The Hard

Exercise Please?

I didn’t bike to work on Wednesday or Thursday, and felt gross because of it. Brain fuzzy, can’t think straight, gross.

Nique needs to exercise consistently. Sewiously.

Not Enough Time

I want more time. I want energy to use said time. I don’t want to give up things I love doing. Can’t I have my cake and eat it too?

The Promise Breaking

I promised myself I’d get up with the kitty and either read (if the weather was nice) or use the exercise bike (if the weather was crummy). This didn’t happen. If the weather is nice I still bike to work, but getting up with the cat is hard. Especially when Rorschach decides that 4AM is a good time to start caterwauling. Rawr.

Maybe I need to face the fact that 8 hours of sleep is what I need. Getting up at 7 isn’t so bad…

Maybe I need to find some other time to exercise. Or something.

Also didn’t do as much writing as I would have liked to. (And I did want to do writing.)

Guilt Guilt Guilt

Not keeping promises to myself brings on the guilt.

Unfortunately while guilt will get me to sit on the bike or open the journal, it won’t make me want to exercise or want to write. Bleh.

The Good

Books!

Finished World Without End. Started Voluntary Simplicity. WWE was very good. I’m kinda sad it’s over. Voluntary Simplicity is looking like it’s going to be good too.

Finishing books is definitely a good thing. It makes me feel like I can accomplish something.

Meetings can be useful

I run a weekly progress meeting for one of my projects at work. Normally when I hear about meetings it’s about how long they are and how they take away from actual productive time. These meetings are different.

For one thing these meetings are short. This last one was 15 minutes? Maybe?

For another stuff gets done in the 10 – 20 minutes before the meeting. On both sides. No one likes to hear that they’re part isn’t done.

Happiness.

Crêpes at the Farmer’s Market

On Wednesday Aaron and I went to the Farmer’s Market on our way to work, and in one of the stalls was a crêpe stand. Very unexpected. Very tasty. I would have them again, though not every week.

It was nice to do something spontaneous and not feel guilty about it afterward.

Improving at Recorder

On Wednesday evenings I’ve been spending some time honing my music skills. Recorder has been my primary instrument for about 4 years now, so unsurprisingly I’ve been using some of that time to focus on it.

I’m happy to say that improvement is being made. I’m able to play more of the notes the recorder is capable of and I’ve discovered that the alto is better suited for many pieces I have until now usually played on the soprano.

I’m really glad I decided to block out one evening a week for practice.

The Learning

I feel terrible if I don’t exercise

*Writes note to self.*

Breathing is Good

Yep.

My Self-Worth is tied up in silly things

Like how productive I am and how well I keep promises to myself.

I need to remind myself that me not keeping promises to myself doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. It means something’s misaligned.

I need to remind myself to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The Wedding Party (Click for full size)

Aaron and I are the ones in the center in case you couldn’t guess. I made my dress and the dresses for the two ladies on the left. And by made I mean I could have done just about all of it myself, but due to time constraints I sought out a lot of help from my friends.

Not sure I’d make the same decisions if I were doing it all over again. On the one hand I’m happy that the dresses were pretty historically accurate and they turned out well. On the other hand it was a hell of a lot of work for people who don’t do reenactment. Chances are I would have made mine myself and then either ordered the rest from a Renaissance festival clothing website or made them a lot simpler. Such is life. I hadn’t intended to do more than mine in the first place and then things happened and I ended up making them. :-/

So, things I learned.

Our Community is Pretty Awesome

I have a great group of friends that really came through for us for our event. I think the only people involved with the wedding that we didn’t know intimately were the caterer (who just supplied the food; no staff) and the site person. Everything else was done by someone I’m either on a first name basis with or is family.

I’d talked a while back about how modern secular weddings are missing something, and I realized something about my wedding. It may not have had the religious aspect, but we definitely tapped into an old tradition… the tradition of everyone in the village working together to make the wedding day(s) happen. That was really special. And happy.

Sometime in the coming weeks we’re going to have a Thank You party for everyone who helped out with the wedding. There’s a pretty good chance Aaron and I will get weepy at that.

Detachment? Have I talked about that here?

Detachment is a pretty good policy in general, but it’s especially important in anything where your friends are helping you out with stuff. It’s one thing to yell at a stranger because something they did didn’t meet your expectations… you’re not going to hang out with them after the contract is up. With friends, you really shouldn’t yell at them for not helping you the way you want them to. For one thing it’s mean to yell at anyone. For another, they’re helping you! Yelling at someone for volunteering their time does not win you anything except grief. Plus, chances are whatever your vision was wasn’t that important anyway.

