Volunteer Explorer

I got the theater itch in high school. My gateway drug was fifth-grade choir. The choreography we added to the spring show in middle school took it up a notch, leading me to the a capella jazz ensemble in high school. This quickly escalated to the junior and senior class plays. I knew I was a hopeless addict when I found myself at an audition for a community theater production of “The Haunting of Hill House.” I got the lead and plunged into several post-high-school years of incessant thespian activity. Over the course of one very hectic year, I appeared in no less than five productions at as many different playhouses. This habit began to fade when I got married. My husband was not the kind of person who seeks any kind of spotlight, and community theater makes daunting demands on the free time of its participants. I was happy to get clean of this often sordid occupation. The drama was almost always more intriguing off-stage than on. Besides, as I got older, I developed a crippling...

Two years go by, and it can feel like no time at all. In a story, two years can mean barely an inch of white space, or the indentation of a new paragraph, or turning the page to a new chapter. In life, two years is two years. It is 730 days of getting out of bed, meeting the dawn, making choices, moving forward. Then suddenly and at very long last, it is two years later. My last post was almost two years ago. I stopped posting because I wasn’t volunteering anywhere, I wasn’t seeking out multicultural experiences as much, and I didn’t have much to say. Also because keeping up with a writing schedule is hard. Regardless, I am picking the whole mess up again. My life is quite different now than it was in 2015, and it seems a good time to return to healthy habits. Like writing and volunteering. I didn’t volunteer much after grad school because there wasn’t room for it. My focus on an inner turmoil that I was determined to hide from the world took up all the emotional room in m...