Worst Advice Ever

Last spring, I wrote a blog entry called "Just Say YES!" It was all about stepping out of your comfort zone and taking on new responsibilities and really throwing yourself in and becoming involved. However, there was one problem: It was written in the middle of my light teaching semester, when a lot of activities were in a lull. I have since concluded that trying to take on everything all at once is the WORST ADVICE EVER.

It is now the beginning of the school year, both for myself and the kids, and I am finding myself with a lot of new responsibilities this year. Some of them (such as serving as the chair for an entire section of a national professional organization), I am terrified about and have no idea what I am doing. Others of them (such as serving as a senator on the university's Faculty Senate), I fear will be a greater time commitment than I had hoped. And it's not that any of my commitments by themselves are onerous - it's just that all together, I am feeling so overwhelmed that I fear I am going to not get everything I need to done, let alone actually do a decent job.

I tried to make a list of ongoing commitments that I have, outside of work (which are many) and children (which involve much chauffeuring) to see if I could pare back on anything. These include:

- Teaching Sunday School twice a month at church.
- Serving on the stewardship and finance committee at church.
- Playing in the bell choir at church.
- Serving on the vision committee at church.
- Serving as the Financial Treasurer of our university's United Methodist campus ministry (please God, don't let me screw anything up)
- Serving as the Secretary of Daniel's school's PTO, which includes all of the beginning-of-the-year membership processing and making the entire school directory (please God, don't let me enter anyone's phone number wrong)
- Trying to initiate a Wednesday night book study at church
- Participating in a monthly book club (which shouldn't feel like a "commitment," but adds to my guilt)
- Serving as the Treasurer for the local Crop Walk

In the past month, I did give up teaching children's church at church and serving as the leader of the church ladies' group at church, so I was thinking that I would be in better shape than I am. I just feel like I am going to drown and the semester has barely started!

"Just Say YES!" is great advice if you have unlimited time and energy. But as someone whose resources seem to be more finite than I realized, I think it actually might be terrible advice. This fall semester, "Just Say NO!" might have to become the stand-in instead. ;)

Uninvited

When I was in second grade, we lived in Seattle. My best friend was a girl in my class named Wendy. Wendy's birthday was coming up and she was discussing possible party dates, and I informed her that one of the potential dates would not work because I had a dance recital that same day. When the day came that she passed out invitations to some of the other classmates, I was distraught because I was not invited - even though I had already told her I could not attend if it was on that date. And what is really sad is that despite the fact that this happened 30 years ago, I can still remember my embarrassment and disappointment at being "uninvited" vividly.

I read an excellent blog post today on how parents (especially moms) may be unwittingly contributing to kids feeling left out through "suburban social engineering." It was a great read and made me really think - is this something that I have contributed to? Examples that come to mind include:

• When my children were younger, we would invite the entire preschool class to their birthday parties, but this led to my children declaring that such parties were "too crazy" and they wanted a smaller group. Parties are now much smaller and more intimate - but with a higher potential that someone could feel left out. 
• We had an off-to-middle school pool party for any girls starting at our local middle school - but did not invite boys, because my daughter wanted to limit its size and thought that would be a good cut-off. However, my daughter's closest friend is a boy, meaning that she didn't end up inviting the person she is closest to. 
• I love sharing pictures. I know I have shared pictures on Facebook of when our kids had friends over, or when we got together with a group of people, meaning by definition I was sharing about a situation when not everyone was included. 

So what can we do? I realize that this is part of life, and obviously not everyone can be invited to everything all the time. Spending time one-on-one with others or in smaller groups foster intimacy and bonding in a way that large groups cannot. But I think that making a conscious choice to include others and to be cognizant of when others may be excluded may go a long ways to making others sure that others don't feel "uninvited." And I would love to hear any solutions! 

How do you handle feelings of being "uninvited," either for yourself or in unwittingly causing it among others?