well, the planning team for ES3 meets tomorrow

I'd actually love to talk about how we are going about how shall we pay ourselves.  But I'm not quite sure if the rest of the planning team would endorse that.  Hmm. . .  what feels right to me?

I have not made it easy for the team to pay me.  There seemed to be an assumption throughout this salon that things should be easy, and smooth.  let's make nice. 

 Broadly, we agreed that each member of the team would talk about what they would like to be paid, and then three members of the team agreed to take into consideration what everyone wanted, and there was a strong impulse to designate a significant percentage of the money we received at the May salon for 'pay-it-forward'.  Suggestions on the 'pay-it-forward' suggestions ranged from zero (my suggestion, which I will elaborate on later) and one third of the entire amount that was paid. 

 I designed the budget for May and I did so with a clear intention that the money we received would be payment for the work that was done to create the space, first and foremost.  And then, only if it 'felt' just right to the whole team, we might tithe to future salon work.  We set a 'prepayment' amount of $280, which was my best guestimate of what it would cost to have the salon.  I assumed that we would have sixty participants paying $280 (we had 57 participants and about half actually paid $280, which meant I had to come up with the money somehow).  I JUST CHECKED:  30 PEOPLE PAID $280

What did the $280 include?  $160 for the caterer.  I forgot sales tax, well I didn't really forget.  When I designed the budget, I asked if there would be sales tax and the facility told me no, no sales tax.  But I ended up paying $177 per person, even though I had only asked for $160. The sales tax shortage came out of my guestimate for administrative costs, in case you are wondering.

I allocated $40 for administrative costs, assuming the registrar (me) would be paid for the central work of organizing this complex project. I also assumed there would be miscellaneous expenses, which, of course, there were.  I also paid the WiFI guy out of this source. Some people (it feels like almost everybody) don't like my personal style and I challenge them but I did a fantastic job.  I did such a good job that it is hard to see how good it was.  I kept track of my hours until I had done 300.  I easily invested 400+ hours, by the way.  When I kept track of my hours, I only registered hours in which I was physically doing something:  writing emails, on planning calls, on calls to participants, and spreadsheet work.  I did not count the endless hours of deep holding work I did on behalf of this whole.  When I say I worked 300 hours, it was real time, billable hours in my former profession of practicing law.

In my mind's eye, ten dollars an hour, which is not a livable wage in Seattle for a one-income household like mine, was the absolute minimum threshold for me to be paid.  Does that sound selfish or greedy?  It was a principaled decision for me.  It is not evolutionary to build the human future without sustaining the real work that I did.  It is not sustainable to ask a human being to invest 300+ hours of their life force without compensation.  Failing to acknowledge this kind of work, which, in my thinking, is quite a lot like failing to acknowledge a mother's work of nurturing her children, is flatly unacceptable.

 So.  $160 plus $40 for administrative brought me to $200.  Then I factored in $25 per person for renting the facility, which cost $7,500 to rent.  In my calculations, I assumed that the beds at the Whidbey Institute would be 'sold' and that these participants would make up a large portion of the $7,500 rent.  There were 25 beds to 'sell'.  I ended up selling about 20. that created a gap in my budget.  And another problem:  some members of the team told me they would be staying on the land so I factored in their payment for lodging and I relied on this to give away some financial aid.  Then they changed their mind, asked for free homestays and left holes in my budget.  I covered it but on my gosh it was stressful and a lot of hard work. It was especially difficult that team members changed their finances related to the salon midstream: it felt like they were blithely ignoring the simple economic realities and, in doing so, dishonoring the salon and, yes, my work. So we came up a little short for the rent.  This shortage came out of my administrative fund.

Then I charged everyone $25 as a contribution to scholarship.  If I were to do this again, I would charge more for scholarship.

Then I added on $30 because the Whidbey Institute was charging us to collect the money.

 All my instincts told me to add another $20 as a secret slush fund but some members on the planning team, virtually all of whom never actually sat down and paid any attention to the actual numbers involved in this budget, arbitrarily pressed me to keep the figure below $300.  How I wish I had had the secret slush, for it would have almost exactly covered the sales tax that I missed.

 $280 = $160 food, $40 admin miscellaneous, $25 share of rent, $25 scholarship contribution and $30 for Whidbey Institute.

A very, very tight budget.

 Then, we attracted a very different group of people this time.  It is my belief that the money energy of the planning team, which varies widely, created this.  We never had the kind of talks about money that we should have had.  Early on, I brought up the topic of money several times, always being shunted aside because, it seemed to me, that the team preferred to spend their energy sensing into the field.  I had an excellent handle on the money and I made it too easy for the team to ignore it.  when I came up with the figures, I offered, more than once, to explain them during planning phone calls but, from my perspective, everyone on the team was happy to just let it get taken care of.

