rosarugosa
6-21-13, 7:18pm
Last year, my company started a practice of allowing us to take a day to perform a community-service gig in lieu of a day at work. So today, instead of spending the day at the office, I did a four-hour stint at a local zoo, mulching and weeding and tidying up, and of course I got to check out all the animals and wander the zoo at my leisure and it was so much fun! It was also kind of a "feel good" thing to promote camaraderie among employees in a different context. I'm a bit shy, but I ended up spending much of the morning with a maintenance guy who used to be one of my "smoking buddies," and it was nice to catch up, and work side by side and explore the zoo together (that's the ONLY downside to quitting the butts; I don't see my smoking buddies much any more). I also connected with someone from a partner dept (another former smoking buddy) who introduced me to a few of her co-workers, so it was an altogether pleasant experience.
I get very anxious about this type of thing, and I had almost convinced myself to cancel. I'm proud of myself for having enough self awareness to think it through and realize that these things that force me to step outside my comfort zone often turn out to be enormously satisfying, and this did indeed turn out to be the fun day at the zoo on a summer day that it should have been. And there were monkeys :)
I get very anxious about this type of thing, and I had almost convinced myself to cancel. I'm proud of myself for having enough self awareness to think it through and realize that these things that force me to step outside my comfort zone often turn out to be enormously satisfying, and this did indeed turn out to be the fun day at the zoo on a summer day that it should have been. And there were monkeys :)