Hope

I woke up at 5:30 this morning. Don't ask me why. For most people, I suppose that's not too early. For me, it's way too early. It's an hour since I woke up and still dark. It will be dark for a little bit over another hour. I dislike waking up to darkness. Makes me feel like maybe it's still 3 o'clock in the morning. (For those of you who know me, I'm a sunshine baby.)

What does a person with no kids do so early in the morning? I do laundry, website maintenance, check myspace messages and write something to you all. Oh, and have yogurt.

I have a new obsession in life. It's called Organized Chaos and it's happening on April 1st.

No, this is not a planned April Fool Joke with weapons of mass destruction. It's an all day concert event in my town with 8 bands from all over Arizona playing, a live DJ, skateboarding ramps and rails, raffle, games like sumo suits, bungee races, a 2-story slide and jousting. We might even throw in a rock climbing wall for good measure.

So my new obsession is quite a fun thing to do. Right now the thing I am most concerned with is raising the money for the event. $5,000 should do it. I have $500 so far.

So what to do? Well, this girl put a call in the form of an e-mail out to everyone involved and supporting it to let them know they need to get off their duffers and start asking the local business community for money.

The event is geared towards teens all over the community. We have several youth groups, community based organizations and government organizations geared towards helping teens that are going to be there to hang out and meet some teens.

I know I have written this before, but our small community has a high rate of meth use, teenage pregnancies, high school dropouts, domestic violence and so forth. I guess this is the first drop in the bucket toward starting to show a unified front around here that we are going to do something about it!

My biggest dream is simply to see the teenage culture in this area completely revolutionized. I want the society illnesses to be the exception and no longer the normal rule. The local high school tends to handle the issues in the negative. I think teens need hope. They need a reason. They need to be told who they can become. They need to know the power an uniqueness of being a teenager. They need to know a lot of things. They mostly need hope.

So I know it is weird to think of hope being packaged in an all day concert event with loud music, skateboarders, rebellious teenagers and silly games. But I hope it sparks hope in a lot of them. Hope that what they won't get at school and in many cases won't get at school can be found in people they don't even know lending a hand, putting their hearts out there to help them realize their full potential.