Volunteering

...can be hell.

I am Group Commissioner for the scout group my kids and husband belong to. I did it because they needed someone and because my family is all involved, and because really how hard can it be?

Add in all the meetings they expect me to attend an hour away...okay. The training they want me to do - including next weekend, traditionally my Christmas planning weekend with the family...I guess so. And a bunch of regulations that should be simple, but somehow never are when they involve getting information from ten different people, all of whom are also volunteers...well, it's all part of the job.

It's not unexpected, and these things are none of them deal breakers.

But...but...but...there are days - today being one of them - where I wonder what I could have been thinking.

Managing hurt feelings and "he said, she said" types of circular arguments are bad enough when you get paid to do it in a job. I really don't feel like dealing with any of it right now. I have classes to plan, final essays to mark, marks to calculate, books to read and edit, and Christmas to organize.

So I did what any sane person would do. I closed my email, put on Christmas music and the girls and I made Part II of our Gingerbread Sleigh project, cutting out the sleigh and reindeer and Santa. (Stay tuned for pictures once we finish.)

And then I blogged about my frustration. Amazing how calming that is! (What you wouldn't know if I didn't tell you is that I wrote and then erased the first draft of this blog and then wrote this much more moderate, much less irate version. A sure sign of maturity (and also why I am kind of glad Facebook and blogging weren't around when I was in my early 20's when I would have burned bridges without thinking twice, lol).