Insights from Cachivachis

This past week has been a busy week, a bit of a tiring week for us, but a good week nonetheless.

We have had a Work and Learn team here as well as another MCC program coordinator from Winnipeg. There's tasks to do like grocery shopping for breakfasts, getting up at 6:45 to lay out the breakfast, there's making sure there's bottled water ordered, clean towels, as well as the other tasks needed to run this place, like making schedule changes, repairing vehicles, painting, sewing, finishing up the new library system etc. etc. I think we are starting to get into a groove. It doesn't feel like we are flying by the seat of our pants anymore since the staffing changes. So that's one huge good thing.

And to add to this week, we were also preparing for our Feria de Cachivachi (I love saying it.....Catcheeee-bacheee!). Both Carl and I realized pretty quickly when starting our job in November, that there was a lot of excess stuff that no one was using, but keeping it, "just in case". So being Type A Melancholy Organizer-ish types, we started purging and sorting. Our goal was to hold a garage sale and sell the excess off. It's a win-win situation. That's a Feria de Cachivachi, Sale of Used Stuff. And I, as the organizer of this said Feria de Cachivachi morphed into the Cachivachera. It has a nice ring to it I think.

Both Carl and worked long hours in the storage rooms and large workshop going through all the items. Even though I was in the deposito for hours on end all by myself, every hour I had someone coming by, asking me for help, for advice. At times, I just wanted to be left alone, to do my own thing. I'm such a task oriented person and I'm dealing with that. But with our maintenance fellow let go last month, Carl spends quite a bit of time working by himself. He doesn't have many people coming around to "interrupt" him.

Yesterday Carl was just mentioning for the 3rd time that he gets a bit lonely working without Pedro. And I noted that, because 1) it was the 3rd time and 2) Carl is an introvert-ish type and so the tendency would be for more solitude than constant people interaction.

I thought about that a bit. I realized that everyone else here is working in a team and collaborating with someone else. Sure, Carl and I have tons of overlap in our job, but there are days when we hardly work together. While I'm constantly interacting with support staff, Carl works in the workshop, by himself. And he takes vehicles to the shop, by himself. And he paints, by himself. He was only too glad to work in the library with Sitha yesterday because it was raining and he couldn't prune trees, by himself, or paint, by himself.

Sigh. I'm not sure what we can do about that. I don't know if it's just accepting the fact that our job has changed. I think over time it will get easier, especially now since we've talked about it. Sometimes I get really tired of working with people, and sometimes Carl get's really tired of working by himself. That's just life.

Well, on the bright side, we have dreams of how to improve this place and do it possibly on a dime. With our Feria de Cachivachi, there might be a bit of extra money that we can go together and decide together how to best use it. That will be fun, a nice bright spot for both of us. I get to go and just work with one person (my favourite person!), and Carl gets to go and work with a person (and I'm thinking I'm his favourite too).

We both gained insight, and lost a whole whack of excess cachivachis. That makes for an overall good week.