We felt it was urgent to get the invitation out, because our planning time was short.  We needed to come up with numbers. And I did.

An energy I was always vividly aware of, and which I believe has been a VERY high source of dissonance in our May salon field, was the wide disparity of money energy within the planning team.  I have upset the team because I am insisting that I be paid ten bucks an hour for my first three hundred hours.  I can't speak for others but I think some of the team perceives me as being greedy.  In actual fact, asking for this payment was the hardest thing I did for the salon.  Insisting on it, which does not feel 'evolutionary' to most, I think, of the other members of my team was very hard for them.  And hard for me.  I have not done it lightly.  yes, I could have asked in a 'better' way.  Well, I have spent most of my life holding back, waiting until I could get things done in the 'right' way, to learn how to make nice a little more skillfully. But you know what, I feel the same urgency all the rest of us feel about the salon work.  The world needs me (and every other dissonant voice) more than ever and I intentionally, consciously, don't hold myself back anymore.  This work, finding the inner resources to ask even when my ask is not done the way better people than me would do it, costs me.  My doing this ask, alone, is worth $3,000 bucks.

It felt like 'everyone' wanted to come to the salon but pay less than $280.  $280 for a four day event.  Even after I explained that the caterer cost $160 (which, of course, was not enough cause I overlooked sales tax), people would say "I can't afford to pay $120 for a four-day conference.  Even after I explained that the rent was $7,500 and all I was asking each person to do was pay $25 toward the rent, people asked and asked and asked for me.  I started out with $3,000, money donated by Michael/Tom/Peggy to the pay-it-forward fund.  I ended up giving away much more.  I tried to hold off giving scholarships, waiting to see if more people would come forward and pay $280. But as the salon drew nearer and we had empty spaces, I decided that having people who couldn't contribute to the rent but who felt clear calls to participate should be given money.  My $3,000 evaporated quickly.  My scholarship fund did not ever grow to where I thought it would be because 31 people paid $25 for the scholarship fund.  So I started giving away my miscellaneous administrative money.  My secret slush.

Giving away the 'secret slush' was really hard.  I didn't exactly see it as my compensation.  Part of my dreaming in asking for $40 for misc. admin was to have a surplus, to have more than what we minimally needed to have the salon.  So, when we weren't filling up and I was swamped with requests for financial aid, I thought "well, these people each have a call to show up." and I set aside my secret slush.  I gave it away.  Yes, I could have refused to give so much financial aid but, truly, each person asking for money had a clear call to show up.  That was one of the wonderful things about this work:  it was joyfully thrilling to feel people's call when they approached me for any reason.  Each time I gave away more than I had budgeted, I embraced abundance on behalf of the 'whole'. 

No one on the team ever asked me to just talk about what was going on.  It was very hard for me to do the work without having space to vent.  But it never felt like the planning calls were the place for that:  as I have said, most wanted to feel what wants to emerge and no one wanted to hear me talk about what was really happening.  This was very, very hard work for me. And I am not talking about the money:  what I was doing was fighting, really hard, to pull this thing together.  When someone like Michael said "we wouldn't be having the salon but for you", I don't think anyone realized the great inner fire I had to keep going to keep it together.  It is this work which I stridently insist has to be honored.  I feel just as passionately about 'what wants to emerge' as everyone else involved in this, what, this movement?

Who could I have chatted with?  I tapped my personal friends these past several months, telling each of them way more than they ever wanted to hear.  My team seemed to be always irritated with me.  No one ever called me and asked how things were going, except Susan.  I never felt an invitation to find space to hold the money collectively.  Gosh, this was a painful aspect of the work.  I would listen to the wonderful members of our team talk about collective consciousness but we never took the time in our weekly meetings to, for example, just check in with each other personally.  We got on the phone, got silent and got into the meeting.  The whole time I was mindful that it did not fit my view of evolution to create an evolutionary salon with a team that did not practice collective self care.  I was often the first person on the call and I tried, each week, to hurriedly ask personal questions of others, just to have some conscious warmth.  And I felt so dissed by the team, during those phone calls, almost any time I tried to bring up details.  Over and over, when I brought up logistics, someone would pause for a moment of silence so we could focus on the energy.  I could have done a better job of asking for what I needed but, you know what, no one ever really asked me what I needed until I spent three days in the ICU.  How evolutionary is that?

I thought often of Terri Anderson and the way she was not honored by the January participants.  Dirty dishes left on the floor of Thomas Barry Hall might be a little thing but it is a big thing, too. 

Am I being implacable?  Yes, I am. Am I being implacable lightly?  Not at all.  I long to give in, to step back from any payment, to make it easy.  I'd probably still get the money I want and it would make the other team members feel better.  I guess I chose to not be easy.

