Dear diary | My last week of May

Dear diary | My last week of May

Dear diary | My last week of May

Dear diary | My last week of May

Dear diary | My last week of May

Hello again! Missed me? I missed you too.

Well, it's time to tell you about how my last week of May went, but not only that. I can also tell you about the month as a whole! So, my dear friends, it's been exactly one day since I posted my article about the first week of May, and I don't want to repeat everything I already wrote there about the radio show, the graffiti project, and project updates. I think I gave a pretty complete answer to all of those topics already.

By the way, why do I and the other volunteers write these articles that might seem unnecessary at first glance? I've been asked this question many times by friends, volunteers, and interns who recently joined our organization. The answer is actually very simple. First of all, believe it or not, it helps psychologically. Writing these articles helps organize all the experiences you've been through. Looking back allows you to analyze your actions more objectively you can see where you made mistakes and where you actually did a good job. As a youth worker, I deal with a lot of administrative tasks. On top of that, I'm also a project manager, and besides that, I'm a graphic designer. In other words, during work I often feel like a hamster running endlessly in its wheel. Taking the time to write these articles helps me mentally for all the reasons I mentioned above. Secondly, these articles encourage us to dive deeper into the topics we write about. Talking about our own work and experiance is one thing, but writing an article about a social issue is much more challenging. You really need to spend time researching and understanding the topic before you can write about it. Thirdly, these articles help promote our organization. Every content creator will tell you that you shouldn't publish content only from time to time, you should do it consistently so that social media algorithms keep recommending your posts. Yes, social media can recommend your content even if you don't have many followers or likes. Our organization really does struggle with having a small audience on social media. But don't worry, we'll gradually become more recognizable. Anyway, I think you get the point... Right?

So, what about my vacation?

It was absolutely wonderful. My vacation officially lasted from May 11th to May 18th, but on May 10th, Korra, his amazing sister, and I went on a little road trip! I'd like to take this opportunity to thank both of them for inviting me to spend a day at the sea.

The plan was simple: Korra and his sister would rent a car, and we'd drive to Halkidiki to enjoy the beach and go swimming. Unfortunately, our perfect plan failed right from the start. May 10th was a Sunday, and as it turned out, they hadn't contacted the rental company beforehand. Naturally, the office was closed. Luckily, fortune was still on our side. We borrowed our organization's car and set off anyway. The car may be old, but this little bird managed to take us all the way to Halkidiki and safely back home. We spent the day on the second peninsula, relaxing on a beach with beautiful crystal clear turquoise water. The sea was cold, but the feeling that summer was just around the corner kept us warm enough to jump in anyway. Alright, let's move on. On May 11th, a friend of mine arrived from London, and we spent the entire following week together. Do you know what happened on the very first morning? I woke up early to meet him at the airport and realized I couldn't remove one of my earplugs. I use special silicone earplugs that have a texture similar to modeling clay because I'm an incredibly light sleeper. During the night, a piece of one earplug broke off and stayed inside my ear. I couldn't get it out before leaving, so I decided to leave it there and head to the airport. Spoiler alert: the earplug wasn't removed until May 19th. We spent another day at the same beach we had visited two days earlier. After that, we headed north to lake Kerkini, where we went horseback riding and simply enjoyed escaping the city and spending time in nature. Every day was filled with delicious food, beaches, beautiful landscapes, visits to interesting places like caves, long walks, and complete relaxation. You might criticize me for not getting the earplug removed sooner, but let me explain.

First of all, it wasn't causing me any serious problems apart from blocking the hearing in one ear. There was no pain and no sign of infection. Secondly, halfway through our vacation we happened to drive past a small village with a local medical clinic. We stopped there, and I asked the doctor to remove the earplug. Unfortunately, he couldn't do it. And you know what? I actually felt much worse after the visit because I had paid for the appointment, yet the earplug was still inside my ear and, judging by how it felt, it had been pushed even deeper than before. Physically, I felt awful too. As you probably know, the vestibular system is located in the inner ear. While the doctor was trying to remove the earplug and poking around my ear canal with his tools, he accidentally irritated it. Because of that, I felt like I had been riding a roller coaster for twelve hours straight. I was extremely dizzy and honestly felt like I was going to throw up. Thankfully, that never happened. So, because of that, I ended up spending one entire evening of my vacation lying in bed. At least the doctor prescribed antibiotics to prevent my ear from getting infected.

And finally, the doctor told me that I could leave the earplug there for a few more days, but after that I absolutely had to go to a hospital in Thessaloniki because they had much more professional equipment. Do you know what I was thinking while I had that earplug stuck in my ear? Well, yes... I was thinking about how unfair it was that I had just paid 50 euros for nothing. But I was also wondering what would have happened if I had been born 300 years ago. It sounds funny now, but imagine if something as ridiculous as this could actually have been the cause of my death.

You know what? That's actually a great idea for another article—old medical treatments and the strange medical instruments people used centuries ago!

And what about pride?

So, what about the Pride event that took place on June 20th? If you're interested, you can read a separate article through the link above where I describe how Pride went for our organization. Here, I'd rather tell you about something different, our internal discussion about whether we should participate at all. My position was quite simple: we shouldn't attend just as individuals, we should be there as an organization. The biggest question from the very beginning was this: should we even participate? Yes, we're friendly and welcoming toward everyone regardless of their sexual orientation. But we're not an LGBTQ+ organization. So, do we really have the right to be there? My answer was yes. You see, I'm a fairly rational person. Remember what I wrote earlier about why we publish these articles? The same logic applies here. We need more people to know about our organization and our philanthropic goals. Pride brings together thousands of open minded people, and most of them are young. That's exactly our target audience. I wanted us to be there to introduce people to our work and tell them about the projects we organize.

Another topic we discussed was selling merchandise. Some volunteers pointed out that even if you're a non profit organization promoting philanthropic values, selling merchandise is still, in a way, capitalism. And that might not be appealing either to some of our own volunteers or to some of the young people attending Pride.

Anyway... I won't repeat everything from that discussion. Pride is already behind us. Even though this article is about May, I'm writing it in July, so if you'd like to know how everything turned out, you can simply read the separate article through the link above.

Overall, May was actually a pretty calm month. And you know what? I completely forgot to give you an update on the comic I'm drawing based on our December campaign about helping stray animals. To be honest, all those endless conversations and preparations related to Pride took up so much time that I had to put the comic aside for a while. But I have one clear goal, to finish it. And I will. If we're comparing my procrastination on this project to what happened with the radio show... well, I'm much more confident that the comic will actually be finished. Thank you so much for reading about my last week of May! If you'd like to learn more about our work, feel free to check out the previous articles available on our blog, here on our website, and on Rethinking youth and also check our social medias, thank you. See you in the next one!

by @lev_me_vision