Mondays...

Mondays are almost inherently bad. Once you start to get in the swing of things with the week, boom! There's the weekend, and then you get to relax and have fun, and Monday smacks you in the face with the workload again. Not that my workload is bad or anything, I've been going on about how much I love it for the past week, but waking up is hard, and forcing your body to work in the Texas heat is just as hard.

Our day today consisted of going to Pearland to meet the Keep Pearland Beautiful staff (all two of them) and learn about their efforts to increase recycling and reduce litter in their community. It was a basic Parks and Rec department but non-profit and not solely for the government. They told us about their education programs and what they were doing in the community to get people involved. They have a lot of volunteers and people backing them up to achieve their vision of a better and beautiful-er (if that's a word) community and country.

This wasn't my favorite day simply because it was so cliche. They were fighting for a lot of the things that environmentalists are fighting for, but I am not sure that their scale is as accurate as they think. I don't know where they got their facts from, and from previous visits to conservation sites, they had research done in science to prove their facts, here, I wasn't so sure. What tied it all up for me was the woman making a snide comment about the upcoming elections and how stupid some people are (like the conservatives who fight for our countries wholesome beginnings, whom I happen to be on the side of). It was a little frustrating for me because she was giving us the side of environmentalism that I didn't like. The opposing side instead of the encompassing side. I liked what she had to say about litter, but I was sure that I would not want to be in a position like her's in the future.

Nevertheless, we went to their huge recycling facility, with a park behind it that would be open in 2016. We helped them pull up weeds in a part of their garden that they had not planned to be filled with weeds. It showed us about planning and how important it is in this field to look at all options and see all obstacles (or at least try), before you implement something.

And while it was similar to other places we had been over the past week, it was dissimilar in the way that they hadn't completely backed up their ideas with science. I wasn't sure if the garden was natural plants to that area and how it would help the ecosystem grow, I was more aware of how it would affect the people coming through it. Don't get me wrong, curb appeal is important, but the more natural, the more self-sustaining and healthier for the community at hand.

But while this day wasn't all that perfect (it was super hot and I didn't drink enough water, oops!), it was still an important learning experience. Throughout my life I've learned to look on the bright side, and I've become perpetually optimistic. Maybe today was a lesson in poor planning. Maybe it was scratching a future job opportunity off of the growing list. Or maybe, like all of this, it was just experience that will eventually further my career in the long run.

All in all, Mondays are Mondays, and if you try to change them, they'll probably fight back.

Forever hoping for a better tomorrow.