Sunday, August 01, 2010

defies all logical explanation

While Mike has been a very active volunteer at the fair the past few years my contribution has mainly been taking care of the home front while he's busy with fair business. In this past year I've ramped up my involvement a lot. A lot. I took on the huge job of prize tabulation for the school fair at Mike's suggestion that I would be good at it. He was right, I'm pretty good at it and I actually enjoy it very much. Who knew data input could be so much fun.

From there it was only a small step for me to attend my first fair meeting.... school fair, of course. I enjoyed that as well. And now I'm doing other stuff too. I went to a work bee last week. Oh and get this... I'm getting all bossy with the School Fair Manager (I know, shocking, right?) .... also known around here as Papa. Throwing out a lot of statements that start with... Couldn't we, I think we should, Why don't we and many variations of the same. It's really kind of weird, because normally I would go in and just quietly do whatever Mike was doing and maybe say those sorts of things to Mike... on the way home... when there was no one else around... because I'm a scaredy cat like that. Even though it's Papa I still probably would have done that, but here's the thing, Papa works tremendously hard to pull this School Fair thing together. You really have no idea. It's so much work. So if I can see way to help him work less or even make the work we have to do easier, then I just can't seem to keep my mouth shut these days. Perhaps it's the Mama Bear coming out in me... I gotta take care of my own.

Then the topic of facebook and twitter came up. Now you all know I big red puffy heart social media so when Mike suggested I would be good at that too..... I jumped in, with both feet, right in the deep end. So now I tweet and facebook on behalf of the fair.... are you following me on both? You should consider it. At some point it was suggested that perhaps I could live tweet the fair and then that turned into a twitter giveaway in which I would tweet a clue about my location and the first person to find me there would win a prize. So now I'm doing that. Can you imagine?

I was telling my friend, T, about it and her response to me was..... isn't that your worst nightmare, meeting total strangers? And I was all.... I know, right? Because it is. It so is. I'm bad at small talk and I hate talking to people I don't know. It makes me so nervous in an "OMG I'm going to puke" kinda way. Here's the deal though.... I don't feel nervous about it at all. Nope, I'm so stinkin' excited about it I can't even stand it.

It's a weird experience. I find myself working on these projects and they aren't little by any stretch of the imagination and I'll stop and wonder... when did I become this person? This person that sits in meetings and voices opinions to people she hardly knows. This person who's pushing for change in a committee she's only been a part of for 5 seconds. This person who's excited about putting herself out there to meet total strangers all weekend long. I really have no idea where she came from, but I think it's pretty great she's here.

4 comments:

WIDNEY WOMAN said...

Nice!!!!!

Goofball said...

maybe you've really evolved and have become much more self-confident. So maybe your self-image of being shy isn't so correct anymore

The Chick Pea said...

I agree with Goofball. I don't think you can call yourself "shy" anymore. You are a whirl of social activity. I don't call myself "shy", but you are WAY more social than I am. Maybe we both have it wrong?

Btw...you/the fair and twitter? Are you kidding me? It is absolutely a match made in heaven!!!
:)

Leah said...

awesome! Look at you go!