Peggy did a lovely thing in one of our circles at the salon:  she acted out giving birth, calling out all of its attendant pain.  We can all see how hard it is for Peggy to birth this thing.  Well, it was just as hard for me, maybe even harder, because I was sometimes down in the muck.  I manage my money energy very carefully and it was very, very, very draining for me to have repeatedly exchanges with people who said $280 was too much.  It was never a simple case of numbers.  I felt the other person's energy, I allowed it to waft through me, I held it, I worked hard.  We have to begin to see this kind of work as real work.  We have to create economic systems that recognize the real work that is done and not only the work that fits into economic boxes we already know.  I want to be paid for sitting in this fire for several months.  I know others sat in the fire.  They were each free to join me as I designed the budget and call out into the cosmos:  I, too, want to be paid for sitting in the fire on behalf of the whole. 

It was also very draining to be so alone in the work.  I can hear people saying I should have done something different.  Yes, I could have been different.  But I wasn't. 

Early on, when I talked about doing money differently, I see now, that most people heard what they wanted to hear, as people are wont to do.  I know that most of the team heard me explicate how, in a past workshop business, I had worked without secure payment in advance, working for self-determined fees.  In my mind, I was never working for free.  I was always working for ten bucks an hour, up to 300.   

I posted comments here on evolutionary nexus in which I flatly stated that I was not working as the hearthkeeper for the May salon for free.

I knew all along that the team had a wide range of attitudes, ideas, beliefs, etc. about how to do the money.  And I knew that there was a lot of unconsciousness about it.  Everyone was willing to avoid talking about money so long as there was no money and everything went smoothly.  Then, when we received payment (it was not a gift:  it was payment and our langauge that it was payment, not gifts was clear), everyone had their own ideas about what to do with it.

I guess my team expected me to be a little humbler.  No one questioned paying the caterer and yet they are surprised that I expect to be paid just as clearly as her.  Virtually everyone on the team has told me, individually but sometimes in group phone calls, that it is clear to them that but for my organizing, there would have been no May salon.  I'm not talking about the busy work of the last minute rush:  if I had not been holding the organizational piece so clearly back in February, back in March, we would not have had a salon.  Just as the salon would not work without paying the caterer or the landlord, the salon 'needed' my work.  No one had any right to assume I was working as a volunteer.

I am in a lot of pain today.  It's not that the team overwhelmingly resisted paying me that has me feeling so wounded.  It is that they do not see my brusqueness about it, my edginess around it for what it was:  my  determination to do the right thing, which is rooted in love.  It was my rigid determination that delivered this salon. 

Yes, it would be lovely if I were willing to accept less so I could make it possible to pay-it-forward.  But I feel, with a passion that consumes me, almost, that there can be no movement built on free labor.  There can be no movement built on a bunch of unconscious assumptions about money.  maybe I am wrong but I come from a place of a deep love for the field that startles me, rocks me.  It would be so much easier for me to make nice.  And I could make nice.  I am very poor and I can get along without this money.  My insistence is not about the money.  It is the love I have for the field.

How will we decide?  Here's what we did.  We asked people to check and see if they felt called to come up with a proposal to disperse the money.  These people will probably ask each person on the team what, if anything, they would like to be paid.  And these people will come up with a proposal.  It was a very difficult meeting because I do control the pursestrings and I have taken a pretty rigid position.  I think it looks to others like I am being emotional and defensive.  I am being emotional and defensive, but I am not defending myself against what I will be paid.  I am defending myself against my own impulse to be sweeter, to make nice, to suppress dissonance on behalf of the whole.  The heated energy I expressed during today's phone call was not because of my inability to control my reactions but because I am so determined to do what is right.

 Now I also happen to believe that everyone that wants to get paid should.  Since we did not raise enough money to, even, pay people ten dollars an hour, I don't think we should designate any to pay-it-forward.  Asking any member of the team to forgore payment in order to serve the future is, for me, a middle class luxury. Asking me to forego payment on behalf of a pay-it-forward impulse (keep in mind that my work is worth a whole lot more than ten bucks an hour and I have not asked to be paid $4,000+ but $3K), feels like forcing me to make a charitable contribution. 

In my mind's eye, we needed to receive $13,000 before I would consider pay-it-forward.  Taht would give us $10,000 to pay the 10 or so people who invested varying amounts of excellent work.

another thing working me is that I see no invitation, for me, anyway, for me to be involved in future work.  I am being asked to donate, essentially, payment for my excellent work to future salons that do not embrace me.   Even if I choose to believe there will be a place for me in future salon work (I do not assume this at all), I feel very strongly that I should not be forced to 'donate' money to the pay-it-forward fund by asking for less for myself.