This is it. As the title implies, the blog series is ending, my PWE is winding down, and, yes, the summer is over. I’ll be sticking around and staying with Wake’s Budget and Management Services in a much more limited capacity, so while a show will go on, it is going to be very different than that of the previous 3 months.
Drake says that the last verses of his albums are like surgery. During the creative process, countless thoughts, themes, and messages are inevitably cut from a project, and at the end of said project, you have these intensely personal ideas that never got expressed. Those ideas don’t disappear after a gallery opens, a movie premieres, or an album is pressed; they stay with their creators. Sometimes they can be saved for the next opportunity; others are more burdensome and must be removed, lest the creative himself/herself be unable to meaningfully complete their project. So, Drake, for lack of a better term, vents on the last verse of his albums so that those burdens don’t linger with him past a project. I’m going to treat this last blog the same way, as surgery.
I’ve probably cut this phrase from every blog post that I’ve written this summer, but man, is public service a grind. It forces us to go above and beyond in a way that I welcomed but was unaccustomed to. We are in a profession that deals directly with people’s lives; we directly impact their finances, personal health, upward mobility, job prospects, housing, and recreation just to name a few. The stakes are immense, and the work that everyone puts in, from County Manager David Ellis down to an intern like me, to each those stakes can responsibly be compared to mountain-moving. Government staff works HARD. They are passionate about their jobs, about their communities, and about the lives that they change. That means long nights, stressful meetings, and scrutiny from stakeholders both vocal and not vocal. It really is a sight to see, and here’s hoping that I’m in the thick of it for the rest of my days.
-Aaron