I've been struggling with how to limit the overwhelming amount of time I spend volunteering as I look at the gradual end of my productive life...I'm only 73 but now that my Mom died I am feeling the deadlines coming up for my body and cognitive ability. It's a harsh reality but the list of things I can get finished to my satisfaction in the time remaining to do them is compromised. I have to prioritize.
My position with all of my groups is that I have made myself super useful. It's somewhat intimidating to take on the tasks I do...I have well-developed skills and I have set a high bar. Even I know I am attached to seeing the progress I have enabled continue after I leave. I can set things up for the next people and I think I will learn to let go, but my problem is how to document the jobs while at the same time making them look like jobs people can easily take on. Unknown people...I do not know anyone currently who will take on these tasks, for any of these positions. Time has shown, though, that someone will, or no one will, and things will survive.
So I'm making lists for each group and will present them with a plea to lighten my load. If that doesn't happen rather quickly, I will have to just quit. It's not a threat, just a way. If I don't walk, everyone will likely sigh with relief and let me continue to give away all of my time for the benefit of others, and of course, the mutual benefit of our organizations.
At the same time, OCF Best Practices keeps working hard to increase the number of tasks. When this stuff was voluntary, I was willing to step up my participation in the interest of better practices and communication, but at this point, it is no longer going to be voluntary. At least that language is not in the motions. Now it says "must" and "shall" and although on the face of them they seem to clarify expectations, they subtly go from "best practices" to requirements. I get the usefulness to the Board and organization, but what went out the window is that we are volunteers giving our time and that comes out of our desire to apply our skills, as we choose, when we choose. If we choose.
My list of tasks for the committee I'm on, Craft Committee, is giant. Some monthly, some annually, some ongoing whenever changes happen, and some I have just taken on as I saw the need. I'm Scribe, so some tasks just seemed to be in my realm...I am a good writer and they were writing tasks. Increasing information dissemination and helping the crew coordinators do their many-more-than-mine tasks served a lot of people, so I felt good about it. I like being supportive when I like the people. That is in fact the thing I will miss. I see needs I can fill and it feels good to fill them. Makes the work easier for everyone, and usually better quality as well.
I like solving knotty problems. This morning I had a dream that seems to be directly about this: I volunteered to take on this task of assembling a wooden award for The Best Volunteer of OCF. It was a new award and The Best Award ever given. There was a table of wooden pieces that needed painting and assembly, and I stepped up as it looked like pure fun. As I tried to sort the pieces I saw that there was no design or model to follow, just a vague picture in my mind of some peach-like thing, and the pieces did not seem likely to make a recognizable object. Plus, they were made of fake wood like floor laminate that I knew would break easily so only one attempt at assembly would be possible.
So I started asking around for plans, or someone who knew the plan, and I found this one guy who said he would bring me drawings. He brought me an assembled but not glued up model which immediately fell apart, plus he told me his wife had designed the award by looking intensely at a fern frond for 20 minutes so I knew it was a complex work of genius and I wanted to do it justice. But I could not, and he brought me another model, metal this time, and suggested I put the wooden one together in Saran wrap so I could see both sides. I set about trying but it was already not possible and the pieces I was supposed to use were indeed, as I was saying, not the right pieces. Putting some varnish on them would not be useful. I found myself kneeling on a sidewalk on Pearl Street trying, while some people came by from one of the many volunteer groups, all excited about the idea of winning that award. They had lots of enthusiasm, but about winning The Award. Best Volunteer for Best Event In The World.
No need to delineate the irony for the event that has the most white supremacy, ableism and cultural appropriation and denial of such of any event with which I am associated. You know who We are.
Which is when I woke up. I took a look at my position in this dream, kneeling on a hot city sidewalk in the sun, making something other people were going to compete to win, and knowing that there was no way I was going to succeed in making this thing. I never once considered that I would be The Best Volunteer. It was just a fun job in my view that turned into a super frustrating nightmare at which I was certain to fail. I had gotten a little help from the one guy, but it came with emotional strings (couldn't complain about his wife's genius idea) and whomever had cut the wood pieces was long gone and gave me crap components to work with without any additional resources. And this was not during the event, but now, so even though I finally know people on Quartermaster Crew, I couldn't go ask them for help. There was no available help, just the expectation that I would accomplish the impossible all by myself. For free.
For an award that I was not even eligible for. I mean, in thousands of volunteers, there is no Best Volunteer. It's not even a concept to entertain. Competition is counter-intuitive. We're all working together for mutual benefit, right? We all wanted to do all the things because we all got fed and had the camaraderie of knowing we were creating something really special, that would endure and be incredible and worth the effort. Life-changing, in a good way.
I do not want any awards. A couple of weeks ago I wanted a thank you, an acknowledgement that I had given from outside own needs to serve others, but today I don't even want that. I just want to stop being of service. I just want to hand over my task lists (another task I took on, making the lists...) and walk away.
I don't know if I will like my life, or myself without my service, so I'm not doing it all at once. I'm taking some time to figure out which ones are likely to be able to replace me, so the work won't just end when I go. I also have to walk far enough away so I don't have to watch these people I have loved working with and learned to love as people, struggle. I don't want to be missed. I want the tasks to be manageable, not intimidating, and easy to take on for people who have more youth and slack in their lives to give more. I am feeling depleted, and I like the possibility that the next people will do even better than I have. They will be able to build upon what we have built so far, and make the things that are beautiful and functional and inspired like a fern frond: fractals of complexity that people will marvel over. Things of beauty and elegant solutions.
So it is probably obvious now that OCF is the first to go. I can't make the thing. I don't have the resources to support me, there isn't anyone to ask for help, and the task is impossible. Committee volunteers are not supposed to have a page-long task list. I probably shouldn't have developed that list to begin with. A more successful volunteer would have hung back, said no, and somehow managed to watch while things remained undone and dysfunctional.
When I came on the committee, there was outright bullying behavior at every meeting. No one was allowed to do anything that would improve the reputation of our committee or our sector of Fair (which is a pretty important sector) or actually to take any positive actions to move things forward. I said fuck that in so many ways. Now we have productive meetings with some actual progress to increase communication and respect Fair-wide. Now we have a group that enjoys meeting and gradually gets things done for all of the mutual benefit. It's actually going well. The bullying stopped (not that it can't start right back up any minute...always a threat.) We wrote a lot of things and have been of actual service.
Now the dysfunction is more external to our committee. We got gaslighted and guilted for things that happened this year and told that we are going to fix them. We look like a strong group that will move things forward despite the fact that people are getting paid big bucks to do those jobs. I'm not gonna. I'm not willing to sit there and get lied to at meetings. I'm not taking on responsibility for crafters who were dissatisfied enough to make petitions and speak up at Board meetings about the things that went very wrong this event. I'm ready to just be a person who shows up and makes my living and doesn't have to field people telling me I shouldn't complain or shouldn't even admit that things are wrong and people could have done better. I had two leaders contact me and tell me I was being ungrateful and unhelpful and disloyal and should not be speaking up. Yeah, no.
I don't have time for it. I'm not even in the running for Best Volunteer. The award is going to look like crap anyway. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but I would rather just stare at a fern frond for 20 minutes and call it good. That's my goal: staring at ferns. Unbothered. Not guilty. Finished being helpful.
Might take awhile, but we'll see. Might be easier than I think.
