analysis of current state of mind
Dec. 4th, 2003 12:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memevectorI'm in a kind of fidgety mood. Over the last few months I've put a load of effort into a project (music workshop design & some co-leading, for money) and now I'm not sure if I can be bothered with it any more. The money was the initial attraction (I had noticed not too long ago that I am ridiculously skint for someone of my skills) and it's also been genuinely very interesting at times, but also way more frustration than I'd expected.
The frustration is mainly in two categories. One is that I'm more used to designing workshops for me to lead. For one thing, that's much less work to set up - I've had to put huge amounts (in comparison) of effort this time into spelling out "when you do this bit, the key things to mention are x, y, z" or "the idea is they all do this and while they're doing it we do that". But the really key thing is that when I design things for me to lead, I don't have to convince anyone else that some exercise or structure works - I can just try it out, and tweak it or ditch it if it doesn't. Whereas with this, I've got a chorus of "Can't we do it this way instead", or "I liked it the old way" or "Why have you put this bit in?" etc.etc.
Now that chorus of resistance can be divided into two parts: some of it will lead to improvements, and some of it won't. But you don't necessarily know which at first, and it usually comes all mixed up together. Some of what we've changed as a result of those discussions is really good - better than I could have designed on my own. It's great when that happens. The frustration is partly about the ratio (amount of slogging away in disagreement in order to get to the useful bits) and partly about a couple of conversations where it seemed like the other person was oblivious to (a) I do know something about workshop design (b) if I put something in there it was for a reason (c) they might not be right!
The other frustration is about crappy logistics causing me stress.
I can't claim to be on the mountaintop of moral high ground when it comes to "realisticness about time". Oh no indeed :-) But I've been playing and organising gigs & concerts for years and years, and by now I do have some pretty realistic calibration for how long it takes to set up for an event, and what kinds of things you need to prepare and plan before the day to give yourself an easy life and be in a good space for the actual event. Some people have not learned this :-)
The trouble is that once I've got involved in something at all - whether or not "the buck [technically] stops here", I am very bad at standing back and letting it be crap. This is a skill which I really could do with developing! I think one of the hardest places to do that is when you know that (whether or not it was your fault) you will be at the pointy end when things don't work. So when someone else is being disorganised in a way that will affect me, there's a sort of osmotic energy suck effect from me into their chaos. And so far, the only way I know to not have that happen is to not be around their chaos.
So those are my two areas of frustration. And they both come under a general heading of "is this a good use of my energy?". I did quite a lot of thinking a lot earlier in the year about that - I alluded to it in my "leverage" post: "is this a structure that's set up to use me well and apply my energy to the moving bit, or is half my energy going to be dissipated into the structure?"
What's probably more fundamental is that having had the fun of the learning curve of doing it the first couple of times, I'm getting this nagging vibe like: This isn't it. Even if it were going really well, it's not really it. It doesn't make enough difference in the world. It feels like my energy has more important places to go.
Mind you, it's still better than some of the things I could squander my energy on, because at least I'm getting paid. Which saves me having to do other tedious things to save money or make money.
Plus, it might "lead on to better things" - which was also a factor in the initial attraction. Which is always a tricky call, because lots of things might lead on to better things, and it's like "which better things, and how soon?".
But it in itself is not what I really want.
Hmm yeah I think that about sums it up, for now at any rate :-)
The frustration is mainly in two categories. One is that I'm more used to designing workshops for me to lead. For one thing, that's much less work to set up - I've had to put huge amounts (in comparison) of effort this time into spelling out "when you do this bit, the key things to mention are x, y, z" or "the idea is they all do this and while they're doing it we do that". But the really key thing is that when I design things for me to lead, I don't have to convince anyone else that some exercise or structure works - I can just try it out, and tweak it or ditch it if it doesn't. Whereas with this, I've got a chorus of "Can't we do it this way instead", or "I liked it the old way" or "Why have you put this bit in?" etc.etc.
Now that chorus of resistance can be divided into two parts: some of it will lead to improvements, and some of it won't. But you don't necessarily know which at first, and it usually comes all mixed up together. Some of what we've changed as a result of those discussions is really good - better than I could have designed on my own. It's great when that happens. The frustration is partly about the ratio (amount of slogging away in disagreement in order to get to the useful bits) and partly about a couple of conversations where it seemed like the other person was oblivious to (a) I do know something about workshop design (b) if I put something in there it was for a reason (c) they might not be right!
The other frustration is about crappy logistics causing me stress.
I can't claim to be on the mountaintop of moral high ground when it comes to "realisticness about time". Oh no indeed :-) But I've been playing and organising gigs & concerts for years and years, and by now I do have some pretty realistic calibration for how long it takes to set up for an event, and what kinds of things you need to prepare and plan before the day to give yourself an easy life and be in a good space for the actual event. Some people have not learned this :-)
The trouble is that once I've got involved in something at all - whether or not "the buck [technically] stops here", I am very bad at standing back and letting it be crap. This is a skill which I really could do with developing! I think one of the hardest places to do that is when you know that (whether or not it was your fault) you will be at the pointy end when things don't work. So when someone else is being disorganised in a way that will affect me, there's a sort of osmotic energy suck effect from me into their chaos. And so far, the only way I know to not have that happen is to not be around their chaos.
So those are my two areas of frustration. And they both come under a general heading of "is this a good use of my energy?". I did quite a lot of thinking a lot earlier in the year about that - I alluded to it in my "leverage" post: "is this a structure that's set up to use me well and apply my energy to the moving bit, or is half my energy going to be dissipated into the structure?"
What's probably more fundamental is that having had the fun of the learning curve of doing it the first couple of times, I'm getting this nagging vibe like: This isn't it. Even if it were going really well, it's not really it. It doesn't make enough difference in the world. It feels like my energy has more important places to go.
Mind you, it's still better than some of the things I could squander my energy on, because at least I'm getting paid. Which saves me having to do other tedious things to save money or make money.
Plus, it might "lead on to better things" - which was also a factor in the initial attraction. Which is always a tricky call, because lots of things might lead on to better things, and it's like "which better things, and how soon?".
But it in itself is not what I really want.
Hmm yeah I think that about sums it up, for now at any rate :-)
