Off to Workshop We Go

Last night was the work party for the upcoming Associate Matron/Associate Patron workshop.  We had an awesome turn out of ten helpers who got everything done in just a couple of hours.  We assembled almost two hundred attendee folders, put discs and packets together, and prepared table numbers and toppers.  That doesn't count all the work that my awesome secretary put in beforehand to prepare the name badges and the CD labels and sleeves nor all the printing and prep done ahead of time so that the stuff to go in the folders and packets was ready for processing.  We didn't need a truck to get the prep materials to the work party, but that is only because my secretary and I put the pick up books together at my house last week so that the binders wouldn't have to attend the work party.

As we head into the last couple of days before lift off, of course the thousand and one little things start popping up, little questions and arrangements that take one minute each, but one minute times one thousand is still seventeen hours of time and so far, I still have a day job too and traveling on the weekends for other people's stuff.  I am reminding myself that sleep is highly overrated and that if you give that up, there is plenty of time for everything else, really!  I was reminded by someone else however, that I really need to try to sleep at least one night in here somewhere because I can't afford to be tired and cranky for the workshop and putting it on is a seriously high energy event.

Even though I have a great team helping me out on presenting the training modules, there is still a lot of energy that goes into orchestrating the thing, introducing the speakers, taking questions and answers, schmoozing during the meal periods, running the discussion groups and report backs and so on and all of that I do myself, so I really should make an appointment for sleep in there somewhere.  I'll have to figure that out real soon, I guess.

The other painful part though is that the rest of the world is rude enough not to stop when I am busy with this.  Because of the time line of other activities, I can't just set everything else aside and concentrate on the workshop.  I have clothes that are in prep that need to be ready a couple of weeks from now, more events eight weeks and eleven weeks after this and of course the calendar and appointments and all of that to finish.  So the finish line is not really Sunday by any stretch of the imagination - it is just the finish of one of many things.  Still, getting something DONE has got to feel good, right?  I'll let you know next week. :-)

I guess that if I was an event planner or a wedding coordinator for a living, this is what my life would be like, with some events in the long range plan stages, others midway and others about to happen.  You know, I've been trying to come up with a retirement job - maybe I should consider event planning.  After all, once you've been through the Grand Line, you are an expert at it, whether you wanted to be or not.

Next weekend is the big workshop in Palo Alto - if I don't survive, I won't be able to tell you about it.