I dont really want to write this, but I feel inclined, compelled, yeah, compelled to be honest. I am doubting what I am doing here. I am not enjoying it like I was at the beginging and I question if I am doing any good at all. And if I am, then for whom?

Before I started down here, as proven by this very blog (dang!) I was A FLUTTER with optimism and naivity. I was going to tackle the world and make change and be wonderful and New Orleans was going to be saved and everything was going to be alright, and all because of me. Well, not quite THAT naive. And hopefully not that obnoxious. But, we can at least say that I was excited. Well, I am not as excited anymore. Or at least right now.

In short, gutting houses gets old. Again, locals are rolling their eyes at Sherlock Jackass who rolled in to their town a year later to learn what they already know. But Im starting to get it. My eyes hurt. They are puffy and swollen from all the funk that has gotten in them over the passed 3 weeks. My body is tuckered out, achey (sp). My feet freaking kill. I have cuts (and infected ones at that) all over my body (but to be fair, most of those are from wrecking Poppy Tooker's Vespa in the middle of Magazine Street last week, never blogged about that one, did I?) Im sun burned and my diet BLOWS! PB&J on white bread is NOT the ideal diet for sustained manual labor.

I might just be crabby because I know I have to wake up at 5:45am tomorrow morning to do it all over again, but I also am discuraged by ALL THE OTHER HOUSES that surround the one I am working on THAT ARE WORSE and TOTALLY NEGLECTED. There are SO MANY MORE.

I question if this town can ever come back.

But the weird thing is yesterday I took the day off cuz I felt like I needed it, umm kinda felt like I do right now, and over the day I had this bizarre growing feeling building in gut. It went through a couple stages. For about 4 hours there, I thought I was going to burst in to tears. Then I thought I needed to run 5 miles. I was all wacked out. But then, around 7pm, it cemented itself in to an unflinching desire to go gut a house. I was actually contemplating if it would be too dangerous to gut, in the projects, in the middle of the night. I finally convinced myself, around 11pm, that it was in my best interest to try to get to bed instead, so that I could wake up fresh and be a manimal all day long today, which, if I must say so myself, is what I was all day today. Pscho With A SledgHammer.

Im seeing strange parrells to returning war veterans (not to be dramatic). But, Ive always heard all they want to do is get the hell out of there. And then they do. And then all they want is to get back. Yeah. Im kinda seeing that. Eye to Eye like. Is that weird? Do the locals who have been doing this for a year know what Im talking about?