Deja Vu w/ Maracas

I have spent countless days doing the same thing over and over again: printing letters, printing envelopes, folding letters, stuffing envelopes, sealing envelopes, metering postage, carrying letters to the post office, carrying letters to fold, carrying letters to stuff, carrying letters back to work.

I'm losing track of time. I know what day it is, but I can nolonger say with certainty what tasks (beyond those involving letters) I accomplished which days. Board members are asking questions that I can't answer ("When did such and such get done?" Me: "I don't know ... Last week? Monday? I'm sorry, I'm not sure.).

I'm not complaining, really. I mean, I am, but I'm not. People are responding to the challenge-grant solicitation ("Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar) faster and in greater numbers (both people and $ amounts) than I ever imagined (Why am I surprised? It works for NPR.).

The hard work is certainly paying off.

However, the repetition of my job became blaringly clear to me this morning (what took me so long? I think I was brain washed, hypnotized by the never-ending sea of white letterhead). Even though I did many different things this morning including: voting in the primaries (Go Deval Patrick!), getting coffee at JP Licks, waking up at 3:30am thinking about work, discovering that WGBH airs BBC World News Update between 5:00 and 6:00am (I was still awake), staying at home in my pj's to fold letters before going to work (left the house at 10:00am) -- even though I did all of these unusual things, everything felt the same. Carrying the boxes, dropping off 500 letters to the post office, waiting for the T, waiting for the damn Bus 1 (which never, came, by the way. I ended up walking, as usual, the 1/2 mile from bus stop to work. Normally, no big deal. But after days of carrying letters, my arms were tired. My back was tired. I was tired. I just wanted to sit on a bus for a few blessed blocks).

Deja vu. I was stuck reliving the same horrible routine over and over.

Until a man in a red work van playing the maracas drove into my life.

He wasn't driving, he was the passenger. But he shook those maracas in time with the music with a passion rarely seen in a musician, let alone an over-weight, middle-aged, blue-collar man in a beat-up red van.

Truly, this day is different.