Also it’s hard to have a complete vision of everything. Better to give people the space to be creative. The more detached you are from your vision, the more surprised and happy you’ll be by what you end up with. For instance, I had no idea what I wanted from the flowers. Giving my friend the freedom to do what she wanted meant I got pleasantly surprised and I didn’t have to spend time explaining what I wanted.

So yeah, yay detatchment!

I like running events

Not that I was actually running this one. We had people on site in charge of making sure things got done, but I think I’d like being in charge of such things too. We’re thinking of having an anniversary dinner dance next year with more dancing a fewer funny costumes. Methinks that’d be a lot of fun, and a lot less work to plan.

It’s nice to be officially married

Aaron and I signed the papers in September, but we didn’t publicly change our status until after the June wedding. We’d been in limbo for 3/4 of a year and by the end it was really annoying. We didn’t know how to introduce ourselves to new people. We didn’t know whether or not we should let people know we signed the papers. Etc. It was weird. I have more thoughts on this that deserve their own post. Suffice it to say, I’m happy to be able to call Aaron my husband now.

I like kayaking

We went kayaking on our honeymoon. I could see myself doing more of that. There’s a club in Ann Arbor I might join. I’m wary because I already have a busy schedule, but I’ve been feeling like my “likes being in nature” side doesn’t get enough attention.

Will probably keep doing one of those things I’d thought about quitting

In the last check-in I’d said I was planning to give up some positions I have. I’ve decided to hold off on doing that for one of them. I’m excited about where that one is going and the person I had in mind for the job I think won’t be that interested in the new direction.

Still a few more wedding thoughts

I have about three posts in my heading related to our wedding and marriage in general. Hopefully after that I’ll be done with this topic.

That’s about it for me right now.

Self-Consciousness

When it comes to this blog I’m incredibly self-conscious. I feel like a fraud. I have a hard time telling people what I write about and feel like I need to defend why I want to write what I write. I need to get over this. The best way to do that is write about stuff I know. So that is what I will do… after the wedding.

Plans

After the wedding this blog will be my top priority. (After usual things like keeping up my current job, keeping my relationships afloat, not letting the house deteriorate too much… etc.) Basically Wedding Crapé will be replaced by Blogging Crapé.

Second to this will be music stuff. Specifically recording an album of Italian Renaissance dance music with Aaron and various other musicians from around these parts.

Third is artsy stuff like sewing myself a new Medieval dress or two for Pennsic. (I’m tired of all the unflattering cotton stuff I have, and my new Tudor Wedding Garb is too nice for camping.) Also I’d like to experiment with making period jewelry and kids clothes to sell. And maybe putting pockets in my skirts.

I will keep this order of precedence in mind.

Letting Go

Methinks I need to let go of some commitments that are weighing me down right now and will weigh me down even more if I try to pursue my already mentioned plans. At the moment, I’m holding on… doing the minimum… but I’m not growing as a leader and the people I’m supposed to be leading are suffering for it. Also I see people who would do a much better job in my place. I shouldn’t stop them from shining.

But it’s hard. I feel guilty for not wanting to grow into these positions. I had dreams for myself and they no longer fit. At the same time I know that feeling guilty about not fulfilling past dreams is silly. It doesn’t make me do what I need to do to be the right person for the job. It just makes me feel bad.

Also, it’s not like I can’t go back to these positions later. I could definitely see myself doing that at some point.

Spending to Earn

I’m thinking about spending money on this Blogging project of mine. I want a better design for the site and I have someone in mind to do it. But that will cost $$. I’ve also been looking for a community to help me get over my business/blogging related mental-blocks. I think I’ve found one that would be a good fit for me, but it costs $$. My hyper-sensitive instinct says paying money for such “help” is a scam or something, but if I view it through the lens of “it’s a class” it’s not so bad.

The trick is I need to block out the time to actually make use of it. It’s not going to be something where I just show up and have everything done for me. I’m going to have to pay money and work. But I think in the end it’ll be worth the effort. I’ll about it for another few weeks before I make any serious commitments. Plus there’s a wait list so I may not even get in.

At this point I trust myself to keep going with this blogging thing. I’ve been doing it for over a year and a half. I’d still really like doing it and want to improve at it. It’s worth throwing money at. Also throwing money at anything not related to music is a big mental block of mine so… yeah.

