A Simpler Concept

 I figured out a more neutral, less emotionally charged way to present what I am seeing within membership organizations.

We've fallen into a domination/control model instead of retaining the skills we need to work within the model we were founded on. We are a collection of equal members gathered to join in an activity of mutual benefit. We are literally described as a mutual-benefit corporation. 

The idea is to be non-competitive in getting our many needs met as we join in commerce and an event to advance our livelihoods. We work together as volunteers, and we hire staff to do the additional work that takes more skills and time than we have available as volunteers. We are all running our own businesses and our ability to thrive depends on us, as well as the system we have designed over decades of work to meet our needs in the complex environment of a downtown public space.

Economic conditions have stressed volunteers who have less time and motivation to do the problem-solving necessary to keep us going. The evolution in the processes of hiring and managing staff has become much more difficult for us, who are not supposed to have employees to manage in our individual businesses, so we rarely have the expertise to make excellent hiring decisions.

In times when we felt we had good management, we allowed staff to have more powers and duties to cover all the challenges. In recent years we failed to have thorough training and guidance built into our system. As recently as Kirsten, we spent hours with her introducing her to our systems, what underlies them, and passing on the collected wisdom of all the things we have learned by hard-won experience.

Since she left, we have had essentially no training and onboarding of staff. We designed a thorough program for it but then hired someone who refused it, and things went quickly downhill. 

So one solution to our current problems is a redesigned hiring and onboarding program to make sure our next management team is trained and meets the expectations of the membership for how they, we, want to be assisted by our staff. Currently expectations are regularly not met because in large part, they have not been communicated. When they are, it is usually past the time when it is not out of frustration and distress. No one is succeeding in staying out ahead of crisis. I tried hard but was working half time or more for Market for free and unable to keep up with it or anything else. I had to pull my support but now I can't bear to be in the room where solutions are discussed. I didn't feel listened to, either, due to an ongoing atmosphere of "that was how things used to be but now they are like this." There was no clear way to express disagreement in the intolerant atmosphere of enforced unity propped up by sharing of only selected information. Even the Board and officers were not being fully informed. 

We need excellent communication skills and information sharing in our model. Members get anxious about their spaces, points, and so many aspects of their participation. All during the design and engagement process for the Park Blocks it was my role to send frequent emails and notifications to members to make sure they knew about and felt invited to communicate their needs and concerns. I also took on the role of making sure the City and architect teams understood our needs and ways of operating so they could avoid doing the things that would hurt us. Our team worked really hard to be the conduit for informed decision-making and we were successful. Working with the city can be complex for both us and for them. Obviously it is vitally important. I had to fight for that role, though. The manager at the time wanted to do it all herself and resented me stepping up, but the results of an engaged membership were positive. 

We're going to need that again if we go forward with any of the redesign plan. There's a lot of member anxiety right now about the repairs, which we have known about since last winter and are still not communicating well to our members.There is in fact no member admin right now on the members page. I removed myself from that position, which I have served in since the page was first created, when I noticed that there were four staff admins and an increasing number of staff posts and interventions such as deletions. The intention was to have a place where members could engage with each other. I didn't feel comfortable with my role there, and felt I had been left out of any admin discussion. It is not now a members' space. 

Pulling my support has not been easy and personally I just can't put myself into an atmosphere of coercion and control. I'm not going to engage in another hiring practice, evaluation procedure, or rebuilding process until there is no more manipulation, selective communication, or misleading information-sharing. I have decided to just come and sell as long as I can and hope that other members come forward to take on the current and future challenges. Nobody wanted to listen to me in the last couple of crises and I'm not going to keep trying in rooms where I am marginalized. People need to step up to educate themselves on best practices, membership organizations, and productive problem-solving. Members know what feels right and will begin to speak up more when they feel safe and have complete information. Right now they have retreated into their own lives and are trusting that the current leaders will do the work needed to keep the organization right side up. I hope these leaders will do the work they need to do.

For that we need strong and dedicated volunteers who will take on the task of making sure we have a robust program for staffing ourselves, or we need to find a paid or unpaid organization to mentor volunteers until that is in place. That would take a deep look at our job descriptions, hiring practices, evaluation systems, and Board responsibilities. We cannot depend on a few people to bring that forward at this point. It isn't completely lost, but those people who could do it are either gone from the membership or discouraged from the needed work. They do still exist within the membership, but at present are not willing to engage in this work for various reasons.

