Taking care in caring for the 'whole'

Tom has started a conversation over under the Denmark conference.  It confuses me to be having a discussion about the container of the ES3 planning team over in the Denmark conference center.

 Yes, I 'get' that this is a larger conversation than the ES3 planning team. But I don't get why it is taking place over there.

 Here's my version of my reaction to the 'mispelled names' snafu (systems normal all . . . . )

I was asked to give Michael the latest version of the invitation for ES3.  Michael would then send this invitation to people from the waiting list from ES2 immediately after the Thursday planning phone call.  Next,  we agreed, maybe after Michael had left the phone call to write a slightly different letter for previous participants. Michael had said he had to leave early but he did not announce his departure. .. this is not a criticism of Michael, just me pointing out that there are many ways we can practice being conscious in every moment, like saying goodbye on a group phone call so everyone else is conscious that someone is not there.  Maybe if Michael had said goodbye, the misspelled name snafu would not have occurred. 

I sent Michael the latest invitation that another member of our planning team had sent all of us that day.  I looked at this edition for substantive changes but, I confess, I assumed that core structural details on the invitation had not been changed in anyway.  It never occurred to me that someone might have changed the signature, where the names of all the hosts are listed.  I can assure you that these names were spelled correctly on all my drafts of the invitation because I am, like, a fanatic about spelling people's names, perhaps because just about everybody spells my given name, Therese, wrong.  One of the things I like about my nickname is that just about nobody ever spells it wrong. 

 
After the Thursday meeting, Ashley and I, who had agreed to tailor the NEXT invitation got to work.  We had agreed, during the phone call, maybe after Michael left (I now realize) that Michael would wait until he got this new letter.  We wanted to incorporate some of Margo's suggestions about sending news of all the many streams of activity that have emerged since ES2.

 
Before Ashley and I could finish this new letter (we had agreed during that phone call that we had until Tuesday at 5 p.m. to get the invite out to previous participants), Michael sent out the first draft.  This was not a problem.  We let it go.  I was kinda relieved that I didn't have to rewrite anything.

Several names in the signature for the invitation Michael sent out were misspelled.  Unfortunate, yes.  Not so slick, true.  But still, in the big scheme of things, not a mistake beyond the pale of redemption, right?

I am working on ES3 more than forty hours a week.  And getting paid nothing although I expect to be paid from the payments people will make at the event.   I am being constantly assaulted by people for taking too much authority, for assuming I have a right to act, for not acting the way someone thinks I should act, for not doing enough, for doing too much.  I feel pressured to trust my team but I don't always feel my team trusts me.  I want to do everything but, flatly, I cannot.  There are literally not enough hours in the day for me to pay attention to every single detail.  And now I find out that one of the tasks projected on to me is the role of gatekeeper for copyediting, even though every host had received the latest version of the invitation and had at least a couple of days to read it for yourselves.  

I am being barraged from many fronts.  Often, instead of doing the work of administering the salon (there is simple tasks to be done, many for which I lack the skills and for which I have no volunteers) I am spending a lot of time explaining to the many people 'helping' what I am doing that they have not chosen to take responsbility for but have, from time to time, an interest in hearing a detailed update of why I am doing, it sometimes feels like, anything and everything.  FYI, I think I have learned to set this boundary now.  To the best of my ability, I will now explain to people that I am doing my best to honor the agreements we make during meetings, that I send notes to whoever asked to be involved and I am not going to keep stopping to bring people up to date.  I would like to do this but I don't have the time.  The team can consciously support me by paying more attention to agreements and then keeping them.

There is no way, simply no way at all, that I can make someone read the blizzard of emails that seem to come from all kinds of directions related to ES3.  Yes, it is frustrating to see draft after draft show up in your mailbox.  Yes, It must be a disappointment to see one's name misspelled.  But I cannot poll everyone all the time to make sure they are keeping up and that they have reviewed things.
 

Plus, I had no reason to assume that I was being held to a different standard than anyone else.  I had never agreed to be copyeditor for ES3.

After the spelling mistakes were brought to Michael's attention (by a recipient of the invitation), Michael responded and urged the recipient not to be too hard on me, which seemed to imply that I was somehow in charge or responsble for the mistake.  Although I appreciated Michael's attempt to protect me, I  also felt a bit resentful, anxious that he had unwittingly inviting other hosts to see me as the focal point for blame when the whole team lets itself down. 

Even though I did not create the mistake about the misspelled names, I am mortified. I used to be a lawyer.  I have done overnighters copyediting important documents.  I am a nut about good spelling. Yes, I make typos, esp. when writing on the fly like this, but spelling mistakes:  hardly ever.  I am so sorry something went out to the previous salon participants with any name misspelled. 

I am also feeling resentful that any other members of the planning team seem to be holding me to a higher standard than you are holding yourselves.  You seem to think that, magically, I am carefully reading the blizzard of emails and the dizzying swirl of changes that are occurring more carefully than each of you. In point of fact, all the hosts had a chance to catch the spelling errors . . . so all the hosts failed this time.  Maybe if i worked sixty hours a week on the salon I could be perfect in all moments, maybe if I dye my hair blue I could do a better job. 

I am doing my best.  And the buck absolutely does not stop with me.  We are all responsible for the misspelled names.

No one can absorb all the information that is coming at us and we all have our own, private, screening mechanisms. 

 
I offer these comments only to illustrate the rushed dynamic we have co-created in the planning atmosphere of ES3.  I am not upset with anyone.  And, actually, I have a lot of thoughts about how we could work together more effectively.  But before I can do that, I have more frustrations to voice.

 I have tried to bring up some organizing aspects, over and over, during the telephone calls.  Most of the time when I do, one of the hosts asks us to pause and do an energy read and then we have some nice time together renewing our wonderful etheric connections to each other as we do this wonderful work.  I love these moments.  But then, when I tried to bring up my attempts to organize again, it feels, to me, like I am rebuffed again and again.  I feel like some of my colleagues on the team are reading my attempts to, well, be organized and get organized work done as somehow a reflection of my inability to be dreamy and sanguine.  I don't bring this up on the phone calls because there doesn't seem to be enough time.  I have all this stuff I need to talk about but I feel pressured to hurry up and silence myself so others can have some airtime.  So I hold back.  I wish people on the team could realize that the power when I speak that perhaps disturbs the deamy field they are sensing into is the field, not me.

I myself prefer to be dreamy and sanguine.  I would be happy to spend the entire ninety minutes of our weekly phone calls listening to the field together.  I really would.  I would, that is, if someone could propose a system that would get the real work that really needs doing?  On these phone calls, I feel like I have to rush rush rush to ask for the help I need when, if I step back and breath, I kinda think the first priority of these phone calls should be the physical work of planning.  yes, with lots of energy reading.  But aren't we a planning team?

How to maintain spiritual/inner awareness in a conscious social system and get things done.  I have lots of ideas.  Where to put them?