That’s about it for now. A week from Sunday is The Wedding. You can expect a Weekly Check-in next Friday. After that I’ll be on my honeymoon in Colorado. I’ll try to have some post ready for that Friday. It won’t be a check-in because… I won’t be there for the checking in. But it’ll be something.

Whee!

I Am Not a Multi-tasker.

I got a lot accomplished sewing wise this week, and a lot of that happened Monday evening when I didn’t have any distractions. (Well… aside from kitty.) When people came over to help with wedding stuff things got done… they just didn’t get done by me. I guess this means I need to block out periods of time for myself in order to make progress on things.

Weddings Are a Lot More Work Than They Appear To Be

There are two reasons for this:

1. Expectations: If you’re having a standard wedding people expect the service of a nice restaurant combined with a fun dance party. They expect things to run smoothly. They expect to never set foot in the kitchen. They expect their table to stay there the whole night.This isn’t too bad if you have the wedding at a hall where catering’s included. Sure the food is pricey and not that good, but you don’t have to worry about who’s going to pour the wine. We’re just getting food from the restaurant and in lieu of professional waitstaff we’re having some of our awesome friends help out with the service part. Not as simple as it sounds. There’s a lot that has to be thought out… especially since we want to let our friends have fun at the party too!Of course none of this would be so hard if it wasn’t for the fact that…
2. The Bride and Groom can’t be event stewards. We’re the guests of honor. That means we need to have someone else be in charge of making sure stuff happens when it needs to happen. If we could be in charge we probably wouldn’t have thought through as thoroughly what needs to be done… but we can’t afford to do that. All in all I think it’s a good thing, since this way we get to enjoy our party. It’s just a lot more work than I was expecting. I’ve thrown parties before… they didn’t require nearly as much prep as this. Granted I’ve thrown some where I ended up drained by the end too…

Methinks I’ll be glad to not have to think about wedding stuff in a few weeks. And we can return to more normal essays.

Wedding

Oh man, this has been eating my time and energy. (In case I haven’t mentioned it, the wedding’s on June 6th. Less than a month away!) Some of the energy/time eating’s been due to worry. Some of it’s been having to face uncomfortable (but good!) things like writing up vows. Some of it’s been guilt at not having personally made much progress on the gowns in a while. (My friends have been incredibly helpful, though.) Here’s what I’ve learned:

• I have great friends. Seriously. They’ve been so helpful and supportive… in an unconditional way. I don’t know how to thank them enough. I don’t know the right way to say thank you.
• I don’t have this money thing down. This has to do with the “I don’t know how to thank my friends”. Part of me thinks I should give a cash gift to thank certain friends that have been over-the-top helpful. Another part of me thinks any gift I could afford to give would be less than what their work is worth. It has to do with the “No one Pays for Thanksgiving Dinner” problem. I want to stay firmly in “social norms”, but I don’t know how to do that. I’m sure they’d be alright if I didn’t strictly give anything, but I still want to. I just don’t know.
• I’m better at being a manager than a producer and I feel uncomfortable about it. When I look back on the past few weeks I haven’t made that much. I’ve made my hat, and I’ve attempted to make the hats for my bridesmaids, and even on those hats I’ve gotten other people to do significant parts of them. Things have been getting done, but I feel weird that I’ve mostly been in the position of “tell others what to do” or “tell someone they’re on the right track” more than I’ve actually been producing.
• *Whispers* I kinda like being a manager. Ok, I said it. It feels good to be in power. And scary. And guilt-inducing. “Only bad people like power.” etc. etc. But things are getting done… I’m just not doing them. No one resents me at the moment (except perhaps some family… but that’s neither my problem nor related to this issue) so I must be doing something right.
• It’s a good idea to not expect your friends to do anything. One thing is ask people to help but not expect them to come through. If they do, I’m thrilled. If they don’t, that’s OK too. This way I totally avoid resentment. Not everyone’s in the same position to give, and that’s alright.
• It’s hard to apply this to my family. All of us have expectations. And resentment. It’s not pretty.

Good thing: I think this wedding is going to happen. Yay!

Guilt

I’ve been afflicted with guilt since… at least elementary school. I remember walking to the bus-stop, worrying and feeling guilty about not having worked on homework that was due in a few days. My hope was that I’d do the right thing in order to avoid the self-punishment. It’s almost never worked, but I feel like there has to be some sort of consequence for me when I don’t keep my promises. I’m starting to see that this reasoning is flawed, but it’s a long-ingrained habit.

