Mistakes were made

Mistakes were made, and I'm mostly just glad that the biggest ones weren't made by me. I did make a few though, chief of which was the assumption that people who respond to an email with "Looks great! Go for it!" have actually READ the thing I'm asking them to approve. Turns out – not so much.

The events of this week have made me so, so, SO SO SO VERY GLAD I did not quit my job to take the job I almost took last month. You may recall I'm still doing some work for the second organization on the side, and even just a few hours a week has been enough to reveal that it's even more shambolic than I had realized – shambolic being a word I just learned while trying to look up the difference between "unorganized" and "disorganized."

It's good that I keep copies of everything. I have emails that clearly show where the oversights occurred, and that might will be useful in helping people understand what happened (and that it was not all my fault). It doesn't solve the real problem, though, which is that this project was already behind schedule before I even became involved, and figuring out what went wrong or even getting a partial credit from the printer cannot change the fact that the success of the thing was largely dependent on the timing – which there is no way to fix. It's too late and that's all there is to it.

And it is satisfying in a way to find an email that shows the mistake that was being yelled about today was actually caused by the person who did the yelling ... But I'm not looking forward to telling her that. I'll have to be very straightforward and diplomatic to be able to explain what happened without appearing to be pointing fingers, or shirking responsibility for my mistakes (even though this one was not mine).

Meanwhile I'm back to 40+ hours a week at my regular gig, at least for the next several weeks, so it suddenly doesn't make a lot of sense to be piling on the side projects again. Knowing this is only a small auxiliary source of income takes a lot of the pressure off – I'm not dependent on the money, so my main motivation is just to do my best work and help the group.

I guess that's why I'm feeling bad about this tonight. I want the project to go well, and it isn't. I'm doing all I can, and it isn't enough. They really need someone who can devote themselves full-time to the work, and that person ain't me. The only reason I'm still working with them at all is to try to help them through the interim until they find someone to hire ... and I was clear that I couldn't commit a lot of time.

This is an organization I've been involved with for more than ten years and I'm suddenly remembering all the friends who've worked for it for awhile, then quit citing burnout due to these same kinds of problems. Hrmm.

Well, we'll see what happens. Right now I have some press releases to write.