Volunteerism.
Side Effects: persistent view
from under the bus.
Tag: volunteering
Pre-Auction Jitters
OMG. WHAT have I done? I can’t believe I’ve really agreed to let myself be auctioned off. I’ve gone from fearing that no one will bid on me to imagining the worst. 😦 Anyone out there know the play “Oklahoma“? Remember when they are auctioning off the picnic baskets??? OMG. What if Jud wants to buy me??? Where is Curly????? OMG OMG OMG.
And what do I WEAR???? Do I dress in my usual jeans and boots? Do I dress up? I’ll tell you right now – my son is not finding this humorous so do not even suggest slave silks as a joke. I am ransacking my inventory trying to find the appropriate attire.
I’ve made a list of my “talents”. 🙂 So if you buy me, here’s what you can get. Someone who can
I think there are probably other things I can do, within REASON, thank you very much! 🙂 , but that should be enough for a start.
Of course, that assumes that I can figure out what to wear and actually make it to the auction today at 1pm SLT. 🙂 Remember – it’s a good cause – raising money for Cancer Research UK. So even if you don’t want me, you may want someone else up on the block. Or you can just contribute for the cause! See you soon!
The View from Under the Bus
When we last saw our heroine, she was under the bus, contemplating trees, as the conference planning meeting drew to a close. 🙂
After the meeting I stick around. J has said that she will give me some help on how to build and she will show me what kind of trees she would like. 
Fine. I am a smart, competent woman who has friends who are SL builders. I can deal with this. I login to SL that night, race to the benches, break into the ongoing conversation shrieking “help help I need help!!!” LOL. Okay, that WAS an exaggeration. But it’s an accurate description of what I WANTED to do. Someone asks how I am this fine day and I explain how I have been run over by a bus. My friend S, a builder, tells me that there are lots of trees available for free. I explain that J doesn’t LIKE the free trees. SHE wants STRAYLIGHT-type trees. Everyone on the benches starts googling Straylight and saying “Oh”. They are saying “oh” in the tone of voice that indicates how big this bus is. 🙂 S tells me that she would love to help me but that it takes a lot of time to build a tree, and she really does not have the time right now. I smile bravely, say “No problem” and, like Scarlet, resolve to think about it tomorrow.
Tomorrow comes and I begin searching SLexchange for trees. I find several candidates that I think may be suitable. 
Class is okay. The BEST thing about it is that it is at the beach classroom at NCI. There is no music playing – only the sounds of the ocean waves and the wind. For an hour as I sat in class, my subconscious processed the beach sounds. All my tensions and stress began to melt away. Ah, there is NOTHING like a day at the beach. Anyway, back to class. It really didn’t teach me anything I hadn’t already picked up from watching tutorial videos online. It was extremely basic and slow. One of the fellow students was having great difficulty doing even the simplest tasks. But once class was over I went up to the teacher, S. I explained my predicament and showed her my newly-purchased tree.
S looked at my Spruce and told me 
Today was yet another planning meeting. J begins the meeting by talking to ME first – telling me that she got my emails and she will requisition $$$ for trees. Ouch. Right out there in the open, for everyone to hear. What I hear, whether or not that’s what J is saying, is that I failed. I am a little frustrated. As YOU all know – I have been trying very hard to come up with trees for this conference. I’ve not been sitting around doing nothing. A little voice in my left ear is saying “Whoopee!!!! We are saved! Give up this tree foolishness!” A little voice in my right ear is muttering “Hey. We can still do this. We have friends helping us and encouraging us. We have made great progress. Who does she think she IS taking away OUR little piece of the project???”. Okay, you already know which voice won. I open my mouth and tell J that I had friends offering to help me and to supply me with trees. That I thought I still would be able to provide trees for this conference. Oh Foolishness, Thy name is Ahuva! 🙂 So J got quite excited at that. I am still on the team. I am now running my own little nursery for the conference. I am to gather up my trees, place them in a corner of our sim, and everyone can come and take what they want and landscape their own sims. LOL. And the other people are STILL complaining about the quality of their (free) trees. Who was the genius who insisted on putting Straylight trees in our sim so that everything else will suffer by comparison????
Calling all copy/transfer trees, bushes and hedges!! Bring me a Shrubbery!!!
The hunt is ON!!!!!
Throwing Myself Under the Bus
I think I’ve proven by now that sometimes I really don’t know when to keep my mouth shut. 
You’d think I’d have learned. You’d think that I would have some small sense of self-preservation that would say “Ahuva – don’t, just don’t”. But no. That does not seem to be the case. I committed the cardinal sin the other day. I volunteered. Yep, I threw myself under the uncoming bus,my eyes wide open, believing somehow that I would emerge unscathed. I’d LOVE to blame my co-worker. In fact I tried, but in truth, said co-worker merely encouraged me to play in traffic. I wasn’t pushed. I jumped.
I work for a company that does some business in SL. I have joined the SL interest group, I’ve attended some meetings in-world. Now there is a conference being held in-world. I met one of the conference chairs, J, at a party in SL several weeks ago. I expressed an interest in being able to help, as much as a “dumb user” can help. So J suggested that I contact her via email in RL. I did so, and repeated that I was offering my “dumb user” help. Are YOU getting the point here??? Are you understanding the skill set involved???? Gee, I hope someone is. 🙂 Next thing I know I am on the list of mandatory attendees for the set-up meetings. Gulp. Okay, be careful what you ask for (yes – I DO know that is a dangling participle -ignore it). You just may get it. So I begin to attend the weekly hour-long meetings. These meetings have been a real-eye opener, but for reasons NOT related to SL. I’ll merely say it’s fascinating to watch how different groups approach the task of holding a conference.
So I bide my time quietly at these meetings. My biggest contribution up to last week was testing someone else’s script. LOL. A woman approached me and asked me to click on her name tag. I was supposed to receive her business card. Didn’t work. 🙂 Can I put “script debugging” on my resume now? 🙂 Then sometime last week J decided that we needed trees to make the conference location look more attractive. Fine, trees are nice, no big deal. Do you see the bus coming over the hill? 
Ahuva's Blog 