AmeriCorps Round 2

Hello from Sacramento! I'm currently almost at the end of the first half of my second round of my ten month term with AmeriCorps NCCC. This round has been a great experience working in a community garden, doing home repairs, and making a community bike shop on Stockton Boulevard in Oak Park. I gained some really amazing skills working with Community Shop Class, Color the Block, and Sierra Service Project. I rediscovered that I love to work with my hands, just planning out what needs to be built, how it will all go together, making a cut list of the lengths we need and then measuring, marking, and cutting. I really enjoy carpentry work

Circular saw, speed square, tape measure

Drill driver, impact driver, T25 ceramic coated deck screws

We were only really building counters for display pieces in the community bike shop, but the idea that these skills apply to building houses was very empowering.

Hearing Chad at Community Shop Class discussing plans for tiny home villages and the idea that carpentry/construction/framing could be used to build affordable housing was really inspiring and that construction and framing are skills that are important to me and that I want to carry with me moving forward in my life, whether that's with Habitat for Humanity or some other organization or idea.

I've also been thinking a lot about people's relationship with land and houses.

The idea of renting has always bothered me because that's money that's not going towards something that you can keep and that you don't really have access to space for:

Workshop Space

Space to work on cars, space for tools like drills and saws for working on carpentry or space for tools like socket wrench set, car jack, air compressor

Art Studio

Personally, I love black and white film photography but setting up space for and enlarger takes up a lot of space, developing film is a precarious process that needs a sink and darkness and space.

Gardening/Farming

Growing produce, God forbid growing wheat to be able to make your own bread, staying in one place long enough to grow fruit trees and tend them over the years (I took a class with Dominic Allamano about fruit tree pruning and learned a lot about soil health, and the system of soil, fungi, and tree health)

Space is hard to access, but if we change the way we think about ownership away from single family units and more towards multi-family and co-op style arrangements, where people share land and space and help each other, not only does space become more accessible, but we create community, stronger community and combat loneliness.

These are some of the ideas I've had about the work I've been doing with AmeriCorps. I'm so thankful I took this opportunity and was exposed to the concept of community service in such a unique way and these more blue collar skill sets that I wasn't really exposed to in Annapolis, MD in the suburbs of Cape St. Claire.

Career

Going forward, I'm considering a couple of different career paths

Electrician

Finding a local in either Baltimore or Philadelphia to be closer to that city to find people and experience a city more personally. This would also be a chance to really apply myself to something and build confidence in the skills for work, work with my hands, and my mind, and to make the space of trades more inclusive of women, LGBTQIA+, and BIPOC people. The trades being a notoriously white, male dominated space. The work is meaningful and empowering and the work environment would benefit from being more diverse, being trans nonbinary myself. But also being white and male passing often, I have a unique ability to enter the space and transform it.

Middle School Science Teacher

I have a bachelors in chemistry and a passion for teaching. And being trans, I want to be there and for and supportive of trans children as they navigate their identity in today's political climate. I would love to be a role model and instructor for children and teaching science or chemistry and being able to help children understand science if that's the field they want to go into and make it into academia or research and development, especially girls, black and brown children, and queer kids, to be able to inspire or empower them to believe in themselves, and know how smart they are that they can do what ever they put there minds to, is important to me. Not to mention being able to reach out to children while this country is going through such a rough time.

Both would start out living in an apartment again, but maybe it doesn't have to.

Maybe they can involve finding roommates to go in on a house somewhere with some outdoor space for gardening and indoor space for music and darkroom processes.

But both options hinge on the idea of volunteering with local nonprofits on the weekends to make friends and find a different meaning in something outside of whatever job I'm working that would have meaning in it's own way.

At the end of the day a job is how we make money to afford a place to live, feed ourselves, access health insurance, and save up for emergencies, traveling, and other hobbies or dreams that have higher entry prices, like buying camping equipment or a motorcycle, an old car, a truck, or a camper (like a tear drop camper).

Recordings & Photos

Lastly, I just wanted to talk about how I've been making music and practicing photography in AmeriCorps.

I'm very proud to say that I've been applying myself more and pushing myself to practice runthroughs of songs and multiple takes recording on my iPhone (although I'd love a dedicated recorder with an SD card slot, maybe one used somewhere??). I think I end up recording something everytime I sit down to practice lately and it's pushed me to power through songs and it's been so insightful to be able to listen back on my playing and my singing to be able to improve as well as being able to share my music with other people at different times.

I'd really like to be able to start putting my music on Spotify, I'd just need a distributor and Distrokid seems good to me. And would need to cancel some other subscriptions so that I'm paying for things that are serving me right now.

Sadly, I'm not able to upload audio files here, my files are too big, so I'll have to work more on having a better process for how I share my music, just my covers and eventually my original music.

Here are some photos that I took while I was in San Francisco on Saturday, only a few because the goal today was to finally make a short post and get it out, but I'll try to keep making more posts to share more photos.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to ask questions or reach out to talk more about any of the topics mentioned in this post.

Best,
Robin Sievers