier, but he had heard me talking pretty seriously about wanting to work with adults with special needs (which is still something I want to do at some point) and didn’t think I would be interested. At this point I was pretty desperate, and interested in almost anything that could fit my qualifications and meet my job requirements – including, but not limited to, office and secretarial work, shift driver, night watchmen, and facilities management (which is the PC term for janitors). I worked on my application and re-focused my resume to bring in to Habitat the next day. I woke up the next morning, got dressed up, and drove down to hand in my application in person. The manager and I talked for a short while and I left feeling like I made a good impression. However, after talking with Micah, my mood changed. He informed me that before I went in they were already leaning toward hiring someone else who had come in the day before. I was disappointed, but it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling at this point. I got the official call from the manger, Bill, the next day. They were going to hirer the other candidate, but they would be sure to keep my application on hand, just in case.

To avoid dragging this out too long, let’s skip ahead a couple of months. My friend Micah, the same friend that was my contact at Habitat, was planning on leaving to go to Cambodia to tutor the child of a missionary family for a year. As plans got more and more solidified for his trip, he decided it was time to inform his boss that he would be leaving in a month or so. That night Micah told me that his boss had brought my name up as a possible replacement for Micah when he left. Micah said it was a good sign, but to not get my hopes up because his boss also discussed a couple of other options, such as hiring a volunteer, or bringing in someone from another store. Both of which would save them some time, effort, and money. Micah said when Bill got back from vacation he would give him his why-you-should-hire-Eric-spiel. A week later I got a call from Bill, or more accurately a voicemail, asking me if I was still interested in an opportunity to work for them. I called him back immediately and set a time up to come in. That Saturday I went in to talk with Bill. He wasn’t very specific as to what the meeting was, so I dressed up just in case, and brought a couple copies of my resume, which I left in the car. I walked in, he showed me around the building, had me read over an official description of what my job would be, told me the Exec. Director, the one that normally makes these decisions was on vacation, that the power was passed on to him, and that he was ready to bring me on starting Tuesday. As fast as it seemed like that all happened, I can tell you it felt a lot faster to me. On Thursday I got the message from Bill, on Saturday I went in to the store, on Tuesday I officially started work. I basically came on as Micah’s replacement, but he wanted me to work with Micah for a couple of weeks to train under him (and looking back on it two weeks into the job, I’m sure glad he did).

All and all, it’s been a really great job. In my next email I’ll have to let you know how the actual work is going. I figure this is long enough for now. Write me back, if you can. I would love to hear from you all.

And I figure, just for the sake of interest, I’ll end each email with a quote or a passage or random fact or scary statistic or something that I liked or thought was interesting or worth discussing or just thought was funny for that moment. This email, I’ll end with this:

“The Roots of Violence:

Wealth without work,

Pleasure without conscience,

Knowledge without character,

Commerce without morality,

Science without humanity,

Worship without sacrifice,

Politics without principles.”

- (Of course) Gandhi

With love and hope,

Eric