it's so good to be around people who are so gung-ho about the same things you're obsessed with. you pine, you vent, you lash out, you laugh out loud, shake your head silly and generally feel good inside knowing here are your comrades who commiserate, even though you kinda just met them and will probably never see again. we can hope together, get discouraged, then regroup and hope again when we are permitted to meet. today was the third day of our leadership training & next month we meet for the last time. i realized i felt the void strongly after meeting these precious unfamiliar (yet strangely similar) few last month.

but it's so great to talk about our ideals when we do meet. who talks about how they feel about work, really? do we ever stop and say what we philosophize about our daily functions?

am i a workaholic? is this my new religion?

i can't say. most of the time i get jaded and discouraged. but then here's a break from the ordinary & we're able to verbalize that yes, we do care about our 9 to 5 even though it gets so frustrating most of the time. that we do wish the best for the people whose lives we touch & affect. and i love how it's so not cheesy to say that. we get so excited and passionate, sometimes even angry.

well, here's an interview question that was thrown at me last week: how do i see myself in 5 years? it'd be interesting to see what this group looks like in 5 years. i wonder if we'll hold on to the same values then. maybe so. but in 10 years? probably not..?
 

i've been climbing a mountain and didn't even know it until i stopped & looked around.
 

we had an emergency exit drill at the office today for those times when we may have to evacuate the building through otherwise inaccessible stairwell. non-fire related issues that new yorkers are capable of imagining without much creativity. i went down with one of the perky twenty-something girl at the office, joking that it'd be fun to have a halloween party there. but i think we were joking to lessen the tension we felt when we think back on the chaotic incident in.. 2003 i think? and no, we didn't even talk about 9-11, that's just too.. raw to think about even during a drill. thought i think we did a fine job at distracting ourselves.

so i found out someone was arrested today because he was plotting to blow up the federal reserve bank with 1000 lb bomb. the news kinda puts thoughts into perspective. wow, life is so fragile and danger is closer to home than we think.

but we haven't had a major crisis since the black out. well, there was the mta strike in 2005 but otherwise we made it through the recent years pretty well. new yorkers demand so much. just yesterday, when i took a late ride home, a mob of people shoved their way into an already packed and brimming train. this short middle aged lady on her way to old age kept pushing me and cursing me out for not moving in. i calmly looked at her, then pointed to the lady on the other side and said "do you see this lady next to me?" i got a grunt and no more eye contact as a response. we, not just the two of us, but everyone on the train inched home extremely uncomfortably. but that's nothing compared to the things we already experienced.

i'm just thankful that nothing happened today. and hopefully we'll continue on safely for a very very long time.