vivdunstan

About 48 hours after stepping down from my previous volunteer position, I've as-formally-as-I'm-going-to taken up a new one.

The queer club I've written about a bunch, where I've made friends and felt part of a community again in a way that was so desperately needed and so good for me after The Other Events of March 2020, had been run by two people out of the goodness of their heart and very little else about two and a half years ago. It was only this summer that they started saying it'd be nice to have a little group of people to help do things like arrive early, set up the room we rent in the community center and stuff like that, and in the last few months a dozen or so of us have done various things (someone procures tea and biscuits, someone knows the code to get in, I am good at setting out tables and chairs and stacking them away again neatly at the end of the evening...)

It's reached the point where our two original organizers want to step back entirely from running things and just be regular attendees of the club, and a handful of us have offered to do that. So tonight those two and four of us had a video meeting for them to share the details of how to book the room, what the password is for the e-mail account, one of us taking over looking after the money, all that kind of stuff. Also when is the Christmas party going to be.

Of course I took notes and of course I tidied them up and circulated them immediately after the meeting.

For all I adore the two founders, I don't begrudge them their break before they can come back and make use of their projects and ideas because they don't have to run up every month and look after all the admin and stuff.

I love the vibe of this, everyone's happy to pitch in. At the Christmas party someone's going to teach us BSL "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" and we're going to wear cozy cardigans and have home-baked treats and maybe mulled apple cider [USian meaning of the word, it's a sober space too which is also great]. Onward and upward, queer club!

I was so busy talking about other things yesterday that I entirely missed something I wanted to say.

It's been something like three and a half years...yes I just went and checked, March 2022, I know it wasn't long before I got offered the job I now have (which was May of that year) because it was important that I was still so-underemployed-I-basically-unemployed, pretty much working as a favor to the friends I was working for, and really struggling with job hunting and interviews.

That chance meeting with someone who I got along with so well and who was so complimentary to me meant so much.

Things quickly got complicated and then the rest of my life got more complicated -- I remember having phone calls about the CEO recruitment while I was in Bournemouth for the work conference that I basically abandoned halfway through to deal with the ticket office closure campaign, still the biggest thing I've dealt with at work, and I'd been there barely a year at the time.

I did present at the board and staff away day that summer about EDI; amid people who could really do finance and governance and stuff I felt like such a lightweight with my focus on inclusivity and lived experience and all that, but everyone was supportive and flattering about absolutely everything that I did as a member of that board of trustees. I learned a hell of a lot -- including getting my first experience of being on the other side of a job interview, so soon after I was lambasting them, which was really interesting and did end up useful at work where I've been part of a few recruiting processes since.

Around the new year, with the sad loss of Gary and the impending Trump doom and the potential to lose my job or face a much-changed workplace and my grandma in hospice care, I reached a point where something had to give and it turned out to be this. I e-mailed the new CEO and said I thought I'd have to step down. She was very kind and said that if I could hang on until the end of my term, which them understanding my reduced capacity, it'd make various things easier for them. Since this meant probably no more than attending a few online meetings and the occasional e-mail, I said I was happy to give it a try. I did make an attempt to meet them on this summer's away day, as I was in London that day anyway for work, but it didn't end up happening and that was fine.

Monday was the AGM at which I and the long-time treasurer stepped down: our terms had ended, his job was more demanding now, and I was sad to go but feeling sufficiently battered by the year that I know I made the right decision; I already feel bad that I wasn't able to give this more time and attention in 2025. The outgoing treasurer said his little piece and left the Teams meeting, and then I quickly burbled something about how much this has meant to me, how much I appreciated having been brought in (sadly the person who did so has not been able to be part of the organisation for some time themselves, so they were not able to hear me say this) and how much of a difference it had made to my

They also got me a free Audible credit as a leaving present, which is a perfect gift for me in that I like audiobooks, maybe not enough to faff around setting up an Amazon account (I had shared Andrew's, back in the day, so already lost access to years of Audible subscription that way, sigh), but the thought really does count. When I wrote back to the CEO to thank her/everyone for it, she replied not only being gracious about that but also saying "I was touched by what you said about the impact for you of becoming a trustee and wondered if you might be willing to write a paragraph that we might use when we’re recruiting trustees again or for our Trustees report? It would be great to capture as a quote if that’s possible?"

Yeah, I am very happy to write them a paragraph. Least I can do.