No Favors Right Now

I feel summer ending fast.  It’s not that I have been driving back and forth to school for sports or working on the Welcoming dinners for new families at Carter’s school that make me feel this way, no it’s the requests for help, favors and volunteering that have started streaming in that gives me that the-vacation’s-over feeling.

Today I purposely did not look at my e-mail from the time I woke up until three in the afternoon.  I wanted a small break from life.  Now of the 212 emails most were junk and were quickly deleted.  One was from a long lost, I mean like 34 years lost, friend catching me up on her mesmerizing life’s story of marriages, children and spies.  That was an e-mail worthy of my time and one that deserves a really good and well thought out response.  Then there were the requests.  Pleas for help, hands, money, words, time and ideas.  I counted.  Twenty-eight different people were asking me to do something for them or their organization, friend, kids or group.

On a request-by-request look most of them were not too difficult or potentially time consuming, but added together they would take a significant amount of time. Remember these were just the requests that came in the last fifteen hours.  I have not responded to any of them yet, but am tempted to not respond to any.  Is this incredibly selfish?

A few years ago when I got into volunteer overload I created a new rule for myself – The One Year In Advance Rule.  Whenever anyone asked me to volunteer for something I told him or her I needed one year’s notice of the request and even then it did not guarantee that I would say yes.  It was a way of gauging if I actually was interested in helping and really had the time.  The One Year Rule worked for a while, but then I would find myself saying yes to things because a very good friend would ask me or I knew it was an easy job I could get done quickly.

I am a lot less likely to say yes to things that require a lot of meetings.  I am easily frustrated by people who go on and on in meetings and I hate to be the bitch that I really am.  Going to a badly run meeting will ensure some wolverine like transformation and I may lash out at a poor unsuspecting, but well-meaning dolt.

One reason I do favors and volunteer is that I also ask people to do things for me and the organizations I work with so I don’t want to burn any bridges, but I’m not sure if the teeter totter is even.  The only thing I do know is that if you have asked me for something recently I might not be getting back to you any time soon and for that I am sorry.  If your request came via e-mail I’m sure that by now it has fallen so far down the e-mail rabbit hole that I have forgotten and am never going back to reread all the requests.  It is easier to ask someone for something in e-mail and it is easier for it to get missed that way.  So I am posting this as a public message not to be asked for any favors for at least the next month.  Please don’t take it personally; I think my plate is full.