We can't continue in this punitive, controlling atmosphere where communications are poor, members are seen as troublesome children who have to be managed and dismissed, and decisions are made in a top-down, secretive manner. While it may not have been the intention to get to this place, we are there and many members are distressed about it.

Many other members are new and don't know that we have traditionally had much better ways of governing ourselves. We generally don't punish people or drive them away, we find ways to operate with their equality in mind. No one gets to define all of the conditions of how we operate. This is something that we do together, evolving when needed and always attempting to research and operate with the most effective techniques currently available.

What used to be called consensus-seeking is now called participatory democracy and we are generally not doing well at maintaining it. Rather than rewriting documents and rules to be more punitive and allow for management control of members, we need to do the thinking to figure out how we motivate our members to cooperate and work for that mutual benefit, without the use and language of "consequences" and a fast system of member "termination." 

It should almost never be necessary to separate a member from their voluntary, chosen membership in our organization. If they have issues with policies, let's address those in a non-dramatic fashion. If they have problems with how they are being managed, let's address those from a system view...what is it about our current system that isn't working? We can then work out ways to improve things through discussion, changes in practices and procedures, and reaffirmation of our goals and systems.

And when we have to retrain or change personnel, we can do that without using control and domination tactics and games to do our best for our organization. It will take time. If we don't have volunteer time to address it, we will have to purchase the time of professionals. Whichever way we do it, we can't just pretend everything is fine.

I have seen this distress enough times to know how it will play out. Let's limit the damage by taking a rational, practical way to figure it out and fix it. What happens if things aren't managed well is that we lose members and income, and then usually make new attempts to restore that which can result in further losses. For instance if we have another fee increase now to pay for what is seen as inadequate management skills, we will lose more members and make less money. Members pay the bills. We need all members to be engaged positively in the life of the organization. When they don't want to be, it is essential to find out why and fix it.

Post-post Trauma Patterns

I deeply apologize for deleting my post from Christmas morning. I still stand by everything I wrote, but it all had an explosive quality I regretted and for the 9 people who read it, was probably disturbing at minimum.

PTSD is no imaginary condition. Every single time between episodes I am sure I am over it, have processed it sufficiently, can control it. It is a deep brain pattern that I can not control but can sometimes manage. This last episode lasted a week, exacerbated by trying to sell at HM for four days straight. I did not manage it well. I'm still triggered and also have the aftermath, which is severe guilt and shame because that is how it works. It's chemicals in my brain. I feel stuck with it.

Blogging always includes a period of what I call a vulnerability hangover as telling the truth exacts a price and doing this indirect exposure in a semi-public way is fraught. I do usually second-guess my truth and try to modify it to protect people I've named and there were quite a few of them who mostly did not read it I hope. If they did this is not an excuse. I am deeply sorry I was so indirect.

I'll have to find a direct way to address the actions of these people if I can bear trying and can find a useful way that is not just me flailing into a void of people not listening, as that has been a big part of the problem. I know when I haven't listened well myself I sometimes believe that I just don't agree with the people speaking, but there is a lot more to listening that just doing it passively. It involves openness.

That effort of actually finding a way forward that honors what they are saying, requesting, or unloading and looks for solutions that will ease the pain is hard. That's why people mostly don't do it. It takes skills. You can't do it when you have already made up your mind that you are right and they are not.

Nothing needs to be final except death. There is always a way forward, an opportunity to make a better decision that doesn't result in loss for one party. The other party may not know that they have also lost. They've refused to grow, to learn and to attempt to make things better for the future. They've made a mistake.

Mistakes are forgivable but some of the actions I observed are not, so I will have to sit with that for a long enough time to get there. Seems like it will take a really long time. Might be a lot of avoidance involved. 

I prefer to feel strong. I guess the passion at least has that redeeming quality, that I feel the strength of action. Maybe I will be able to come up with something that is strong and doesn't trigger my damaged areas. Of course I don't even want to think about it, so it might take awhile. At least HM is over and it's Jell-O Art season. Exploring creativity will help.

Be well. Thank you for considering forgiveness and having empathy.

