July 6, 2011

The first leg

...of the marathon.

Yeah, as I'm starting to write this blog, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be one of those life update posts where I don't get on a soapbox or anything. I don't think.

Starting in early June, I started to be busy. Staff training was a few weeks away. Lots of teaching materials to write, lots of schedules to make, details to figure out, people to call, camps to keep marketing. It's weird to have to plan to plan. With all of these details in my head, it's challenging to put this whole mental mess of summer into some kind of sequential, logical gameplan. Especially for a summer you've never seen.

But every summer in camp is one you've never seen, I guess. But that first one, it's a real bugger.

Even as I write all of this, from the lobby of a McDonald's, basically pushed out of camp by those I'm working with to preserve my own sanity, I have about 70 billion little things in my head.

Still gotta plan the games.

Didn't get out the chiquicampa flyers.

Fall retreats aren't that far away and NOT A THING IS DONE FOR THOSE, OHMY-

Stop it.

My brain needs a break. Let it rest. Camp will happen regardless. The big stuff is taken care of. The staff are here. The campers are signed up (around 90 right now, but a lot of them just show up without calling.) The devotional booklets are printed BUT THEY STILL NEED TO BE STAPLED.

I'm learning about delegating responsibility. My first thought with every task is just to do it. I used to feel guilty about delegating. Or at least, nervous about passing stuff off to newbies. Doing everything yourself is never good though. It gets messy. Overwhelming. Stressful.

Especially that last one. If effective delegation were an artform, I'd be a four year-old with finger paints, helplessly hoping to grow into a Picasso.

And so staff training started on Friday. And pretty much since then, I've been running, with this constant noise of to-dos in my head. OHHH, FORGOT ABOUT THE STAFF TRAINING EVALS-

No. Cut that out.

And today is day six. We've covered a lot of ground, and skipped over a lot of ground that, I hope, we'll come back to later. Our staff stays over on the weekends, which means we have some duties on Saturdays as well. Not really a day off in the whole month. So you've gotta pace yourself. If you're not careful, you can crash.

So they kicked me out. And to think, on a night when the Tigers had already played a day game.

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