February and on to the darkness at the end of the tunnel...
It is now mid-August 2018 so it has been more than 6 months since I have felt a desire to sit and write about Rotary. My last post was reasonably positive... I thought that maybe our Club was turning a corner towards a more hip and happening future.
Then we had an Assembly. This is a members only meeting, a bit like an AGM but without the elections and it is an opportunity to "air your dirty laundry" if you have any. It turns out, my positive thoughts were premature. I got a lot of criticism from a small minority about my leadership of the Club. The majority of the room said very little. I should have been able to take that as a good thing and just ignore the "squeaky wheels" but I guess I'm not built that way and I took it very much to heart. I deflated like a stale balloon. That's why I stopped writing. I didn't have the energy in me.
I have several family members in the Rotary Club and at this point in the year they all went tripping off to Europe for 3 months so that made things even harder because I didn't have my usual venting partners.
I did survive until the end of June when my year was up, but just barely. From the outside, I guess one would call it a successful Rotary year. Over a 12 month period we gave more than $40 000 to various charities both locally, nationally and internationally. Personally I became a much more confident public speaker, I organised and helped to organise some pretty interesting and fun events and speakers (at least I thought they were interesting!) and I did meet and get to know some fantastic people along the way.
And then there is the other side of this coin... I stopped eating properly and started drinking regularly, I stopped exercising, I stopped catching up with friends my own age (outside of Rotary), I could probably measure in buckets the number of tears I shed and in weeks the number of hours I should have but didn't sleep. My business is pushing the outer limits of acceptability for the bank and if it had not been for some amazing staff, would no longer be my business. (To be altogether fair, the current drought also has something to do with this.)
Rotary's motto is "Service Above Self". If you balance the previous two paragraphs I think it is safe to say that I at least achieved that!
Right now, I'm taking a break from Rotary to see if I can find some of the self that has gone missing. Whether Rotary will be a part of my future remains to be seen.
Then we had an Assembly. This is a members only meeting, a bit like an AGM but without the elections and it is an opportunity to "air your dirty laundry" if you have any. It turns out, my positive thoughts were premature. I got a lot of criticism from a small minority about my leadership of the Club. The majority of the room said very little. I should have been able to take that as a good thing and just ignore the "squeaky wheels" but I guess I'm not built that way and I took it very much to heart. I deflated like a stale balloon. That's why I stopped writing. I didn't have the energy in me.
I have several family members in the Rotary Club and at this point in the year they all went tripping off to Europe for 3 months so that made things even harder because I didn't have my usual venting partners.
I did survive until the end of June when my year was up, but just barely. From the outside, I guess one would call it a successful Rotary year. Over a 12 month period we gave more than $40 000 to various charities both locally, nationally and internationally. Personally I became a much more confident public speaker, I organised and helped to organise some pretty interesting and fun events and speakers (at least I thought they were interesting!) and I did meet and get to know some fantastic people along the way.
And then there is the other side of this coin... I stopped eating properly and started drinking regularly, I stopped exercising, I stopped catching up with friends my own age (outside of Rotary), I could probably measure in buckets the number of tears I shed and in weeks the number of hours I should have but didn't sleep. My business is pushing the outer limits of acceptability for the bank and if it had not been for some amazing staff, would no longer be my business. (To be altogether fair, the current drought also has something to do with this.)
Rotary's motto is "Service Above Self". If you balance the previous two paragraphs I think it is safe to say that I at least achieved that!
Right now, I'm taking a break from Rotary to see if I can find some of the self that has gone missing. Whether Rotary will be a part of my future remains to be seen.
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