And But One Day Later

 Since your hearts are already broken, let me make you weep. I think this is all about the death of our planet, or rather, burying the fear of it. They want to loot and pillage, as that is all they know, the only way to balance their grief, which they will never admit or recognize. We feel it though.

My reactions last night while I watched PBS and all of us bargain with our deaths, were to think about misogyny and racism, and why we were willing to believe they would not operate. We wanted to be done with those, and we believed it was possible. I burst out in tears when I saw Kamala on SNL. I knew. She was going to be our savior...and we all know all we need to know about that myth, that the black woman will save us.

Those voting for him do not recognize that they were voting to hurry it up...to hasten and get it over with, the pillaging and death of our planet. They know the storms and floods and loss of their homes and shores and ways of life are beyond control. They know we have ruined it, not me, not you, not any one of us, but all of us acting together in self-destruction. They voted to get it over with, as quickly as possible. To hand it over and dream of going off to Mars.

Otherwise why would you believe in the con, the Musk, the known quantity that is him and his acolyte, the young liar hillbilly. It was easy to see through it. You just had to shelve your memory of what happened not very long ago, how hundreds of thousands of your relatives died while he pretended to look at the eclipse. He always tells exactly what he is going to do. He is going to sell us out, has been selling us out, will never not sell us out. He makes the deal. I suppose you could have pretended not to hear it, to just stay on the surface of your fears, of "others," of high prices, of reading and changing your attitudes to match the times. Why bother to go deeper? Nothing matters. The planet is going to die and no one can do a thing about it.

Not you, my six and now four loyal readers. You have been listening. I know my son did not join the young men gamers who think it's funny that everything is about beating that next boss and the more violent, the better. Did you know that two thirds of Americans are gamers? Do you think they are based in this reality, on this planet? 

We've successfully been put in these silos. When Frog died, my whole entire Fb feed was Frog posts. Mostly people wanted to say how special their relationship with him was because he told them his off-color and sometimes offensive jokes on the regular. Who among them felt his congestion, his weak heart, his despair when he tested postive for Covid and figured it was all going to end for him. It was all about them. I reflected on my own death, which will no doubt be one of those which identifies the person with their persona, their products, their shtick. Not real. I'm happy for him that he did not have to watch the election returns this time and wonder how he would survive. I hope he wasn't afraid as he struggled to breathe, alone at his end. I'm pretty sure he didn't think he'd be finding himself in heaven.

We're not going to heaven. They are going to strip out all that we have been using to prop ourselves up. We will live in an authoritarian country for the rest of our short lives, we will suffer. Our community is valuable, but it won't be enough when the next mismanaged crisis arrives, when our safety net is handed over to crazy people to be looted. We will hang on, but we will lose our people as we have lost our structures that we built.  

In OCF, in Market, everywhere I can see, the authoritarians have risen up saying only I can fix it. Sure there are still a few good people among us, but we're beaten down. We've tried to say something, we've tried to help, but mostly we have, at this point, withdrawn our support and turned to survival. We have meaningless smiling conversations as they rob us of what we have put in place. I went into the office and my box where I collect items for the archives was already redecorated with someone else's name, in ignorance of what I am still doing. Another conversation was had about how I should just bring in my carload of materials and work on them in a windowless room an hour or two at a time. Another dismissal of what I have been doing, of the scope and meaning of my project, of the hundreds of hours it represents. Of the nature of a volunteer task. Dismissal.

Yes I am full of rage. I am a woman, I've been raging all my life. I ride my bike to the market and have for more than fifteen years...a little bit of fossil fuels going unused every week. It has added up. I'm even more angry that I broke my wrist, sidelined myself, can't work and can't be independent, can't maintain my homestead and my meaningful work and life. I cut myself off from my community, to some degree on purpose, for my own emotional survival. It's not about whether or not I like the people...sure I like them. But where is their rage? Why are they not living their values and trying harder? The planet is fucking dying! Do we think it will not affect us?

I almost can't bear it. This woman who put herself out there for sacrifice had it all. She worked so hard for it. She told the truth every day for 107 days and had faith in us that we were listening. We had faith in each other. But we were in a tight little silo and we had no idea. 

My mother once told me she was sad that I was so cynical. She had no idea how cynical I was, fifty years ago in my twenties. She let it go, I stopped telling he about my rage, and I just kept trying to live my values, desperately then and still desperately now. Isn't it worth it, this planet, this community, these people? This beating heart, Frog's weakly beating heart? Doesn't it mean anything?

Well, you and I know it does, we just don't know how to magnify our rage into something that makes a real difference. We can't control it. Our attempts to control each other won't help. We forgot how to work together, to collaborate, to lift each other up and support each other. We just want to smooth things over and pretend it isn't about death and profound beauty and moving forward to something more real and less fake. It's about death and beauty and something real. It's not a recycled joke on a piece of copy paper you can collect for $2. It's not a fucking tote bag.

Americans have now taken their self-hatred and fear and thoroughly fucked the world. It's not forgivable and we won't be able to fix it. If I even manage to survive for four years of this, my fight and rage won't even make a dent. Many of us won't survive it. We're not meant to. We're expendable, and in the way. We won't be the first to go, of course, because America is determined to be the final boss. But we're all going to lose, we've already lost.

Ride your damn bike. Refuse the damn plastic and the domestic poisons and their cancers. Quit buying the comforting lies. This is the fucking end. It's fine to cry. I hope you still can. I myself, find it impossible. 

My rage is quiet. It looks like nothing. It's stoic. It looks out the window when the sun is golden this time of day and it doesn't dissolve in tears. It's not likely to explode. It's also not going to explain itself to you. It's not even about you. It's not even about me. Maybe it's about a bird, a leaf letting go of its branch. Maybe the absence of fear, a finding of joy. A life. A death. A god damn gorgeous, living planet. Saying good bye to that, slowly but forever.

Day before the election

 It's the day before the election...hard to not feel anxious about it. I don't really believe it is close, but I have underestimated the racism and sexism of Americans before. They didn't used to be comfortable admitting it in public like they seem to be now, but a lot of people have it internalized so thoroughly they don't even know that's their motivation. But I'm planning to stay offline as much as possible and have faith in young people and people my age who really won't go back to what we know was very wrong.

Meanwhile, I'm just managing my emotions over missing five markets, four of which were sunny and I'm sure would have been very successful for me. Even the last one wasn't all that wet though still would have been too hard for me. I've been doing a lot more with my right arm and hand but it isn't strong enough to rely on for bike brakes, lifting, dealing with tight bungies or all the rest of the things I would need to do market. I missed it a lot more than I expected and was depressed every week about it, so didn't want to visit and feel very cut off from my usual social opportunities which pretty much consisted of showing up for the weekly workday. 

But Holiday Market starts on the 16th and I am planning to manage the load-in on the day before. Even if I can't bike well, just crossing the Fairgrounds won't be too hard...I can walk the bike if I need to. I've gotten good at using my left arm as the main one and the right just steadies things so I've been raking leaves, weeding, and getting the yard and gardens ready for winter. I got my painting project finished although it looks quite sloppy but it got too wet and cold to go back and neaten up the edges. I'll catch them next time. Seems like I repaint the white trim every couple of years no matter what.

Got my outside water management pretty together although my hoses broke in several places so I'll be looking for new ones I guess. Inside the house, the kitchen sink started to drip and I thought it would be easy to fix but I broke a part and now have to replace the whole faucet and that will have to wait. I turned down the pressure and just turn it up to wash dishes and can probably go for awhile without being too frustrated with that. House maintenance is always an issue though, and it does get a bit overwhelming now and then. I had a rat in the attic again which I caught in one of the dozens of traps I have up there but I have no idea how they get in and think there must be a system of tunnels that they live in that extends under the house. I'm not seeing any real evidence of them outside though. I see far too many squirrels but they don't seem to be that interested in getting into the house. 

I have my first PT appointment tomorrow, since the one last week was canceled. Getting medical care is a challenge so I'm grateful my issue is sort of minor on the scale of things I could be dealing with. I hope she will give me permission to do the things I have already decided I can do, and give me some more to try. I remember when my dad broke his wrist when I was a kid, chasing a rabbit in slippery grass. He cut his cast off at some point and had a box of cocoa butter bars that he used for exercising it, squeezing them I guess. I'm in a removable brace which is much better than a cast but I'd love to wear it less so I'm hoping that will happen. I see the doctor next week at what will be 6 weeks so I hope he sends me on my way. A memorable adventure that I hope not to repeat. It's only my second broken bone in my life but I don't want any more so will try hard to be more careful. Gravity is real.

