Silly me. I thought this would be a good year to expand my circle of acquaintances - and my professional contacts - by raising my hand for a couple of volunteer jobs. With Emma leaving for college and Sam getting a driver's license, I imagined that I would have a lot of free time on my hands. I picture sitting around at home, long empty evenings with nothing to do but feel a little empty, like a shallow pond at the end of a hot dry summer.
So I agreed to two things. I would serve on the board of directors of a small private K-8 alternative school, and I would be the treasurer of the Community High Jazz Band.
All this before I knew the University would hand me an entire second job as administrative director of another unrelated unit, a job that could very easily itself be a full-time job. I'm not complaining. I like challenge, and learning new things, solving new problems, helping people and getting to know them. But like any new job, it's tiring. Like speaking French for a day or a week or a month in Paris, before something clicks in your brain and all of a sudden, you understand passing comments on the street and telephone conversations and you are thinking and dreaming in another language. But before then, man oh man, you are tired. Nothing sounds better than a trip across the Channel and a conversation in your native tongue.
The Community High Jazz Band treasurer turned out to be so much more than I had thought. Not just reconciling a checkbook, but creating a system for collecting RSVP's on a major spring trip to music camp, then collecting, depositing and tracking parent payments, and addressing financial aid needs for the parents, and fundraising for scholarships to support the half dozen kids who need help to be able to attend.
To add insult to injury, Sam dropped out of jazz band before the school year even started. The kid plays the stand-up bass (very well, I might add). The program director is a saxophonist with a deep and abiding passion for Charlie Parker. Sam got assigned to learn one Charlie Parker solo too many. No doubt Charlie Parker is a master, but there are a thousand outstanding stand-up bass solos that will bring tears to your eyes. Learning a Charlie Parker saxophone solo on the stand-up bass is more like a hazing ritual.
I stuck with the treasurer role, though. I didn't want to leave the teacher in the lurch. I said I'd do it, and I wanted to follow through. But I began to realize it was too much. I set about accomplishing some intermediate steps - collecting the last of the initial payments, creating a fundraising team - and then I solicited among the parents for a new treasurer. I've got the last check in an envelope now, ready to go to the bank tomorrow. The parent board has voted, I've transferred the account signing privileges to the new treasurer and shared the last Google docs.
Nobody stepped forward to volunteer to be the fundraising chair. I won't give up on the fundraising until I know the money will be raised. $2,500. I believe that all the kids who want attend should be able to, regardless of how much money their parents have. Compared with the $2.5 million I'm trying to raise for a hiking-biking trail along Dixboro Road, I should have no problems.
RIght?
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