One morning in the life of Josh

A sample of one morning in the life of Josh Orem

6::45 a.m. First alarm goes off. Snooze

6:50 a.m. First alarm goes off for second time…. Snooze

6:53 Second alarm goes off. Snooze

6:55 First alarm goes off for third time…Snooze

6:58 Second alarm goes off for second time….. Get annoyed enough to open my eyes and write down whatever parts of my dreams I remember. Climb down the step ladder from my loft and get dressed for the work day including khaki pants and burgundy polo shirt. Wake up roommates who should already be awake. Dilly dally around. Make a bowl of oatmeal. As I wait for bowl to cool realize how close to being late I am. Dump oatmeal into Tupperware and put into backpack.

7:25 Put on helmet. Jump on bike. Ride like mad.

7:35 Arrive at work. See my supervisor pulling into garage so hurry inside, up the
elevator and into office so it looks like I was there on time at 7:30.

7:40 Check phone messages from the weekend. Write down who they are from and place on appropriate desks. Check work email. Reply to necessary ones. Make and bag 15 bologna sandwiches.

8:20 Board outreach van with outreach partner and call client to inform him we are on our way for pickup.

8:30 Arrive to hillside where clients live. Find a few extra passengers requesting a ride. (One is a pit bull mix) The now six of us head back to town.

8:40 Arrive to Department of Motor Vehicles with two of the clients needing to get IDs. Partner takes other client to hospital emergency room for a broken jaw. We believe we have all of the paperwork we need to get a California ID. Our newest client (of 10 minutes) goes off on his own without any problems. The priority client and I get to the front of the line and are told that the Florida birth certificate will not work because it is a photocopy. I go to a higher up in the chain of command.(who we spoke to last week with LAPD assistance) I tell him we now have what he requested of us. He now says he can’t help us. I ask him who else we can speak with. He directs me to the office supervisor’s desk. Things are not looking as good as we had hoped. We meet the supervisor. I explain my relationship to the client and that this ID is the only thing keeping a homeless veteran from a potential apartment. I explain how this is our fourth trip to the DMV in a week to try to get this ID. We give her a Veteran’s Affairs card, a copy of a Florida birth certificate, a record of all the information the LAPD has about the client, my business card, a weak smile, and a silent prayer. She takes all this to her desk to deliberate. After some agonizing minutes she oks it. We hurry to process it and give the lady the 7 dollars before they can change their mind. Once we get a receipt we know it’s a done deal. Client gets photo taken and we are out of there. We should expect the ID to arrive in the mail in one to two months. We need the ID sooner than that in order to get the client into an apartment, but hopefully the receipt for an ID will do the job.

This is one example of a few hours of work at PATH. I will try to update on different scenarios that I see in my current line of work.

Pre-blog

This morning I had the privilege of being a panel speaker at a Mennonite Conference in Northridge, CA. It was a great experience. Basically I was there to explain how I came to be in the position I am currently in and what I am doing in said position. As per usual I had no idea what I was going to say until I was up to bat. As I started my rambling stream of consciousness a thought really struck me. I started thinking about how many people are truly involved in this process of volunteerism. This is not a one-man show. If I had to list everyone involved in the process I know that it would take up pages in very small font. And then I talked about how important communication is to all parties involved. As I was thinking about this, I realized how much room I have for improvement on this aspect of my current vocation. I think that one way of doing this is to simply blog more. Sometimes when I contemplate blogging I build it into a big thing in my head. I think I should just start writing more about everyday events, because most of you can’t really picture my day to day activities. I will start that this week. I will choose one day and just write down everything that happens and then relate it to you the viewers. I am posting this now just to hold myself accountable in this area. So thank you all. Also you all could help me by giving me specific areas that you would like to know more about what I am doing here.

Thanks,
Josh