I have started coloring hats a little...I have trouble getting the caps off the markers and don't want to try anything too precise but I've been able to get caught up a little. I'll do more while I watch election results since drinking won't be that fun and I'll need some distraction. Surely we have left the dominance of white supremacy culture behind. All of the young people I know have grown up knowing better and I have faith in them and in women who value our autonomy and are sure about that. 

But I live in a bubble and want to stay in it. I'm just accepting that I will be anxious and wishing and hoping for the best. Still expecting a lot of shenanigans, but also a definite statement that women matter and the whole concept of dominance is outdated and not the way to solve our problems.

Refreshing and Reframing

 It's hot. Day off, so I don't have to be productive, except I have so many things to do I still feel compelled. I didn't really get the house cooled off enough so being lazy might be the important task of the day. 

Market is different for me...I resigned as Secretary at the August Board meeting, so it has been about a month, and it's an interesting transition. Part of it is a grief process as I figure out new motivations and roles for myself after 15 years of making the Secretary role an essential one. The biggest part of that was then feeling responsible for all of what the organization did...I had the duty of care and loyalty to answer to and handled so many crises, including the near total loss of all of our systems and staff at the same time...fortunately we worked hard to recover as much of it as possible and rebuild, which was mostly successful. It was very difficult in so many ways. 

It was not a burden I could carry any longer, and as my performance at all the tasks slipped, I grew increasingly unhappy with my ability to stay on top of it all. Having the legacy project of the archives staring me in the face every day, I realized I had to prioritize getting that finished and out of my livingroom. I have to navigate my actual survival at this age. 

I'm doing well for 74 but the reality is that some things will get increasingly harder so I want to apply as much energy as I do have to the many tasks of finishing up a life. I have other archives besides Saturday Market, and all need to be organized and placed withe younger people or in places where they can reside. Of course I don't know who will want a lot of it, if anyone. So for the parts that are discernible, I need to move to get those in place. It gets overwhelming fast.

 I'm focusing mostly on what is outdoors and one thing was this wood rack that was the first thing I built when I deconstructed the back half of my house in the mid-1990s. Apparently I had no idea bout removable fasteners aka screws and this thing was full of giant nails. It had a lot of wonderful and heavy wood stored on it and listed toward my neighbor's fence as it sank into the mud. At some point I removed everything and put some concrete pads under the legs, but it was still leaning and there was a possum and raccoon sanctuary in there. I didn't really mind that, but it was ruining some of the wood and not helping with the leaning, so I decided to take off the top layers at least. 

As I worked on it I talked myself into removing the whole thing. I put up brackets in my shop to store the siding and other good boards and that turned into a lot of wood storage but my thinking is that now I can at least access it, it will stay usable, and I have an opportunity to use the wood before I have to get rid of it. I'm scheming on a potting shed type of extension and a couple of other projects so I can give the boards one more life, but I'm also trying to be realistic.

I'm not great at getting rid of things. It's getting easier, but I like to use things up and I do get attached to the possibilities of them. I have a few piles accumulating to recycle, and I will need to complete those processes before the weather really turns, but I keep putting off the actual driving to the places with the stuff. I'll get there. It's supposed to rain Wednesday so that's a motivator. So today I should get out there and keep at it. I did manage to knock the rack mostly apart on Friday before it got way too hot. There are still a lot of pesky nails and pieces of wood to deal with. The shredding tarp was too big to get into the garbage so that will take a little longer. I cut a piece of it off but I only get picked up every other week, though I am patient. Probably I need to work harder on getting over paying people to do things like take a load to the dump. I know it would be worth it. And now this rack is a thing of the past. I will dig up the photo of me so proud of building it at the beginning of my project so many years ago. I'm glad I remembered to take a photo.

As far as Market goes, I made myself skip the Board meeting despite the draw toward at least listening in...I just have to work on that gradually to disengage myself from feeling like I have to do things as a volunteer or it will all disintegrate. It won't. People are stepping up, and many other people have the knowledge and will to cover what I was doing, so it's some getting over myself and some allowing things to happen in different ways than I would do them. Attachments. 

