Why Snow, of course!

Be daring,
be different,
be impractical,
be anything that will assert
integrity of purpose and
imaginative vision
against the play-it-safers,
the creatures of the commonplace,
the slaves of the ordinary.
-Sir Cecil Beaton

This blog is supposed to be about work; however this is problematic because I've worked less in the  last week then I ever do :). Today they closed my office because of the massive snow storm that blanketed Athens with a beautiful white dust. I love how snow in Georgia turns our world upside down. I've always dreamt of moving away from Georgia and probably will one day; however, snow days will never be the same as they are here. I may have pnemonia tomorrow (and some very questionable bruises from falling down my stairs in my stockinged feet...), but today was amazing. It made me feel like a child again. It was the first time in a long time that I let my worries go, I didn't even try to do any work. 


Snow has a very magical power. It can turn the dingiest aspects of our environment into a beautiful masterpiece. For example I looked outside at our gigantic pile of trash that we forgot to take out and it was transformed by a beautiful white blanket. Social workers are kind of like snow (yeah that is right, I'm finding a way to make this about work). Social work is intended to draw the beauty out of the often grundy situations our world gets itself into. Similarly this is how people in general try to live our lives, showing the beauty rather than the baggage. 


But as the snow melts, the filth is rediscovered and usually worsened by gray sludge. Similarly, as I've entered the field and delved deeper into human behavior I realize this is also how we try to solve our own and each others problems. We put on a superficial blanket that eventually erodes and makes our lives an even bigger mess. I am not excluded from this pattern. I haven't always fallen prey, but when I do, I fall hard. 


Wouldn't it be beautiful if we embraced the snow and the sludge. I've done it in the past. Often it is in the search for only snow that we loose our uniqueness and ambition. Please remember that whether you feel like a snowy day or the sludgey aftermath, you are still beautfully and wonderfully made. In the wonderful words of Katy Perry "Baby you're a fire work"! I usually don't care for very trendy songs, but I just love her's ;)