I went and did it. I ran for President of the French American club, and was elected.
What followed was a sleepless night wondering what in the world I got myself into!
I'm more serene about it now, although I'll admit that there's some stressful conflict with the previous president who as remained in the bureau. He's a single university professor in his 50's who is pretty old school (he thinks it's a bad idea to let club members post freely in the private Facebook group because "They can just post anything") and also not very open to imagining other people's needs and desires (he's done 0 to accommodate families and kids or people living far from Toulouse).
Having received the club's archives, I've seen a couple lists of former board members an active members, and it's a bit disheartening to realize that most of the people who were active in the past are no longer involved in the club. It's normal for some turn-over to happen and for people to leave the club if their social circle has developed (at a certain point you want to spend time with your friends, not always make new ones), but I'm worried people have been burned out by serving on the board and quit the club (I'm mostly worried because I could see that potentially happening to me...).
But let's focus on the positive: several of the participants in my workshop "How to find a job in France for Americans" have since joined the club. Other new members, and even some members from several years ago, have (re)joined. And I'm making progress on organizing an Easter arts and crafts event. I have also had positive feedback from some various businesses and groups I've contacted.
And a quick round-up of my other news:
My husband "forced" me to pick a new sewing machine for my birthday: a Pfaff Ambition 1.0. So far I'm really happy with it, although I need to schedule a session or two with the dealership to learn more about the complicated features (it has a screen to program a series of stitches; I think it could make coffee if it tried). It's amazing all the stuff it can do, and I'm trying to focus on making time for sewing (not always easy!).
I updated my computer system (Mac), and Apple Mail doesn't have an RSS feature anymore! Which means I have to find a new way to read my blog feeds. I have put in about 5 minutes of research so far, which means of course I have not found my substitute system. If anyone has any recommendations, I'm all ears.
I'll be going to Greece for the first time in late June/early July for work, and my husband should be able to tag along since the trip includes a weekend during which I won't have any work obligations.
Speaking of work, there are more days I hate it than days I feel like I"m being useful and actually contributing to something. I'm thinking more and more seriously about learning to code and working in something related to programming or data analysis. Friday afternoon I had nothing to do, so I started on a Python tutorial. Maybe PHP next?
4 comments:
Way to go on becoming the president! I wish you lots of luck in making the group active and fun!
I use Feedly for my RSS feed. I've been using it for years and honestly haven't looked for any other tool, but it's simple and nice looking, and I've never had a problem with it. My husband (a web geek) uses it as well.
P.S. My husband is a web developer and mainly focuses in PHP specific languages. Lots and lots of work out there.
I use feedly to do my rss feeds these days.
I use an Apple plug-in called RSS Bot that goes in my menu bar. It has trouble automatically finding feeds on websites but I usually manage to figure out the address myself.
Good job on becoming president of an association. I hope you'll find motivated people to help you out with it. I say that because I have suddenly become way more involved in a rock climbing association than I intended, as secretary, because we find ourselves temporarily without a president. It's a mixed bag. We're also learning about the parents/nannies' association we belong to as parents of a child who goes to a nanny and man, I think there's always a stubborn ex-president to be found. Club life is complicated.
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