Kindness Challenge Day 29

Day 29: Do a good deed to bring a smile to someone’s day

 

Today’s challenge is pretty vague so I’ll use this opportunity to tell a story. Winter 2015/2016 I heard both presidents at the coop were resigning. One in March and one would stay on until the end of the year. I watched for several months but no one stepped up. I told the staying until the end of the year president that I would take on the job if no one more qualified stepped forward. Realistically, I didn’t want to. But on the other hand, no board, means the coop doesn’t function and my special needs child, the one who does not adapt to change, he loves it there. He loves it so much he’ll try new classes there because he’s comfortable in the environment. I can’t lose that. She agreed I hadn’t really been at coop long enough (less than a year at that point).

Flash forward a few months. Want to guess what happened?

In April, 2016 A. and I are elected and essentially take over the board. Along the way we divide up the work as much as possible and have a dozen member board over that first summer to keep things as easy for everyone as possible.

Want to guess what happened?

Yeah by Fall the board had dwindled to almost nothing. And I was doing six jobs easily. A. was doing another 6. But we ran that way all last year. Hoping we were improving the culture and community at the coop enough that this year we could get more people to get involved and do what they said they would do.

I unhappily but fully devoted all the time the coop needed to it’s running. When I do something, I give it everything. There is little point in not doing a job right to me. But that also means when you break my “give a f**k” there is no turning back. I am done. I reached that point this fall and gave notice I would be resigning when the president came back from maternity leave.

I started looking for people to take over portions of my job, specifically. Like “you spend all your time here on your laptop, can you take over the website?” That sort of volun-telling. And I eventually got people on board. In fact, almost all of my jobs have been off loaded to other people, just in time for my replacement to come in.

Why the hell am I nicer to others than to myself? ROFL.

Anyway I told the new vp all the things I offloaded. It made her day. Possibly her week. LOL