I have a growing pile of clothes in my closet and a growing pile of trash next to my bed, a growing pile of molding food in my fridge, a growing stack of missed calls and voicemails that I cannot bear to listen to, a growing stack of papers and post-its, messages scrawled on my hand, a growing list of work and personal emails. All I want is to clean everything, and to be able to stop for one second and make a flow chart and be able to move all this energy in the creative directions it belongs. To write, to grow. To be accountable to the people I love, and myself. There is an old photo I have of a Laser 3.14 piece stating Clutter in Your Head and Everywhere. I don't look at the phone for hours, days. Or when I look at it I call my therapist, my psychiatrist. In a neverending comedy of errors, they never answer, and they call back when I am at work, and the appointments are never made. Imagine how hard it must be for people with serious fucking problems. I think about this all the time, every day. If it is this hard for me to get anything done, and I am so high-functioning that I can have a difficult job and trick people into what is essentially the digital-age, utterly graceless version of air-kissing my way through a social life, then how impossible must it be for anyone with serious mental health concerns to function. I see this in action each day. I see it play out in unfortunate ways in my workplace, sometimes. When I first got here, I did a training called The Ropes about youth homelessness, at the end of which we did a roleplay. I played DSHS, where you get your food stamps etc, and one way in which we simulated the treatment that mentally unstable people receive was that I was required to give them their forms in Cyrillic, without explanation, and to be unhelpful and require that they stick to their time limit when they asked questions.

Monday I was working the front desk during drop-in, and five people were asking me questions at once. Someone was asking me how to figure out how to pay a transit authority-issued ticket when they had lost the physical ticket. Someone was asking me to print something. Someone was asking me what "snugger fit" condoms meant. Two people were asking me to check their mail. One person was throwing his mail around, and rapping. As the fray reached a height, this rapper smiled at me, and asked, "do you ever feel like you're going crazy because so many people are asking you questions at once?" and then "do you work at this job because you crave attention?" This was an interesting question to be asked while being asked five questions at once. Or at all.

Today a woman named Octavia came to talk to us about outreaching to young people of color who don't identify as homeless. She reified a lot of the things we are all feeling about how protocol is sucky and building relationships and coming from a place of honesty is the best way to reach young people. She reminded me that it's ok and better to let young people know where you're coming from. And got me to thinking that really, that's better/best to do with anyone. Seems obvious, huh? In youth work, it gets lost sight of sometimes because you're worried about maintaining appropriate boundaries, about maintaining your role, whatever that is. In life work, self work, it gets lost sight of because you're worried about seeming like you have your shit together. Maybe I need to try...worrying less. I will wish myself luck with that.