FINALLY blogging!

Wow, I haven't blogged since November. 

I've been meaning to do it. Thinking about doing it. Feeling like I should do it. But now I'm actually doing it. A nice quiet Friday afternoon presents the perfect time to blog.

 So, what have I been up to? Planning workshops, teaching workshops, going to meetings, working on curriculum materials, and helping with a website project for digital storytelling facilitators. That's the past few months in a nutshell.

To expand on a few aspects:

Workshops: I guess that teaching workshops begins to cross over into the "direct service" category, but workshops are the heart of what we do at Center for Digital Storytelling, so if I didn't participate in some of them I wouldn't be very helpful to the organization. Teaching in the workshops has shown me what stuff people consistently trip over in the software, which helps me know how to structure our new software guides. It also has shown me how much work is involved in putting on workshops, especially those customized for a specific group. There's literally months of email exchanges, meetings, logistics planning, and recruiting before the workshop takes place. Then there's three incredibly intense days of work, and maybe a week or so of tying up the loose ends. (More if the project involves special curriculum materials or a custom DVD)

Anyway, you all don't really care about all of that. What I think may be relevant is the point that I'm sure all of you are observing on your own: nonprofits are hard work. It seems that there's never enough time, money, expertise, or staff to get everything done. Now I understand why CDS has tutorials that are probably 3 years old and full of typos. It's because just running the day-to-day operations of the organization takes so much work that there's not much energy left over for creating the tools that would actually make our work easier. I'm still trying to figure out how to balance that. Example: If I take three hours of my day today, I can get one rough-draft tutorial fully edited, printed, and ready to use. That means I'll be three hours behind on everything else, but I won't have to scramble at the next workshop to print out a half-done tutorial (and neither will my coworkers.) If I take three days to get all of our lab computers in tip-top shape, we'll probably be set for the next couple months. But I'll never have three free days because of meetings, phone calls, deadlines, etc.

To solve some of these problems, my very supportive supervisors suggested that I hire some volunteer interns to help with the more basic tasks so I could focus on the tutorials and other capacity building that requires some know-how. This seemed like a great idea, but now I've spent a good chunk of time soliciting interns, interviewing candidates, and training the three that I selected. And the one day a week that they are here, I get less done because they have a lot of questions. I'm hoping that this is because they are new, and as they get more experienced they will be more self-sufficient.

So, to sum up, I'm feeling a bit overworked. I think I need to start a yoga class or something to destress a bit. The good news is I'm learning lots, even if sometimes I'm learning it the hard way.

Comment from Corey Funderburk on March 15, 2007 - 1:32pm

Hi Jessica,

That does sound a bit stressful, but you sound like you're handling it quite well! That's pretty nifty you get your own interns and three at that! You should definitely take a Yoga class or something of that nature. Laura and I have a few favorite weekly TV shows that give us something stress-free to look forward to. Do you have a bike you can ride around or a favorite coffee shop? Anyway, keep up the good work, it's good to hear your blog-voice again! :)

Corey