Writing All the Blog Posts, Without the Paper

Generally on my slow way home from Market and as I unload my trailer, I write blog posts in my mind about my day...post-Market I have so many deep appreciations for what we do there all day every week. Sometimes I'm chewing on some situation that needs resolution, sometimes I'm feeling that I should shut up and crawl back into my cave. Most times I am singing. I do the same walking home from meetings. Walking to meetings I am usually going over my mental lists of what I have to do, or say, but going home I just let the reflections flow while I enjoy the flowers and trees of my wonderful neighborhood.

This week I ran around Market on adrenaline getting set up for the Founder's Day display, buying flowers, excited about a photo shoot for a future RG article, full of anticipation about a wonderful surprise that is going to hit the news on Monday, and a little bit worried that something random would spoil these golden moments that are going to be such important parts of our history.

I spent a lot of time in the office this week, and last. It is not my habit to dump big projects on our staff. I am more used to having an idea, and then putting my whole heart and soul into making it happen, with the attendant hours of labor involved. I do the work happily, take on whatever isn't really in someone's job description, and have no problem spending my time and money on something that has fed me so richly for so many years of my life. I do it because I love it. This week I found out a lot about Vanessa as we worked on making easel backs for those posters, and I found out that our staff is a group of singers. They just break into song all the time! What's not to love about that?

It was fun and I could have done more of it. Our staff, all of them, get my undying gratitude for running with this honoring Lotte concept, and for saying yes so many times all throughout. It's one of those types of promotions that might not show direct effects...though we had a nice Weekly mention. I didn't get to spend a lot of time on the deck myself, but once I was surrounded by Lotte's daughters, her best friends, and some of the artisans who were built at Market as I was, and another time three former managers and Vanessa were up there laughing and talking shop. Every moment I got to be on the deck was golden. Bill Goldsmith patiently sat there ALL day and also took home parts of the archives to scan, as we need a digital archive as one of the first steps toward keeping our history accessible and complete for all of us. I hope many more people than I am aware of took home something valuable from Market yesterday. https://www.facebook.com/eugenesaturdaymarket/videos/10155255581981640/UzpfSTcxNDQ5OTYxOToxMDE1NTgwNjk3OTg2OTYyMA/

I have decided that Archivist is my next role for the market...way beyond the Secretary role, which I will at some point gladly mentor another member into. I was very nearly voted out of that officer position this January  after ten years...for whatever reasons, I got the message that some are ready for me to shut up and get into that cave. Carrying the historical legacy better suits me anyway, so I won't question the ondas (kind of a silent wave) or care about who or why, just acknowledge that change is good and I have plenty of ways to use my time that might actually result in more important and more personal gratification than just selfless service.

The 50th Anniversary of Market and OCF is the force of nature that will maybe catapult me into a new phase of my life. I need more time to write. I have several books nearly written in my mind and in my many journals...I also want to make sure that Market history is set into permanent and useful form. I plan to study and acquire techniques for the physical parts, preservation of the artifacts, and hope to use and develop some personal skills for interviewing and networking with people in person, something I do rather badly and can improve by being less tied to the day to day overseeing of our legality and proper Board actions and also to whether or not I have approval from the membership for the many actions and decisions in which I am involved. Maintaining the approval of others is wearying and I dislike both examining it and being re-assured, caring about it and thinking about it. I'd like to unhook from it completely and just do what I want to do. Maybe not realistic, but I do seek ways to diminish that anxiety and do less of what brings me criticism and more of what brings me simple joy.

The ways our membership organization, and Country Fair's as well, fail us all, is when we descend into our pettiness and resentments and forget how we are all on the same team working for the same goals. If someone has a great idea, ideally we all get behind it and help push it through! Ideally we don't pick it apart, especially afterward, or bring up how one of us gets more than our share of whatever quantity or perceived benefit, while others are unfairly deprived. I get that this comes from deprivation and insecurity, but it serves no one when this dominates our work. I have heard many times now how us old people need to get out of the way for change and for the young and how the new members are the future and so on. Who invented this duality where if one gets, there is an "other" who loses?

If one of our master craftspeople is still successful after a lifetime of effort, not only have they earned it, but we are so lucky to get to share their gifts! They know things we will never know starting today...our history is rich with ways we have adapted and struggled and overcome. They are our precious treasure. New is fantastic and change is essential, but it isn't a choice of one or the other. We have everything in the Market. The more of everything we have, the better. We don't have scarcity. We have abundance. When someone brings their success, we all gain.

We're going to be in the civic spotlight tomorrow and for the next while. We are in a golden moment for our organization and we are so poised to make the most of it. We've always had stellar and hard-working staff, and right now we have a marketing expertise that is unmatched in any time of our history. Goodbye to our inferiority complex about whether or not the city loves us (actually it has been mostly the county that has made us wonder.) I had a meeting with the City Councilor for my ward this week, and she got us so thoroughly I laughed in relief. She said all the right things.

So often it has been our self-sabotaging perceptions as humans that have gotten in our way, more than any external force. Take a look at "internal and external locus of control" readings. When we operate from an internal locus, our confidence rises and we are freed from a lot of doubt and hesitation that can cripple us. With our crafter population, one of my problems is that I have seen all of our warts and flaws and witnessed many of our errors in judgement, and I fear that we will destroy our momentum and bite ourselves in our collective asses. Fear is not a good driver! Get someone at the wheel who can drive well, and maybe just read the map for awhile. I have always been a better navigator and support person that driver. I'm so happy to let our great staff drive our bus.

I'm happy to yield to the real visionaries among us, to let experts in the many aspects of us come forward and be expert. I am not a person who wants power and control. I want to be left to my simplicity and joy and also to feel in control of my seat in the back, my lunchbox, and my satchel of homework. I've always been happier to wind my way home on foot and meander my way through the woods while other people rush to keep up or get there or make big plans or do big jobs.

I do have a big plan, which is to have Lotte and the Eugene Craft Movement be enshrined in a museum wing. I intend to do my little parts to take that dream as far as it can go. In my imagination there is a little display of Jell-O Art in a corner. In my plan maybe I get paid to write things instead of hauling tote bags to the fountainside so often, but as long as I can be by that fountain, I intend to stay there. For those of you happy about that, thank you, I really appreciate the support. I got a lot yesterday, and it feels wonderful.

For those of you resentful of that, or who want to stick out a foot and trip me, well, that is in your power. I suffer as much as anyone with emotions. Go right ahead with your bad self if you have the need to punish others. Be prepared to be ignored. Be prepared to watch the positive among us rise above it.

Get on Board, children of the market! We need your positive energy and your great ideas right there in the room. We need you to collect our wisdom before we rest. Run for the Board! Drink one less beer and attend a committee meeting instead. Put aside your phone and take minutes for it. Extend yourself. Our success is mutual. Now is the best possible time to be a Market member who thrives, with the connection, the support, and the outstanding collective expertise of our almost fifty years.

We have everything we need right now except robust volunteer participation. We have people waiting to step away, as soon as you step forward. Volunteers made this Market, including Lotte, who did it all for free, and continuing through the thousands of us who already stepped up. It's your turn. Please try. This is the common good we are preserving, with a big slice for each of us, in the ever-growing, never-finished pie. There is a piece for you, and it is luscious.

And now, a chat with Mom, who also has my undying gratitude, and a HOT DAY! I will be silent and on the deck. Or possibly singing and in the garden. Or both.