gathering together

Suddenly it is starting feel like there is light at the end of the tunnel, or at least we're approaching the end of one lot of to do lists anyway as Summer Gathering draws closer. Of course there's another long list of things to do once it starts, or even the day before it; but gradually the empty boxes on timetables are filling up with sessions, facilitators and helpers, negotiations over 10 minutes to get the children from their homegroup chores to their sign in session have been had and the poor guy at the Postshop finally managed to add me on a as a signatory to the bank account despite the system repeatedly crashing on him!

At times it has felt like there have been a very small handful of us holding the planning of this event together and burn-out has hovered on the horizon. It reminded me very much of WGYF, and the sinking feeling that we had at one point where the number of people who were turning up for meetings seemed to be dwindling fast and it felt like more and more was being done by fewer and fewer.

However then, as well as now, we weren't really alone - there were others getting their heads around sessions if not dealing with the frontline logistics. Remembering how it had felt and how in the end everything fell into place one way or another at WGYF has been a huge help, and having Fran here involved with the planning who had been part of that too and could vouch for it meant I didn't feel like I was being completely naive to suggest that it would come together if it was meant to. Not everything went as originally planned at WGYF and I'm pretty sure a few things at SG will bear little resemblance to our original thinking but I've got faith that it'll work out somehow.

A lesson I found hard to learn years ago is if you need help ask for it, don't feel like you have to do everything yourself. I started off yesterday looking at the timetable for the sessions I'm responsible for... far too many of them still had 'Anna' written in as running them as I'd yet to get help organised. I'm still not that great at asking for help but at least now I know I have to do it and that it's far better to spread the load in terms of my own sanity and others learning experience. The boxes look somewhat better now - my name still appears a few times too often but it's not on it's own... it's coming together, we've asked for help and so far we've got it.