Incident Command: Again

I've thrown myself at emergency response a few times now, and the process has been convoluted and frustrating. However, I finally made it!

There are the petty things - throwing myself at a (volunteer) job. Being offered the job. Having it reassigned to someone else. Being re-offered it. Going to an office building for the first time in a month. Trying to figure out when I can work from home, which job (my "day job" and my "temp job") claims which hours. If I can do overtime. If I am qualified for this role.

In April I spent a day at the Incident Command Post before it was discovered they meant to send a different Jessica and I hadn't actually been assigned. It took until June 1st to get me fully up and running in a new role. I had started to train for a different role and it turns out I was assigned but never told about it until I was working on my new one.

I wanted to log all of these things, but as I return to this topic I find that they don't seem as important. Yes it is frustrating to get jerked around and to have no idea what the job is, what the next day looks like, or who is making these decisions. But when things went from intro to buckling down to the work? Well, everything else doesn't seem to matter. We're all trying to do our best and, yes, things could go better. But we are here and we have to make it work now, not in the past.

I walked the dog tonight after finishing my work around 8. A voice on a loudspeaker at a local school track was working through names of graduating high school seniors and, if I didn't know better, I would have thought it was an ordinary commencement ceremony. There were no people on the field, only a smattering of households listening from their front yard. Strange how things can feel so odd and also so normal, so sad and also hopeful. Or maybe we just feel, not one emotion but many simultaneously, raw.

Time has been playing tricks again this week - almost like the beginning of the pandemic. Everything moves so quickly and also so slowly.