Fancy Computers and Bird Heads Have Entered My Life

I almost gave up on doing this, once I started training for my census job, but a park-bench conversation led me to get back to the blog. My thought had been that now that I'm working, I don't need this to fill my time/needing-something-to-do gap. But this weekend I was drinking my coffee in the park, watching the volleyball game, and talking with Sloane about how I respect/envy people who are able to commit to projects for the sake of committing to projects. I talked about how we live in a society where if what we're doing isn't "productive" in a very specific sense, it's not considered valuable. While I think this is true, I'm pretty sure I've used this as an excuse for not being productive in various stages of my life. Sloane made the point that all a project needs is to make time to do it every day. You just tell yourself that you're going to do it for ten minutes, and then bam, you're making good progress. I can blame society's lack of emphasis on non-"productive" projects, but really it's just about me getting off my ass and doing something that will make me feel good about myself, so here I go again!

Last week, I officially started working for the census. Here are the tools of my trade:
I get a fancy hand-held computer, or HHC, in census speak. I have to scan my fingerprint to log-in, and it allows me to check on the progress of my crew as they do their work, going around the neighborhood making sure that addresses that were there 10 years ago still are there, and entering those that are new. My technology-is-ruining-the-world inclinations thing it's a little bit creepy, but I do have to admit that there's something fun about it. The same thing goes for my census bag and my census badge. I definitely have a little bit of shame and misgivings about working for the federal government, but I have to say that I kind of get a kick out of being official and carrying out a task that is, at least in theory, something that is very embedded in this country's tradition (again, in theory) of doing what it can to represent the populace. The census has been taken every ten years since 1790, as mandated by federal law. The data collected (in theory X3) is used to determine where funding for schools, roads, etc. are directed. Maybe I'll do a bit of a census history report some time.

I'm hungry, and I need to make myself some dinner. I was going to leave you with a photo I took on my phone while checking out my assigned census district this morning, but I can't seem to figure out how to put it onto my computer, so I'll just share it with you. I came across a decapitated bird head on the sidewalk as I was walking along. It was just resting there, looking as though it was carefully placed. Is it an omen? What does it portend?

xo,
mj