Tuesday, July 28, 2009

No Breaks

Sometimes, I feel like I can't stop working. I hadn't planned on doing that much work tonight, I watched my favorite show, The Closer, then started to read, but couldn't concentrate on my book because I knew there were so many things that needed to be done, so I went back to work. That was at 10:15 and now it is almost 1am and I still have a lot of things that I need to get to. This was a lot of "secretarial" stuff that needed to be done- Excel lists to be updated, bills paid, emails sent, desk organized (still working on that), date auction program work, posting our date auction on another site. These are all things that I don't do during the day because there are always so many other more pressing things that need attention.

I had some moments of panic last night before I went to sleep- worrying about the date auction and our anniversary events. I was going into the "what if" doomsday mode- what if I had a date auction and no one showed up, what if I have an anniversary celebration and no one comes. Part of me knows that won't happen, but a greater part of me is very nervous. More than anything, I need these events to be two big successes. In order to be a success, I need people in the door. All the work for the last 7 months will mean absolutely nothing if we don't have two awesome events. The pressure is immense- this has been a miserable year for fundraising so these events are incredibly important. Right now, I feel like I'm doing all I can to keep things on track, but I also feel like I need to do more.

I'm trying to get our calendar wrapped up as soon as possible so I can focus on our events. I did two photo shoots yesterday, I haven't seen the photos yet, but hopefully they will look good. One of the shoots was the redo- that shoot only went a bit better, but I think I got at least one good photo. I was in Needham this morning doing photos with two young firefighters and their little kids. One of the kids was only 7 weeks old- that's our youngest calendar star so far this year. I did Hopedale photos this afternoon. These kids were a little older, it is so much easier working with kids that can take direction and stand still for more than a few seconds. I'm going to be in Worcester tomorrow morning doing photos. After that, we have 5 more photos to do and then we're done. I still have a half month spot left to fill for advertising. We have a former board member who said he would take care of a month in the calendar, but I haven't been able to reach him recently, so I'm getting a little concerned about the status of that ad spot.

Tomorrow, I need to follow up with the sports team that I met last week and I want to reach some other teams that we could work with. I also need to get more gift certificates for our date auction couples. We need 18 more certificates- which is quite a large number. I also need to follow up about a lot of auction items and follow up with people that have agreed to sponsor our events, but haven't sent checks yet and I need to follow up with sponsors to get their ads for the program and website. Do you sense a 'follow up' theme going on here? Things would be much simpler and I would get so much more accomplished during the day if I didn't have to spend some much time following up with people who have either already promised things but haven't delivered or people who just haven't responded. Perhaps I might even have time to relax and read my book then without feeling guilty about not working.
Well, I think I should go to bed. Part of me wants to keep working, but I need to be sharp for photos tomorrow morning. Until tomorrow friends..

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