I was seeing my influence diminish and was having mixed feelings for a long time as I released things and released myself from caring so much. Some areas are easier than others...it's like the training I have had to do to not get involved in people with cars as they use them to load and unload...it's not about me. It's not important that my opinion about it is heard. 

The whole process of letting go is what this part of my life is going to be about. Every aspect of that is hard but just takes practice. I can get good at it just like I have gotten good at holding on. I can put that caring into the archive project instead of putting as much into the living market with it's daily and weekly wrinkles. I'm questioning what my motivation will be...it has gotten really hard on Saturday mornings to just get going. It doesn't help that my anxious cat likes to wake me up at 4 so I don't get enough sleep. It doesn't help that August sales have slumped but that just helps me feel more connected to members who don't sell as well as I am accustomed to doing. As I remind myself, the successful times come and go. The persistence pays off, but only if it comes with flexibility. I don't really have a choice, anyway...it's my income and I need it as long as it is available to me. 

Yesterday I had the kind of experience that makes the big difference...my neighbor was this young man who made cookware and shared my love of so many aspects of crafting. It was his first day and he had sold other places so really could see the ways Market shines far above a lot of other selling opportunities. We love history, wood, creative solutions, having a lot of skills...it was such a pleasure to meet him and tell him a few of my stories. He said such kind things at the end of the day. I was reminded of my value that had slipped in my own estimation as I grew less committed to holding everything to my high standards. I hope I can remind myself every Saturday that you just do not know what the day will bring and you don't really want to miss it...there's going to be something. And if there isn't, you will create it.

The Beginning of August

 I stopped writing in the spring, and not because I had no thoughts...I didn't feel safe expressing myself. Looking back, not a lot has changed, but this week I resigned the position of Secretary of Saturday Market. My reasons were personal...call it burnout. 

I'd been considering it a long time...I remember back in 2017 or so saying I would serve for one more year. I never found a time without a crisis to handle. I felt needed and wanted to get more things in place before I left volunteering...and I go back to about 2009 in this position, before Beth resigned herself.

I wouldn't say this is a time with no crises, but I just find myself unable to pitch in anymore. It is not a particular issue or situation, so don't speculate about it. I have just served long enough. The longer I sat on that decision the more hypocritical I felt, so I just did it with little notice at the Board meeting. 

The relief is amazing. I immediately realized I could write here again, and express my opinions again, without feeling some breach of the duties of loyalty and obedience and care that an officer is bound by. I don't anticipate any rabble-rousing or anything. I deeply need a rest.

The amount of time freed up will be instrumental in meeting my personal goals of this next phase of my life. I am 74. I have limited time left to finish the SM archiving project, deal with my other archives, and get my end-of-life plans in place. There is a lot of property maintenance to do. I have legal things to get into place, medical things, transitions to plan for. 

I have people to treasure before they too transition out of reach. I have books to write, and so many books to read. I have many possessions to shed and projects in progress. If I get extra time, I can learn to relax better. I can simply focus on my own priorities instead of always putting Market first.

It's an immense change and I am experiencing some grief processing as well, of course. I'll just be a member, and of course still plan to support my fellow members in their work. I don't want to undermine anyone else's efforts. I just want to be out of the pivotal position I was in, even though it means not being as "in the know" as I was. I expect I will shed my need to know. 

I've enjoyed not having a vote, trying to stay in a more or less neutral position, but I was beginning to struggle with how to disagree again. I had been there before. I didn't like the dissonance and am glad to be free of it. I have always had honesty as my number one value and I need to feel free to speak honestly without feeling disloyal to anyone. I gave up trying to find someone to take my place and decided that was my own control issue and I could let that pass. People will feel more free to take on the jobs when my oversight and modeling is gone from it...they can do it the way they envision it.

I do wish the other leaders the best. I felt bad that I couldn't let them know more in advance but I don't know how well it would have worked to try to transition out. Seems cleaner and more supportive to just step away and let the important tasks rise to the top and be taken on by the many capable people within the membership. No one has to worry about my scrutiny or my high standards or my historical concepts of how things should work. 

