Okay. So I’m on the committee that helps to put together a bluegrass music festival in my hometown every year. I find it strange that I’m even on this committee, considering I’m not conversant in bluegrass, though I’m acquainted with the genre. But it’s a position left over from the days when I worked with our local tourism office, that I was volunteered for the committee and elected to stay aboard after my stint with tourism ended.
Recently I was approached to chair the subcommittee of which I am a member, since the subcommittee chair and her immediate boss were both declining to do the work this year.
To which I said, oh hell no.
That I am the logical choice to become the chair, I don’t dispute, considering the choice to be made from the other members of the subcommittee — five people — the two who are declining to do it, two “youngsters” (one who is pregnant and going on maternity leave, one who is sweet and shy), and me. Me. Me, who is arguably older and wiser and less likely to take any shit from someone.
Two things are stopping me dead in my tracks. One is that the two who are declining to do anything this year will be back in full force next year, so that would be awkward. The other is I am afraid that if I were to take on the chair, it would become my job for life.
No good deed goes unpunished, folks.
But in frantic and panicked emails flying back and forth between me and the two younger members of the committee, it became very clear to me that someone was going to have to step up and put an end to the bullshit. As someone who is a bit removed from the situation (being that I do not work with the tourism office and therefore it does not affect my bottom line), I gave it some thought and told the other two that indeed, the show must go on. Leave out the players in the drama that’s unfolding and focus, quietly and covertly, on getting the subcommittee’s job done.
Which, of course, makes me the de facto chair.
~sigh~
We’ll get it done.
– Mox