Here’s a list of things I’ve learned/realized about my guilt problem:

• I’ve been doing this for a long time. See above.
• I don’t know what a life without guilt looks like. Do I go around breaking promises all the time? With no punishment, why should I be good?
• Hey! That sounds familiar! It’s the “Without the Church people would lose their sense of morality” argument. That’s clearly false. “Good requires Guilt” is probably also false, maybe even for the same reason.
• Still don’t know how to deal with me not keeping my promises. The best of I’ve come up with so far is to:
  1. Figure out why I broke it.
  2. If it’s because it’s something I don’t actually want to be doing, I forgive myself and move on.
  3. If it’s for some other reason I first apologize.
  4. Then I do whatever I can to fix it.

  So, in keeping with that. I’m sorry I didn’t update last Saturday’s post like I said I would. I’m not sure when I’ll get to it. Right now this blog is, sadly, not quite my top top priority. Aside from the obvious tops of Relationships and Work, Wedding comes first right now. Then Blog. Then everything else. I still want to edit that post because I want to improve my writing, but editing takes time and energy I have a hard time providing right now.

  Not sure how much I like this method for guilt-dealing mechanism.

So that’s my check-in for this week. Methinks this will be a good way for me to get in my “one post a week” minimum (and let you get to know me a bit better).

If someone’s vegetarian, chances are good I’ll think of them positively.

If someone doesn’t like reading for pleasure, chances are good I’ll think of them negatively.

And these are just surface characteristics. If they’re doing things I think are harmful like eating non-food items or spending more than they earn, I’ll not only judge them, but want to confront them about it.

This isn’t a malicious tendency. I’m aligned with Truth. I want others to be too.

But this tendency to judge and preach isn’t all that effective. It’s arrogant and self-centered instead of helpful.  Arrogant because I don’t know everything. Self-centered because what makes sense for me won’t necessarily make sense for everyone.

Here’s something that’s gotten me in trouble before. I love cooking, I believe it enriches my life, and I believe it is the best way to ensure that the food you pay for comes from good sources. I feel very strongly about this and think a lot of people would do well to start doing their own cooking. Just because I believe this, though, doesn’t mean that everyone can, will, or should learn to cook for themselves. It’s certainly possible to live a good, happy life without every developing cooking skills. I have to be open to the idea that the person I encounter falls in this category.

For the most part I’ve learned to deal with this tendency. If you think you fall into this trap too, here’s some advice.

First, start noticing when you start judging other people. You can’t stop a habit if you don’t realize when you do it.

Second, when you notice you’re doing it, Bite your tongue before saying something you might regret.

Third, channel your energy into understanding them rather than preaching. People like feeling they’re understood, and you’ll be better able to give advice if you’re asked.

Also, remember that there no one right way to live. If someone is happy with the way their life is going, be happy for them. If their happiness doesn’t make sense to you, all the more reason to look for understanding.

9 ) Sometimes People Need To Be Shut Up
No one likes sitting at a 3 hour meeting where the main topic ends up being “whether or not we should require everyone to wear nametags”. Also no one likes being at a meeting where one or two people have the floor and 98% of what they say is meaningless.

On the other hand, a meeting that moves from one topic to another in which everyone has a chance to speak, but not too much time, is great. Everyone feels productive. No one feels that someone’s monopolizing the floor. We want this kind of meeting but most meetings I’ve been to (and unfortunately quite a few I’ve presided over) have been like the first type.

The main reason why my meetings tended to cater to the longwinded was that I’ve had the belief that interrupting someone is the GREATEST SIN EVAR. This is bad and makes all of the succinct people irritated. If this is a problem for you, here are a few simple solutions (some of which I’ve even tried!).

• Send out an agenda ahead of time and ask the longwinded people to send you a summary of their thoughts before the meeting.
• Limit the responses of everyone. Use a timer. This is kind of harsh for the 98% of people at your meetings who don’t have this problem, though.
• When you’re notice someone’s taking a while to get to the point, interrupt and ask them to get to the point, or interrupt and see if you can sum up for them. Ask if your summary is accurate in their eyes. The glory of this kind of interruption is that you aren’t really cutting them off. They still get to have their say, and even more than that they know they’ve been understood.

10 ) Calmness Trumps Defensiveness Every Time
If you get emotional at your meeting, you lose. If you freak out and have a tantrum… you lose. Calmness about your rightness is important. People will respect you more.

