A snail's pace

Today I attended a local nonprofit's volunteer orientation. I left the session feeling like I had learned a lot about this fantastic organization, and I also left feeling inspired and excited to get started with my duties--although it's probably a bad sign if a volunteer orientation doesn't   leave you feeling that way.  I believe strongly in the nonprofit's mission and am eager to play a role, however small, in making it happen.

I found myself thinking, I wish I would've known about this a long time ago, and then admitted that it had been on my radar for at least two years and maybe more, when I first learned of a colleague applying the same job skills I had to this volunteer opportunity.  It took me another year of deciding that it was just about time to file my volunteer application before I actually dropped it in the mailbox.  But there I was today, watching a videotape about the organization and feeling like a bozo for not taking action sooner.

And what makes my cheeks turn red is that I've ignored this lesson in the past.  For two years, I have been a mentor in a youth program with a physical fitness component.  I would, without exaggeration, call it life-changing and would also call it one of the most rewarding experiences that the last few years have held for me. Yet filling out that volunteer application also took a full year of seeing this program advertised at events, and that was the first experience where I really felt silly that my hemming and hawing about making the commitment had taken so long.

By now, the reader is probably urging me to get to the point and quit dawdling, which I find kind of ironic.  In some ways, my indecision has been healthy, because committing to something on an uninformed whim is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.  The absolute worst thing, I still believe, would've been to commit to a mentoring relationship, build trust, and then back out a few months later because of the time or challenge.  If I jumped on board every time I heard about a nonprofit doing good work in my neighborhood (or a kooky Community Ed class or neat triathlon club), I'd end up full of commitments to which I wasn't doing justice--the breadth, if you will, but not the depth.

But for all that time I spent mulling-but-not-acting, what did I have to lose?  Once I decided that I truly believed in the organizations I wanted to join, what was holding me back? The thought of trading a few weeknights per month and the boundaries of a cozy comfort zone?  We're talking about a two handfuls of hours per month here. I hope that as I get older, I'm able to sort out these types of decisions more readily, with quicker recognition of what is a good fit for my skill set and my values.

There's a crystal-clear test lurking in my short-term future, and it's utterly unrelated to social justice but serves as the potential hat trick for my mulling-but-not-acting tendencies.  There's a running club based in Minneapolis that looks great, and I've kept the club's flier for two years in my reference file pile.  Seriously, it says 2009 on it. I've held back for a number of reasons in the past: their workouts might not match my training schedule, I don't know anyone there, it's kind of far away (20 minutes), and of course, it might be hard.  Now that I've documented this habit in writing, it's time to break it. This summer, I'll join the darn running club, and I will keep my eyes open for other ideas that leave me feel like treading water with floaties on my arms instead of swimming.