Today, instead of waking up at a frankly unseemly hour of the morning and commuting directly and dangerously into the rising sun, I instead began my first week as an AmeriCorps alumna instead of an AmeriCorps member. My unexpected life detour into disaster recovery has come to an end. It was a pretty bumpy road at times, but I’m glad I took it. I was able to help some people along the way, which is really all I wanted out of this experience.

I also met some really lovely people. I keep making mental notes of topics of conversation to bring up in the office, forgetting that I don’t actually work there anymore. I mean, I’ll be back there at some point, possibly to borrow their scanner and also to return the traffic cones I inadvertently stole. Also, social media is a thing. Still, it’s always strange when you see someone every day — whether a classmate, a roommate, or a coworker — and then you suddenly don’t.

“Abrupt change” has been sort of a theme of my life the last couple of years, I guess. Like I said in my last post (which was almost two months ago — so much for New Year’s resolutions, whoops), I do have some constants, though. Writing, of course, is my greatest constant, and I’m excited that I’ll have some more time to do so now.

I also have plenty of Plans, but none of them are quite Reality yet, so that can wait for a future post. Writing is my Reality, though. It’s maybe strange that something as intangible as making up stories out of thin air can be as solid a bedrock as it is for me. I just appreciate having an area of my life that I don’t have to question. I’m not sure where my writing will take me, but I’m sure about the writing itself. I know I’m very lucky to have that.

For now, I’m going to be working fewer money-making-job hours than I had been (though I’ll be earning considerably more, because AmeriCorps), so lots of people have been asking me what I’m going to do with my “free time.” This has got me thinking about when I stopped thinking of writing as “free time” and when I started thinking of it as my job. The switch must have happened pretty gradually, because I can’t pinpoint an exact moment. But yeah — I’m not actually going to have any more free time than I ever did. I’ll just get to use more of my work time to do the job that I love the most.

And someday, I hope, I’ll be able to say the same thing about my writing as I can say about my AmeriCorps term: “I really helped some people with this.” I definitely never felt sure of myself as a disaster case manager the way I do as a writer. I actually spent a pretty large portion of my 10-month term thinking I was kind of awful at it. If I could go and tell myself one thing at the beginning of my term, it would be to try to get out of my own head occasionally. Of course, I’m fundamentally incapable of doing this literally ever, so the advice wouldn’t have done much, but I do realize that people in need don’t need the people helping them to be perfect. They just need them to keep trying. That’s something I did do, and that’s something I’m proud of.

One of the tenets of the organization I worked for was that people have an innate desire to help others. While that’s hard to fit in with some of the contractor fraud I saw (some people will literally steal tens of thousands of dollars from children and little old ladies after their houses are destroyed! So that’s a thing!), I genuinely think that’s true of most of us. I also think that if someone is anxious or prone to guilt due to personality or brain chemistry or latent childhood religion (or all three, in which case hello and welcome to the Existential Crisis Club!), then they probably worry that they don’t help enough.

At my AmeriCorps class’s graduation party (bowling! Which I actually really enjoyed — maybe I’ll follow in my mother and grandmother’s footsteps and become an Intense Bowler), my bosses and coworkers made speeches about us, which was emotionally overwhelming and embarrassing but also really gratifying. So, I guess if I were to actually arrive at a point in this meandering post, it would be that I encourage you to go and emotionally overwhelm/embarrass someone who’s helped you in your life. Tell them what they did was good and enough. Because while (good) people don’t help others for the recognition, letting them know they’re appreciated is an easy and kind way of turning it around and helping them in return.

So there’s my sappy moral. That’s the end of my free time for the morning. Now: to write.