Time Flies When You're Having Fun

This weekend I attended a couple more OVs and almost the last Instructional. Talking with some of my girls, I was struck by how much we discuss dates and times and the manner in which time really does fly by. I've been thinking of this journey as a six year tour, which is now two and a half years over, but I realized that there is something a bit deceptive about that because the last year isn't for planning, but for doing. All the prep time is over a year before the journey is over and that means that whatever I want to do in my year has to be completely ready to launch by July or August 2012, whenever I hold my last workshop, because it is at the workshop that your calendar, your projects, your programs and just about everything other than your appointees has to be announced and start being distributed. And the appointees have to be appointed already because all that stuff has to go to be printed in the itinerary for distribution at Grand Chapter in October. So really, I have two and a half years before I launch the Great Ship of State and then I get to spend the last year doing all the things that are already planned out. Also, it is all well and fine to think about this in terms of lots of years, but there are a lot of deadlines along the way and looking at the body of work to be done, I am getting concerned that the two and a half years or so I have left may be cutting it fine. There are lots of things that are particularly time critical and then a bunch of stuff that just has to get done sometime. I've been trying to wrap my mind around it and I think it goes like this. Books - Grand Officer Book, Deputy Book, Worthy Matron Book, Worthy Patron Book These can be done at any time, although the last one can't be finished until you have a man to review it, add his bits to it and do any editing that is required. Having looked at several versions now, I wonder if we aren't reinventing the wheel on these each year. Except for thirty or forty pages that is specific to each year, most of this can probably be done in a standard form. Maybe that is an approach to consider. It is a lot of work though, any way you slice it. Choosing a Man/Choosing a Dress - I can start asking around after Installation this October for my man and my dress and need to make choices before July 2011, although several people hope I will get this done earlier rather than later. It seems to me to be something of a toss up on which of these two decisions people think is the more important one. Session Stuff - Committees, Schedule, Decorations, etc. Everything but the people, like picking a theme and decorations and such, can be done any time. For the Committees, you can think about who you want, but there is only a limited list that you are supposed to ask during the Grand Conductress year. The rest have to wait until you are Associate Grand Matron. So I have half a dozen or so people to find between November 2010 and July 2011 and the rest have to be found and asked between November 2011 and July 2012. Grand Officers, Deputy Grand Matrons, Committees - Other than the handful of committee people that you ask ahead of time, all of these people are supposed to be found and asked and confirmed between November 2011 and July 2012. You have to do this at the same time as . . . Calendar - which also has to be done between November 2011 and July 2012. This includes getting the events for all the other organizations that you have to visit on the calendar and then deciding when to hold OVs, receptions, and everything else on the Grand Chapter calendar. More Dresses! - In addition to the dress for my girls, I have to choose winter dresses for my Grand Officers, year dresses for my Deputies, and session dresses for my Grand Representatives. I also have to choose spring and session dresses for my Grand Officers and session dresses for the Deputies, six dresses in all. The first three dresses, or the fabric and the person making them, needs to be decided in time to get them done before October 2012, so say no later than March 2012. The spring Grand Officer dresses go just a few months after that and the session dresses a few months after that. Whew! So here's the part that puzzles me. The Calendar and the people are both such huge jobs and they both have to be done during a very narrow window of time. I don't see how you can do any of the other stuff at the same time and I am not sure that the nine months you get is enough to do the whole job. Several people have told me to just take this one year at a time and concentrate on the stuff at hand, but I feel like you have to get absolutely everything you can get done early done so you can clear your decks for the big, last nine months rush which includes the two hardest tasks, finding all your people and the calendar set up. I can't figure out how you have time enough for those if you are also trying to write books and make session decisions and so on and so forth. I mean, granted that after three years on the road you've learned to get by with minimal food and sleep, but no matter how much you try to stretch it, there's still only twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week and I am convinced that if I blink right now, when I open my eyes another month will have flown by. Having enough, or not enough, time can lead to some uncomfortable problems, too. For example, to help us find the people, we get member resumes that people turn in and I certainly want to use as many if not all of the people who send those in because it seems to me that they have shown some interest in getting involved. But I have heard that in some years, people have been reappointed to a committee rather than getting new people on board simply because the AGM ran out of time to fill all the spots and it is easier to ask those already serving if they want to go on because hopefully they already know what they are doing. I have been thinking about this and I think that where it is possible to get some new, qualified people, we should try to do that because the more people who have served on a committee, the greater number of people who know how to do what that committee does, but turning over the whole committee to new people who have never done it before seems a bit fraught with danger because none of those people know how things were done before. They might come up with better ways, but they also might spend a lot of their time reinventing the wheel. It is a puzzlement! But to do that, you have to have the time to talk to the people and get a feel for where they would serve best. Just appointing them out of a hat seems dangerous too. So I want to meet these people as I travel, but I am not supposed to ask for recommendations until the person ahead of me has asked for her recommendations, so it seems like we are setting ourselves up to do everything at the last minute and that doesn't quite seem like the best way to do it. Maybe I need to ask around some more and see if my understanding is wrong or if there is something I am missing. Perhaps there's a secret time machine that you get when you become AGM to help. :-) Next weekend, I will be in Escondido and Sun City, but not in San Marcos.