Fever, day three

You know how some days, you’re pumped up and ready to take on the world, and some days you wonder if it is possible to get any flatter after you’ve been run over by the Mack truck of life? It’s been one of those days. Flattened. Smashed. Run down.

Funding for my kind of work has been dwindling for years and we are at a point where things are looking pretty grim. Profoundly grim. Mostly I can maintain a smile and a cavalier attitude, optimistic that something will come through, some funder will open up their bill fold, some partnership will open a new door, something, something will come along. We’ve been around for 25 years. Something will come through… right? Right?

But other days are darker. On those days I spend time worrying about my family’s personal finances and whether we will ever get out of this freaking two bedroom condo and into a house with a yard for the kids and a vegetable garden for me to wiggle my toes in the dirt. I think about all the change I want to make and all the good I want to do, this searing desire to make the world, starting with my community, a better place… and weigh it against health insurance and saving up for college tuition. I wonder if I really can make a go of the nonprofit sector and how many more sacrifices I will have to make to stay here.

I don’t always feel dismal about the nonprofit sector. I am proud to work in the environmental movement, proud that I am part of something bigger that is working to protect our world, our resources for our kids and their kids and their kids. It is why most days I am pumped up and ready to take on the world, giving knuckle bumps to the sky and feeling like there is so much to do! And I want to help! Right now!

But today, my seven minutes of blogging caught me at a dark moment, worried about my organization that I care so deeply for, worried about my mortgage and health insurance and all the stuff grown ups have to care about. And I find myself wondering when the real grown up in my life will come along and fix it all. I’ll wait! I’ll just stand right here and wait. I just need a grown up.

My mind races to extremes. I think about how if we have to close our doors at my organization, I’ll never be able to find another job. Just never. We’ll have to live under a bridge and eat road kill for dinner. We’ll have to make the kid’s bedrooms out of refrigerator boxes and duct tape and our phone will be a plastic cup connected with string running between our boxes. I’ll be forced to collect cans on the side of the road for diaper money. Jay will learn to hustle people for money and Ella will head up a street gang.

To be fair, this is also me on very little sleep and we are now on day three of a 103 fever and a very unhappy, lethargic Jack. Everything seems worse when you’re tired. Maybe tomorrow will be better.