My Life As An Elf

Packing, post office, office work, packing, packing, packing, post office...this is what my life has consisted of for the past week. The person I'm working for has a TON of orders that consistently have been coming in, especially for the Christmas season. Many times I've thought "man, being an elf sucks!" and I would imagine my ears growing into points as I lugged bags of packages from place to place.

Other than the 10-hour days I've been working, some amazing moments have been mixed in. One was today during lunch. I've been working with some Ukrainian ladies that speak in broken English and support their families by doing labor related work like cleaning homes, etc. In fact, the main person in charge of packing is a cleaning woman and has the amazing ability to organize, pack and basically just get shit done while yelling (in an excited way) all the way through it.

So back to my lunch - we barely have time to eat, but found 15min to go to the lobby and eat picnic-style the crackers, cheese and cookies that they brought. They were telling me about how educated they were back home and that it's hard even to send money back to their families because of the mafia mentality that's taken over the Ukraine, supported by their jail-bird President. Apparently, over there if you own a business or are getting money from family members in America you're tracked down and basically robbed in exchange for protection.

Anyways, non of the immigrant story is new to me but I rarely take a minute to really think of all the sacrifices that have been made for my generation and Americans in general. I have complaints like anyone else, but I have a lot of freedom, security and options provided to me. I can start a business...or not, teach...or not, have a family...or not - you get the idea. Between listening to them talk and almost push their food onto me, I ignored that guilty twinge and just really appreciated what they were saying and took a moment to thank my own ancestors who immigrated here and took a lot of crap so that their kids could do yoga and ponder the meaning of life and their own happiness ;).

Then we went back to packing, packing, packing and of course I got my elf ears on and went off to the post office to ship many Christmas presents to eager people in their safe and secure American (and some Canadian) homes. I am now ready to go to bed and hit the repeat button again at 8am tomorrow morning...after doing my yoga and pondering the meaning of life of course...