Productive At Last

Note: This was originally written on July 3^rd

 Today went by so quickly, probably because I didn’t really do any research J My supervisor has wanted to revamp these guides that help citizens report suspicious activity. The handouts mention things both obvious (ex. sex or color of car) and not so obvious (ex. accent or number of car doors). My boss said she wanted me to “update” them, but when she handed me the old editions, I burst out laughing. The “suspicious person” sheet had a drawing that was clearly from the 1970s.  The man was sporting a trench coat, quite the voluminous hair do, and some crazy patterns that were gaudy even in black and white. The Americorp Vista said he looked like a young, dashing Ron Swanson (Parks and Rec watch party anyone?). And the font was that awful, not quite retro, shadowed bubble lettering. Anyway, I decided to just start from scratch. I worked on the guides all day, took very few breaks, and it was so very fulfilling. I created a tangible product that my supervisor really appreciated. And I know that my work was needed, useful, and will last awhile. (There was even talk of showing the local police precinct!)  The past couple of weeks I have felt like I was going nowhere and doing nothing productive, so I really needed this boost.

UPDATE: My supervisor loved both of my guides (after 17 group edits!) and has shown them to our grant donor as well as the police precinct. It sounds like other groups in the community security coalition want to use them as well. The only damper on this success is that I used a picture from Google Images and I’m trying to figure out if that was acceptable or not…