Habitat.
This month was a work community service event, where our office sent a dozen volunteers to Jamaica [Queens of course. pff, I wish.] to work on two house builds with Habitat for Humanity. They were working on restoring some houses which would be sold to veteran families for a dollar, part of a Bank America Initiative.
Now, I’ll be straight, I’m not a huge fan about all of the things the Bank does. But they do put real effort into community service opportunities and charitable donations. It’s part of the Southern culture that permeates through their mission statements.
Anyway, the dozen of us show up at this part of Queens. I’m late, because I’m a piece of shit, and getting anywhere in the morning for me is a huge pain in my ass, and always rudeas to the people I leave waiting for 15-20 minutes.
We split into teams. Most painted the first floor. A group was split off to join another house in sheetrock-ing. I worked mostly on sheetrock in the basement in the meet up house. We cut out a few pieces of water resistant sheetrock and drilled them into the metal beams. We also had to adjust/clean up some of the previous volunteers, who left sheets in awkward intervals or insufficient support. I really enjoyed working with my hands. Drilling sheetrock started kind of difficult, the metal beams would warp easily without a good grip and angle. I also made multiple multiple entry holes for missed screws.
I had to take a trash run for my second shift, to relief my coworker from the unpleasant duty. But I finished that quickly, and was able to return for a little more sheetrock work and help paint a corner a bit out of reach for the rest of the colleagues.
What was satisfying was the ability to make mistakes and learn, something I had experience with screwing in the sheetrock bits. Mentioned before, the beams of the wall were made from metal c channels. Those would easily deform and weren’t super stable. It made the screws miss, or unable to pierce the sheet. I broke screws. I missed. I drilled multiple useless holes. It was annoying and stupid I couldn’t get the easy task. Eventually, I started to get an idea that steady hands, bracing the beam, would give me the right leverage to have a high success rate.
I made other mistakes. Broke sheet rock. Added bracing to anchor things. Dripped paint. I learned a valuable lesson on heat transfer from friction between bit and screw. Ow.
I want to remember to make more mistakes. And make them often. It means I’m doing something unordinary [for me], hopefully getting better at something new. Kind of like Shaq going from photography to photoshop.
We ended with a couple drinks at a tapas place near Jamaica station that was at least good portion sized, if not the most inspired food.
It was a good event. I highly enjoyed the manual work. The people were nice. And I got that visceral pride from seeing the results of our work tangibly.
I sort of wanted to do an additional thing this month but I didn’t, because lazy. I even signed up for the dog walk, but I valued the extra sleep too much.
The farm asked me to their ending potluck, but the invitation was very last minute and I had Peter’s party in mind. Honestly if I had more time to think about it, I would have 100% gone to the potluck instead, even with the hour commute in mind. It took nearly that much to see Peter. Not that I didn’t have an alright time and Peter’s my friend, and I value him, and I wanted to show up. But simply because I should have take the last networking opportunity on the farm I really want to be a part of. Fuck, kinda dumb. Whatever. Resume. Go to some events next year. I’m sure they will need the help. It’ll come back around with effort.
One more and that'll be 12!