How I am NOT like Rabbit

It was a Captainish sort of day, when everybody said, "Yes, Rabbit " and "No, Rabbit," and waited until he had told them. 

                                                          --From The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne

I didn't delegate enough with the 27+-family-garage sale, it turns out, now that I know what's involved. But I did delegate sign-making, and that was was extremely helpful, but also very hard for me. My friend L, who runs her own business and has a very different personality than me, told me, "People like to be told what to do." Which is think is probably true, but, still, I had some concerns.

I asked three people via email to take charge of the signs. One, whom I had never met, had said when she signed up for the sale that she had some signs from a friend's sale we could use. We had a productive exchange about signs in which I tried to subtly suggest she might be a good person to help work on signs. The other two I had met, but one, when volunteering to help with the signs, made it clear that although she wanted to help, she lacked all confidence in her artistic ability, and so might be best at putting them up. The third is a working mom who spends a ton of time and energy on her kids and her local extended family. She offered to help, though, and she is just the kind of clear, direct, and just person you want to work with, so I took her up on it.

I finally decided to ask them if they would form a team and take over the sign project, even though I didn't know if any of them knew each other. So I sent the email, and then left town for a few days. And this is what I did while I was away:

• I worried that they were mad that I was being so bossy.
• I worried that they were thinking I should have just done the signs myself.
• I worried that they had not all gotten in contact with each other. 
• I worried that they had gotten in contact with each other, but were all angry at each other and not getting along.
• I worried there would be no signs/few signs/small signs/etc. when I got back.
• I wondered if I should email to check up on them and how I would do that without sounding even bossier.

I should say that none of these concerns had anything to do with the particular people involved. My concerns came entirely from my own fear of putting myself out there.

Of course, you know what happened. I came back from my trip to find lovely, giant, clear, durable signs at key points around the neighborhood, and immediately I started receiving compliments on them, which I happily passed on to the awesome sign team. As much as I hated asking them to do it, I was thrilled to be able to tell them what a great job everyone thought they were doing.

Your Fearful Leader

I like to tell my kids the thing about how being brave doesn't mean that you're not afraid of something. Being brave is about being scared...but doing the thing anyway.

Things are progressing with the neighborhood group and the associated neighborhood garage sale. I and a few helpers put about 250 flyers into and onto and around mailboxes last week, telling everyone about both the group and the sale. The group is now up to almost 25 members (hey! that's, like, 10%!) and I think 16 people have signed up to participate in the sale, and it sounds like more are planning to, but haven't signed up yet. Which is all really exciting!

Passing out flyers was a little wonderful and a little horrible. The weather, most of the times we were out, was gorgeous. When I was with my gregarious friend, L, she talked to everyone who was out in their yards and met new people and got people excited about the group and the sale. When it was just me or me and Dr. Jay, we would nudge each other, "Hey, go talk to that person!" "No, you go talk to them."

I worried that the flyers would blow away and everyone would be mad at me for messing up the neighborhood. I worried that the mail carrier would give us a ticket for putting things in mailboxes. I worried that people would think I was selling something. I imagined that people would think I was a young hippie mom, dragging my kids around to get paid a few dollars by some stupid company  trying to sell them something they didn't want. I imagined that a lot. (Not that I have anything against young hippie moms. I just have a terror of being misunderstood or misread or misjudged. Which is a story for another post...maybe.)

But I got through, and at the end, I felt like I knew the neighborhood better, even the parts I never go to because they're not on my way anywhere. And the few people I talked to were very nice. And then people started signing up, little by little.

In A Short History of Nearly Everything, one of my absolute favorite books, which I keep listening to over and over on audiobook, Bill Bryson talks about Max Planck, and how he learned, after doing much work on entropy, that someone else had already done the same work but published it in an obscure source. After describing this, the next paragraph starts: "Undaunted--well, perhaps mildly daunted--Planck turned to other matters."

I have been daunted by this neighborhood group project. But I have to remember that many people eventually succeed with something, despite being daunted along the way. But they keep going, and then, someday, someone looks back and says they continued, undaunted.

Generosity of Spirit

I have been going on and on about how my skin is so thin, I take everything personally, wah, it's so hard for me to put myself out there, my feelings are hurt, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I am on a committee at the kids' school to put on a fundraiser that includes a silent auction, so we need to find donations, and encourage people to attend, etc. There's another mom on the committee, who, like me, is showing up and trying to be helpful, despite maybe not having fundraising so much in her blood. She is a professor at the university near here, and came up with an idea that all the profs who are parents at the school (about 20 of them) could go in together on an ad for the program. They could all meet to have their picture taken somewhere on campus, and it would only be about $10/family, and that would give a bunch of people a fairly easy way to contribute and maybe help faculty parents meet each other and feel some connection. Sounds like my kind of idea.

So she sends out an email to twenty faculty. Ten respond and say they are interested; one responds and says he or she is not. So she sends out another email, to coordinate the next step of scheduling the photo, and only four of the ten respond. So now she's in a position of a picture of 5 people in the program, not really representative of anything, and the price has now gone up from $10 per family to $40 per family, and so she's going to have to email those four people, tell them this, and see if the still want to do it. She was very surprised and disappointed, and, I think, pretty hurt that she was trying to do something thoughtful and helpful and got so little response, when what she was suggesting would have involved so little investment from the people involved.

As she was talking about this, I just kept thinking, "I know how you feel! That's just how I feel about the neighborhood group!" But before I could begin to commiserate, Madge spoke up.

Madge is the development person at the school. It is her job to ask for money and donations and to get other people to do the same. When Madge addresses a group, she tells jokes, she warms up the crowd, she never uses notes, she is funny and engaging and gets her point across at the same time. And this is what she said: "Aw, that's frustrating. But I really believe that people are well-intentioned. We all let things slide, but it's not because we mean to. Except for a few actual duds out there, people mean well and want to help, but sometimes they just don't. For whatever reason, it just doesn't happen. They'll probably come up to you at the event, holding the program, and ask you if it's too late to participate!"

Later, there was discussion of a particular parent who had volunteered to help with something, but was basically MIA. Madge said, absolutely good-naturedly, "Yeah, every year she says she wants to help, but she just doesn't end up doing anything. And some people are just like that. And you just ask every year, and, who knows? Maybe this year is the year they'll do something."

She didn't take it personally. She didn't get angry. She just keeps trying things, sees what works, tries to put her energy toward the things that have the greatest return, but she never stops casting the net, seeing who wants to help or give, who will actually come through. And when I said that I was happy to streamline spreadsheets of contacts and send out letters, but that I didn't want to call anyone on the phone or visit any businesses to ask for donations, she didn't bat an eye. She is infinitely generous in her evaluation of other people's comfort zones, abilities, self-perceived abilites and limitations, forgetfulness, and general failure to do what they said they wanted or were going to do.

And generosity, you know, is maybe the number one thing that I think creates abundance. I mean, isn't it interesting that the same people who are uncomfortable putting themselves out there are often the same people who are quick to judge other people's non-action or neutral suggestion to be criticism? If I were more generous in my reading of others' actions, would I be in an atmosphere of abundance of spirit, where I would be less likely to assume other people are judging me harshly? Is this paucity of spirit a vicious circle that feeds on itself? And would more generosity of spirit lead to an abundance of spirit in my life, where maybe I would not see well-intentioned suggestions as angry criticism?