One day...

Every year, I plan some big event and then a few days before it, I'm stressed and I keep asking myself, "Why??? Why did I do this to myself?" But you know what, in the end it's all worth it.

Two years ago, our Spring Break Service Trip was that event. Last year, we did another service trip AND I decided to organize this Invisible Children Challenge...adieu having a life. Haha. This year, it's Service Splash.

We started planning during RA Training. Since I work in a new residence hall (did I mention that yet? The building just opened this Fall. 1,000 residents, 2 professional staff members, 20 RAs, 6 themed lounges, a convenient store, a fitness center and aerobics room, a game room, an active swimming pool and a lazy river.)...anyway, since it's a new building, my colleague and I wanted to start some new tradition. Service Splash will hopefully become that. The idea is to do service for a month or so and then celebrate with a party/concert by the pools.

Our RAs were excited. I told them I could bring in two bands (yeah, I have some connections there...LoL). They picked the service organizations and the activities: making teddy bears for children in hospitals and collecting food and hygiene items for a youth center for teens that identify as LGBTQ.

We started off strong. Everyone was excited. We had high goals - maybe a little too high goals. Then, the event came closer and closer. We weren't getting the number of donations we'd been hoping for. Our "sewing parties" for making teddy bears had low turnouts. And my and my colleague's staff didn't get along anymore. We had a huge argument over t-shirts...his staff wanted to order shirts (and I totally agreed with them...haha...I mean, we had an offer for getting t-shirts made for $10 each...with three different colors...you can't do better than that!) and my staff wanted to make shirts (which would still cost $6) or not have shirts at all. The t-shirts really weren't the reason for the argument - there's been a lot of hidden tension, mostly due to personal issues - but it was the last straw on the camel's back. My staff had been grumpy and unmotivated for a while and this didn't help.

Some of the returners decided to take some initiative (good) and come up with a plan (also good), but chose not to involve me at all (not so good), which led to them coming up with some pretty unrealistic plans (bad). They presented it at a tension-filled staff meeting (argh) and then got frustrated when I had to shoot some of their ideas down (in the nicest and politest way possible).

And here is where my own stubbornness came in. I was not going to let this event fail. I've spent too much time and effort on it myself, not to speak of all the money we were spending on it, and the fact that I'm friends with the bands who're coming down for the event and I will not let them play at a catastrophic event. So I couldn't to work, to fix, to problem-solve, to promote...sleep has been optional lately, weekends have been filled with work-related tasks.

And now it's one day before the event. It's 1:50 am and I'm about to crash for the night (my body doesn't agree with this sleep-being-optional thing...I guess I'm getting old). I still need to clean my apartment (the guys in the bands are staying over in my apartment), I need to put up some more posters tomorrow morning (they really should have gone up tonight but that just wasn't going to happen), I need to iron a bunch of clothes (just did laundry), I need to do some more laundry and I need to go shopping (I don't think the guys would appreciate the lack of food in my fridge...and the few things that are in there are all Vegetarian meals). And then there's of course the shopping for food for the event, going over the script with our MCs, organizing the raffle prizes, and and and.

And of course tomorrow (or really later today), I'm in the office in meetings from 9 am until 5 pm, then I have a quick break, then another meeting at 7 pm and then one at 9:15 pm. Yeah, that'll leave me lots of time to work on that to-do list mentioned above...argh. Oh well, what can you do?

But you know what? In the end it'll be worth it. Because we have made over 100 teddy bears for children in hospitals AND we have collected almost 600 items for the youth center. AND I know once the bands start playing at the event on Wednesday, I'm going to have a blast.

But next year, someone please remind me not to get myself into one of these large-scale projects again! Thanks! ;)