It feels like a bit of an adventure now. Tonight is the Slug Queen Coronation which is just a ridiculous thing to participate in and it may relieve me of my seriousness for a bit. August is the perfect time to have more time to myself...I love summer and plan to enjoy it very much. 

Of course I still plan to sell every week as I still need an income and I'm not planning to retire from working...just from working for free. I may get lazier...we'll find out.

Current thoughts, last May

Wrote this last May, but apparently did not feel okay to publish it. 

 

I'm getting so few readers now that I feel much more free to speak my mind...without feeling like I will get in trouble of get someone else in trouble. Just the concept of getting in trouble shows me my normal world has changed. Normally, I don't feel like there is a higher authority that can cause trouble for me. When I was being actively bullied, they had a certain authority...I had to concern myself with whether or not things would get worse. They did come in here and take sections out to share in the hopes of getting me in trouble...but of course, it's a blog, and I'm free to say whatever I want. So it isn't really governed by any codes of conduct of organizations, or similar, as it's not being done under the auspices of said organizations. But still, that level of scrutiny was daunting and I admit it shut me down more than once. 

 I'm still observing the changes brought by authoritarian attitudes and wondering how to counter them. I did successfully articulate in one situation that the word "consequences" is needlessly parental and has negative connotations that don't promote good dialogue and understanding. I stuck to just a few points in that particular situation to keep a balance and not take the stance of a defender or proponent of any specific solution, trying to hold space for discussion and the exchange of group process. I think it helped craft a little more ease in the way forward, but I am chafing at even being in the situation caused by people's need to control what is not necessarily theirs to control. They want perfect compliance with a somewhat strange set of rules, often ambiguous in wording, but with a lot of underlying assumptions that haven't made it to the status of group agreements...the group agreement stage was skipped.

The whole atmosphere of compliance makes me cringe. I guess that's because of the proximity of the patterns I learned about in my study of codependence and control/compliance relationships. I don't think of myself as controlling, and I don't like how much I am willing to comply, but I strive for neither extreme...I just want to have my time to work and decide for myself how I will spend it. That has meant much less close relationship to others...but I don't miss those interactions that used to confuse and trigger me. When I feel the pressure I retreat to my back deck and my journal and write it all out until I feel grounded again in my own life and my own ways of seeing it in the bigger context of all of the things I do.

I'm often caught unaware by things that have needed to be dealt with that I've overlooked. The chaos of the pandemic period caused a break in the logical sequence of policy-making in response or anticipation of the need for it. Now we seem to go months or years without having the time to revise, tune up or even realize policies are inadequate to the different landscape we are in. Some of the smooth operations of having an experienced team in place have gone by the wayside and although I'm not scrambling as much as I was for the last few years, I don't have the taste for it anymore. I want things to go smoothly with everyone doing their parts, and me not being right in the middle of it.

I want to give gentle lectures about how and why we used to do things, and what the underlying attitudes and assumptions were that led us to be that way. I usually resist, because that was then...perhaps there is a real need for more control now. Orgs are bigger, and the vision has expanded without any discussion of it. I haven't been involved in a discussion of vision or mission or that kind of emotional direction in years. I can't assume everyone's on the same page...we just aren't. It's like our dancing styles...I dance like I did in the 60s and 70s, and most of the people in my world weren't alive then. They dance like the 80s or 90s or whatever people dance like now. It's so different as to be beyond recognition as dancing sometimes. 

So to avoid being sidelined as out of touch, I tend to hold back and see if someone else speaks up first...see what other assumption landscapes emerge before I try to establish mine. Mine seems too trusting, too kind, too gentle for the current atmosphere. I mean, it's desperately emergency-based out there. Everything has the capacity to be extreme, intolerant, dangerous and threatening to the peace. It seems naive to expect to find peace.

Yet I keep trying. I spend time looking for words and phrases to defuse the threats and build trust. I speak up for language and the importance of what words bring with them and how they feel when used to correct, to manipulate, to judge. I spend a lot of time journaling and seldom feel safe to make a spontaneous statement or reaction. I have to carefully consider whether it will help or make things worse. I don't suppose this is anything new...probably people should often be doing that...but I find it taking more time than usual these days.

So I need this space to explore articulation by typing words...it forces me to order my thoughts and find a way out of my dilemmas.