11 ) Sometimes People Just Want To Be Told What To Do
Compulsory democracy isn’t necessarily a good thing. The pace of choir practice is a lot slower when I try to get the choir to lead themselves. Not everyone has the time or inclination to spend time pondering how to sing the music or how to pronounce the lyrics. Heck, a lot of the time I don’t really want to put in the extra time/effort either.

Encourage people to be proactive, but don’t force it. Don’t worry too much about being too totalitarianism. If you take it too far, people will let you know and forgive you for it if you fix it.

12 ) Fully Think Through Your Proposals
Going back to that major proposal I passed for Swing Ann Arbor, the fact that I thought everything through helped a lot with getting people on board. People trusted that it would succeed since I’d thought about just about everything.

Another thing I wanted to do was to change the tone of Swing Ann Arbor. I started going swing dancing in Ann Arbor, it was right after I got back from Austin. The Austin swing is (or at least was… I haven’t been there in years) incredibly friendly. I made lots of friends easily and was remembered by a few of the good dancers. It was a great experience. When I got to Ann Arbor, things felt different… and not in a good way. After months of going regularly people I danced with every week still didn’t remember my name… yeah… it just wasn’t that fun. As president I wanted to fix that.

Few people on the board agreed with me that there was a problem, though… and in my mind they were part of the problem. I had no idea how to convince them there was a problem, nor did I have any proposals for how to systematically fix it either. Also, any ideas I did have required more time than I was willing to give. Unsurprisingly, between my trying to cut corners and my inexperience I damaged some relationships. Alas. The main point here is if you don’t have a lot of clarity on an issue, you should be wary about attempting to deal with a problem directly, especially if you can’t convince people on your team that there’s a problem.

13 ) Pass Proposals That Take Sense for Your Group Where It Is Right Now
The SAA proposal to add more classes was a bit overambitious and didn’t fully address the issues the group was facing. I tried to arrange a track of advanced classes so that intermediate dancers, like myself, would still benefit from going to classes. What we really needed, though, was a strong base of dancers who were confident with the basics first. Unsurprisingly the classes that did that were the most successful. The intermediate / advanced classes… not so much.

14 ) Preparation is Rewarded
The days I’ve fully prepared for choir rehearsal have always been the best rehearsals. I’ve gotten a lot done. The choir’s learned a lot. Honestly, I’m amazed that I don’t prepare regularly given how much better things go when I’m prepared.

15) Preparation is Hard to Do
Preparation is kind of like exercise. While you’re doing it you sometimes feel good, and after you’ve done it you feel excellent. But it’s really hard to get up the willpower to do it in the first lace. Convincing myself to focus and figure out a day or two before rehearsal what I need or want to to do at the next rehearsal is not trivial.

Having compelling goals helps this. (Huh, who’d have though…) Having a lifestyle setup that supports this is also immensely helpful. If you and everyone in your household knows and respects that every Friday after work you spend an hour on preparing for rehearsal, it gets a lot easier to take the time to actually prepare. Funny that.

16 ) Leadership Takes Both More and Less Time Than I thought it did
In certain respects, leadership doesn’t take all that much time. With being SAA president I didn’t have to be at every weekly swing dance. I only had to organize the monthly meetings, preside over said meeting, and make sure all the administrative stuff with being a student group was taken care of. Really it wasn’t that much.

Similarly with choir, I only really need to figure out the day of what we’re going to sing, and then be there every week to facilitate the rehearsal.

MOAS, I have 4 reports a year I have to send in, and then I have to organize the weekly workshop, most of which are recurring ones anyway.

At the same time, if you want the group to flourish you will have an invisible weight on your shoulders all the time. You have to coordinate with your executive board. You have to prepare for choir practice. You have to encourage people to come to the weekly workshops. Writing emails can take a while. Doing publicity can take a while. And these are the kind of activities where it’s hare to measure how long they take. Some don’t actually take that long, but they can feel like they take a long time. Some zap your mental energy. (How do you quantify that drain?) In short, it’s complicated.

Do I think Leadership is Worth it?
Absolutely. When something I’ve worked on turns out well it feels immensely wonderful. Working with other people to create something big and cool is also great. It’s a great way to develop yourself and come face to face with your limitations. You meet a lot of people. You become a better person for it. (Hopefully) Really, I’d recommend leadership to anyone who wants a systematic way to improve themselves and the community around them.

1 ) Easiest Way to Make Connections
As a leader, you are visible to your group. People are more likely to remember your name. You’ll have to interact with others in order do complete your projects. Really, it’s a no brainer. As a leader you will meet people.

