Overview...

What started as an awareness raising and ethnographic styled walk through Sierra Leone, this site now details the encounters of a not so academic academic who spends more time occupying Wall Street and squats than a university...

Saturday, April 7, 2012

At what cost?

Written 3/28/2012

So I feel a bit like I'm up against a wall on this.  I have to get myself to the right place in terms of the quota, but today was a straight disaster.  I got one contribution for less than 10 dollars.  I was trying.  I was engaging with people, having great conversations, and completely getting people familiar with everything we do and the party itself.  In fact I would certainly say I did a hell of a job today, just not my job today.  As I've said before.  My job is to make money for this party, not to get out the vote.  I'm great at that, but that isn't how the game works in our world.

Anyway, so the gist of it all is that it is tough to work hard, to try daily, to push yourself, but to not succeed.  It is not something I am very familiar with.  I tend to have success in many ways and in most things I try to do.  This has been a bit different of late though I guess.  I haven't gotten very far with schools and jobs back here in the US, so maybe I should no longer say that.  But I guess more pointedly, I haven't done good getting jobs and into schools.  Once I'm there, doing, I usually always do well.  But not in this sense.  Not this job. Seems I generally fail at this kind of sales and fundraising throughout my life.  Everyone always thinks I've got the personality for it, but it doesn't seem I've got the heart or character for it.

No matter, tonight was a tough night.  Felt like I was just trying and trying (too hard probably) to make it work.  Not only was I pushing and pressuring myself, but I was taking it kinda hard.  I was having great conversations, but then nothing would come of it.  I'm actually kind of disappointed with myself over it all.  Here I am measuring success in a political sphere on whether people give me money.  Its so far from where I have and want to be.  I can feel this ugly transition in me, toward measuring my self through this outcome.  It is so sad.  I believe in these mutual and communal ideals, yet here I am now, forced to deal with and become driven by this job and a success based on monetary outcomes.  It is so sad that society can't function as Occupy does, and the Occupy couldn't provide a sustainable life for me.  It doesn't pay, and in our society it seems that this is the first and foremost thing that matters.  Food, shelter, clothing, they all come from money these days.  Money I don't have, and that I need this job to provide.  But at what cost?

1 comment:

  1. I did ethnographic research amongst door-to-door salesmen. The ones who were good at cold calling strangers like you're doing, did two things that made them successful:
    1) the visited a lot of people in one day, they could tell almost immediately if someone was not interested, and then said thank you and goodbye
    2) they didn't care what people thought of them. In cities people forget you very easily.

    Maybe this job isn't for you, but maybe you can make it work. Good luck either way.

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