History

History shows me what came before and helps me determine what I will do in the future. When you start a new organization, there isn't a history other than your previous experience. But we're now in the business of creating our own history so while I can look to my experiences and use them to build this new thing, I can't use them to determine what the outcome in this particular situation will be...and it's frustrating. When one week is spectacular, we're packed, the place is humming and hopping and the following week is slow...I don't know, is it the weather? Is it a review? Is it the stock market?

Next year, I'll be able to look back at this year and say to myself, "well, it was a holiday weekend or we had 10 feet of snow (don't even get me started on the plowing!)" but this year, I'm flying blind. How do you plan for that? KL tells me to relax and he's not the only one to give me that advice but there are people relying on this to work...staff, apprentices, volunteers, the community and sometimes the pressure is so heavy. I want to be proactive and not reactive. I want to be able to make the right decisions at the right time for the right reasons. And I want the decisions to create the history that we've planned for and not blow up all the landmines along the way...because that's going to be painful.

I suppose I want to be able to know the future even though I know that's not possible. Don't all the self-help books say that you have to allow yourself to make the best choices that you can given the knowledge that you have in that moment? I don't actually read self-help books...perhaps it was an episode of Survivor or maybe a Tracy Chapman song.

So where does that leave me...should I work harder? Of course that is a given because I won't squander this opportunity but what is the answer here? Is it me, is it my choices, is it structural...is there even a solution that I can put in place to solve my dilemma? Gandhi said, "A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history." I have that but will it be enough? Maybe I'll leave it in Gandhi's hands for tonight.