When I was president of SAA, I presided over meetings. That alone got people to recognize me. I also acted as a bridge between SAA and the other Ann Arbor swing group, so I interacted with the other group too. To this day, I’m still mostly remembered by the Ann Arbor swing people that were around during my tour of service even though I haven’t been dancing in months. More than that, I wouldn’t have any reservation about asking them to help me organize an event or something.

2 ) People who never talked to you before will all of a sudden take an interest in you
This is something that’s sort of distressed me, but seems to come with the territory. People who wouldn’t give you the time of day when you weren’t in a position of power — even if you were an active member before — will now remember your name and talk to you. This happened both as SAA president and as MOAS. If you’re anything like me, you’ll wonder how to treat these people. Is it that they’re attracted to power or something?

I struggled with this for a while until I realized something: Unless you’re in a leadership position you personally aren’t vital to the functioning of the group. You aren’t someone that a general member of the group ought to know. There’s only so much time and energy in your life, it’s best to spend it on important people (and people who you likely to like). A leader qualifies as an important person. I don’t totally agree with this philosophy, but I can understand it… and may even unconsciously act on it too. So, yeah, just because someone gives you the time of day primarily because you’re a leader doesn’t necessarily make them bad people.

3 ) Service is King
People will love you and want to work with you if you do service. With the MOAS position I volunteered to take care of room scheduling and that’s done a lot to endear the other leaders to me. Same thing with being choir director. The more you give, the more get. The important thing here is not to do service with the expectation that you’re going to get anything out of it other than the joy of seeing something work well. People will sense your ulterior motives and won’t like you all that much.

4 ) Detaching Yourself from Your Ideas is a good thing
I mentioned this in my last post on detachment. Basically if you want to get a proposal passed you have to be detached from most of the details. For example, in SAA I wanted to try a totally new schedule for classes. I wanted to turn SAA into more of a teaching organization than a social dance organization. That took quite a bit of doing. I made an extensive proposal that took account of everything, but most importantly I left lots of areas open to adjustment. I didn’t care how we phased it in or where the extra practices took place. What I cared about was that that there were more classes and that we changed things fairly soon.

The proposal got passed, and of all the things I tried to start while President, I think that was the most successful.

5 ) Contempt is Bad
In Gladwell’s book Blink he has a chapter that discusses an instance in which a scientist/psychologist type person takes a look at a video of a newly married couple and can tell in an instant whether or not a couple would stay married or get divorced. The primary factor he looked for was contempt, a state where one partner does not respect the other.

Unsurprisingly, if you have contempt for the people you’re working with you’re in for a bad experience. Within a few months of being the head of SAA I developed contempt for my fellow board members, and unsurprisingly things went downhill from there. Ah, hindsight. Whatever you do, when you notice yourself developing disrespect for your anyone in organization WATCH OUT. Chances are there’s been some misunderstanding.

6 ) Criticism comes with the Job
When you’re in a leadership position, someone’s inevitably going to criticize you. It’s OK. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It doesn’t mean you’re doing a bad job. What it does mean is you need a method for dealing with it. If you take it personally, feel sorry for yourself, and ask why they aren’t attacking other people in the group… you’ll be doing a disservice to everyone else you’re serving.

7 ) No matter what you do not everyone will be happy
Going on #6, not only will you be criticized, but not everyone will be happy with your decisions. Even your good decisions. The way to know if your decisions are actually good is to ask yourself “is this aligned with where the group wants and/or needs to go?” You also need to look at the criticism you receive, see the criticism.

If you’ve determined the criticism is misguided, should you try to convince the other person of their wrongness? It depends mostly on how much you need to have them on your side and how much time you have. And even then, if you explain your position carefully and well and explain why their response doesn’t make sense and the response is to reiterate their position… it’s probably not worth your time to pursue it further.

8 ) The Loudest Person does not necessarily represent the whole group
This can be really hard to remember. In the choir the majority of the people there don’t have a strong opinion on the music, but one or two people do. I want people to feel welcome to give their opinions and know that it will be heard and acted upon. At the same time I know that it’s not always a good idea to obey what those one or two people suggest just because I’m trying to be amenable to other ideas.

It’s a balancing act. Sometimes it’s wise to listen. Sometimes it’s not. Again, this is best when you have a clear idea of what to measure up suggestions to. Is it aligned with what the group wants to do? How much time is being spent arguing points that don’t have clear answers? Etc.

More to come on Monday!