"when we’re all brilliant and fast"

Holy Crap May

So, the general schedule looks a little like this.

M - work/training
T - work/therapy
W - work/volunteer
Th - work/training
F - gym/volunteer

That seems pretty straightforward.  And my evenings are clearing up.  Light's got class on Tuesdays, training on Mondays and game on Thursdays. I mostly have a study date with him on Wednesdays and that's it for evening commitments.  But, in and around that, all the things happen.

I try to go to the big thrifty, I volunteer at open studios, I go to a readercon meeting, I try to go see Coolidge, I have tea with Delight, I have tea with Purple, I go see Peter Mulvey at Oberon, I go on a vacation with Light to Lee, I see Melissa Ferrick at the Sinclair, maybe go to Brookline Booksmith for a book signing, I go to Passim for an Ellis Paul show, only really I'm going to see Rebecca Loebe open I go to High tea with Delight, I help Mech and his lovely fiancee move  into a new house (for version of help that might just be run interference on my father)  I have tickets to the Gaiman/Palmer double features at the Brattle. Then I hopefully go up to Maine to play boardgames until my eyes bleed.  And I'm a little wistful about Wiscon, but I believe some day I'll make it there.   And since my class-taking efforts this semester have almost completely failed (didn't like Intro to Museum Studies and dropped it.  Tried to take flute, class was canceled. Signed up for Solar System and Beyond and the instructor makes me uncomfortable.)  Now I want to try to take a class at the asylum, or finally go to gather here, or something.

I'm getting more and more interested in how organizations use and retain volunteers, particularly when they are skilled, but also in the absence of compensation or what the perceived worth of the  compensation is.   And, as I may have said before, convention work seems more like having the hobby of stabbing myself in the face with a sharp stick.   But, occasionally there is praise, occasionally I can think of myself as helping drag a particular community into a better world.

(but, oh, the praise is so much sweeter than the knowing)

I assume most other people volunteer for social reasons, finding their tribe, finding new people with whom to hang out.  Which has been a little bit true for me, but definitely in an individual way, rather than finding a place where I feel like I belong.  For the most part, I feel like I've made awkward overtures, and then not figured out how to follow up on them.

I assume, in most of my friendships, I make it clear where I stand, and I then accept whatever subset of that is what the other person wants to offer.  Purple asked me last week if I ever said no, and I don't know that I do.  I'm too grateful, I think of myself as a difficult enough person that attention isn't ever going to be thick on the ground.  I have lots of angsty teenage poetry about scraps, and how I felt about taking them, and knowing I was never going to be getting meals.

To be clear, I'm no Dickensian orphan.  I'm no Norman Rockwell urchin with my nose pressed up against a candy-store window.  I'm a grown-ass woman, with an awesome husband and a pretty sweet, intentional lifestyle.  But lonely doesn't seem to be a thing I can cure myself of, no matter how fast I'm paddling.