I’m writing a plan to to increase the number of food stamp and nutrition program recipients who shop at DC farmers’ markets. I attended to a farmers’ market managers meeting at the Food Research and Action Council (FRAC) yesterday to collect some useful background information.
For several years I worked with FRAC employees in a budget coalition. Visiting their office in a different capacity made me feel as if I had been resurrected… and not in a good way. I felt like a zombie. Colleagues who were seeing me for the first time since my layoff did a double take. Their eyes said, “My god! She walks among us!”
I know that my zombie metaphor reflects my insecurities and not (necessarily) the outside world’s perception of me. And of course everyone was lovely and happy to see and work with me. What surprises me most is that it took me a whole month to finally come up with a zombie metaphor for my un/under-employment situation.
I have a love/hate relationship with zombies. I am the proud owner of a machete. Its practical use is to cut down the mass of bamboo from overtaking my vegetable garden. But truthfully, when I saw the machete in the gardening section at Home Depot I thought, “Well, that’ll be just perfect for the zombie apocalypse. I mean, my field hockey stick would not last very long against hordes of the undead and I’m never gonna get around to buying a gun (besides it would just run out of bullets eventually).”
Seriously.
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, applying for jobs…
