Great Relief

Listen to this article

Phew! Felt such great relief after yesterday's meeting that I slept right through for 10 hours after reaching home from work (haven't been sleeping well the whole week).

Tossing & Turning
For weeks and weeks, I have been dreading yesterday because I was to chair a meeting with all my fellow volunteer coordinators from all our centres to plan for the year ahead and I just didn't know what to say and how to say it (like in the staff devotion that I was supposed to lead last Tuesday)... It also didn't help much when on Wednesday evening, I went through the structure and the contents I have planned for the meeting with my boss and was told that it was too heavy a meeting for 3 hours. I therefore had to re-do the whole thing. It was getting more nerve-wrecking as it approaches the actual day and I was like losing sleep over it. There was one night, despite having slept for 11 hours (from 8pm the previous night straight to 7am the next day), I still felt lethargic the next day...

Thursday: "You Stole My Volunteers?"
It didn't help that I was also super busy this period cordinating volunteers for projects and handling other administrative tasks e.g. working on the budget etc. To make me more stressed, something happened on Thursday morning which demanded my attention, pulling me away from planning for the meeting. A director from another department came to inform me that one group of volunteers has pulled out from their fund-raising project to take part in another project that I was coordinating.

You can imagine how embarrassed I felt but was also a bit annoyed at the incident (since I was already up to my neck, was think "not another one!"). To a certain extent, I was blaming myself for letting that happen but on the other hand I am reminding myself that I could not have prevented it because different people from that group have approached us to enquire about volunteering so I would never know they are from the same group. Nonetheless, I felt this was a real bad incident and am sincerely praying it won't cause a misunderstanding that will sour my working relationship with that department.

I eventually tracked down the group leader and called them to understand the situation. I called the centre affected by the "pull-out" to apologize for the mix-up and started to work something out together. Despite it being a bad incident, I am so glad that everyone, including the group of volunteers, are understanding enough and we cooperated with one another to work something out. So they will continue to do the fund-raising for half a day and help out at another centre for half a day (they had initially pulled-out because they wanted to finish their volunteering project asap, prefably within 1 day, rather than doing fund-raising over a long period of time). Within half a day, we have got things all sorted out, so despite this incident not being a pleasant one... something positive turned out; I am so glad to be working with really understanding people and felt a sense of achievement when we could finally resolve the issue in just half a day.

But that meant half a day was gone from planning for my meeting, which was to be held the next day :( In addition, I had also made changes to the group volunteering form so that in future, all group volunteers will have to indicate if they are applying or are currently helping out in other projects in the same organization. Hopefully, this will prevent future occurences of such this nature.

Friday: Judgment Day and "You Can't Do It Alone!"
Anyway, judgment day eventually came and there I was on Friday, still working on my presentation slides all the way till 1pm (meeting was scheduled to start at 2pm). And here I did it again, failing to plan the logistics way before for the meeting and my director boss had to in the end help me mobilize her whole department (I was in a different 1-person section, though under the same department) to help with the preparations. Was so touched when I saw my fellow colleagues chipping in to help me with preparing the food, bringing down the food, preparing the meeting venue, getting ready the AV equipments. Even my director boss also helped to photocopying my worksheets and helped me collect the projector for the meeting while I rushed out to buy the refreshments. She must be thinking:

"This person ah, never plan for meetings one ah, happened one time before already for the Japanese exchange meeting and now again. Sigh. Had earlier asked him to get help from his colleagues if necessary but never did ask until the last minute".

Well, I must defend myself :) Must admit that I am not much a team player and could have asked my fellow colleagues for help way earlier to prepare them. I guess I had been, in a way, pampered because in the past when I did training, I used to only have to worry about coming in to do the training and all the refreshments, training venue will be handled by the admin staff. Even in my previous workplace, I was blessed with my admin colleague who helped me see to the prep before meetings so I could just concentrate on preparing my materials. I should have recognize that I am a 1-person section now and cannot cope with such things alone. Guess it is another lesson learnt.

Kept thanking my colleagues for coming to my rescue and they kept laughing it off saying that "it is OK" and that they had also helped the last coordinator with such things. Guess they can see how stressed I looked and kept asking me to "calm down" and relax, assuring me the meeting will go well. Anyway, I was also horribly busy this period and was multitasking with so many things on hand (I have a whole briefcase full of documents just 2 months of joining), so it is understandable why I did not plan early also right? :)

So how did the meeting go? I would say it went tremendously well, at least for me. At first, I "gabra-ed" and started off stuttering since I was nervous but I became more confident towards the end. It was also very disappointing at the beginning becasue of the turnout; only 8 out of 20 came for the meeting (Dec happens to be a busy period for all) but I am nonetheless glad that these VCs came along to support; they kept reminding me that they are so supportive and I must repay their kindness :)

The meeting also went well with everyone contributing and sharing. I guess I attained what I had intended the meeting to achieve; VCs

• seeing the value of "investing in volunteers",
  
• seeing the importance of understanding and working on volunteer motivation
• foster a sharing culture, sharing ideas and volunteers
• understanding the need to raise the profile of our volunteers not only to fellow VCs, volunteers and the public but also to management to help justify our work
• see the possibility of tapping volunteers to manage and lead other volunteers instead of relying on themselves to "run the whole show"

I also got to know the VCs better (considering this is my first formal meeting with them). Although we rushed through the last part of the meeting, there was consensus on the theme we should all focus for the next year and we managed to identify a theme statement for next year.

All in all, I was glad to be able to achieve all these and to see the kind of support I have (have another friend who also messaged me Matthew 6:33-34 to remind me of God's support) . Although the planning part was horrible and my boss will most probably have a bad impression of my meeting planning skills, I am still overall overjoyed and of course, relieved, that the whole thing went relatively well. Can also see that my boss is impressed with my presentation slides and heard her commenting to the other VCs during break time that the "next part is interesting". That, to me, is an affirmation.

In the end, I stayed back in office to complete the meeting minutes till 9pm on Friday (latest I have stayed in office so far) and I guess this is yet something to celebrate :)

Thanksgiving for Answered Prayer
I must also thank God for answering my prayer for the meeting to go well. I thank God for allowing my thoughts to flow well, enabling me to share what I have learnt at 2 workshops I had attended with my VCs. I must thank God for blessing me with VCs who helped make the meeting a success, sharing and participating and finally thank God for blessing me with managable workload on Friday; I had initially wanted to put aside all work on Friday to concentrate on the meeting but was afraid that a lot of calls and emails will come in that I will be busy once again doing follow-up work after the meeting, without rest. Thank God that there were just a few (non-urgent) emails and no voicemails for me (something that would not be possible on workdays)!

Friday: Feeling all Christmasy
Starting to feel all christmasy. Everyone in the department came in casual attire today and we were decorating the office for Christmas. I was given a small christmas tree for my table. For sometime in the morning, I was trying to "open up" the mini christmas tree because it looked all "shrivelled up" after taking it out from the packaging. By the end of the morning, I had so much snow (from the mini christmas tree) and glitter (from the christmas tinsles) on me, I looked like a christmas tree myself. My colleague also came over to my room and helped me to decor my room and now, my room has this "blue and silver" christmas theme :) Indeed did add some cheer to the cold cold room. Here's my little christmas tree: