To be sick of carrying people? (Long and ranty)

[PrincessTeacake]

I will admit that I tend to burn the candle at both ends at times, I have a lot of hobbies and I get very passionate about them, getting involved in a big way in any community activities.

A few years back I got involved with an indie media publication. The man who owned the company hadn't published a single issue until I joined, after I did he published five issues. I did his accounting (though it was never my job) smoothed over issues he had with the other members of the team, travelled across the country for the work and even managed to finagle us a table at a trade show when he argued with the people who were going to share their tables with us and they changed their minds. He repaid me by making me work the table all day without a break. I left shortly afterwards, he's not published a thing since.

After that I was recruited to work on a community event. It was hampered from the get-go by a lunatic who did nothing in the time leading up to the event but tried to grab all the glory for herself, and meddled in every single thing I tried to get done, including taking over writing up the event schedule that required me to be in three places at once. When it was over, she brought up false legal charges against two of the members of the committee to get rid of them. It backfired, she was thrown off the committee, but it should have been nipped in the bud early on.

The following year at the same event, we had two members who together were just as bad as the previous lunatic. One was a misogynistic pervert who refused to work with anyone he didn't find attractive, treated our volunteers like dirt and deliberately sabotaged a lot of the things I was running because he wanted my job. The second guy was in charge of our special guests, he refused to introduce the guests to the rest of the committee and was horribly rude to one of them. He also insisted on the schedule being changed multiple times for no proper reason. Both of them got drunk on one of our busiest nights in a room that was full of people's stock to be sold the next day and could have been damaged. The perv pissed off our volunteers so much they went on strike, leaving me to run a room full of 1500 people by myself.

I should mention that at that time of this event, I was recovering from a pulmonary embolism and still on a lot of medication. I have fibromyalgia and was struggling with mobility problems through the whole event, and was put on a drip when it was all over. Like the previous year, if the person in charge had have put his foot down, none of this would have happened. I left a week after the event and in the following two years, the event has been taken over by the perv and run straight into the ground.

Now I'm involved with a different event, for the second year, and it looked like things were going to be different. The committee were mostly women and we were all friends at the start. Last year was the biggest and most active year we had and this year is shaping up to be big too, but I'm running into the same bloody problems again.

I was the only person recruiting volunteers and as a result, we have very few. I resorted to begging my friends for help and promising I'd make it up to them later. When I asked another committee member why she hadn't recruited anyone, her response was 'lol, I thought you had a posse'. Both herself and the committee chairperson are running trader stalls, which is ridiculous because they'll have no time for anything else. One committee member is asking to do sweet FA because she's six weeks pregnant. Fair enough, but I'd given her almost nothing to do in the first place.

I am just getting really sick of having to do all the work in these situations. I know I'm volunteering and I could leave if I wanted to, but I want to make these events a good experience for the people that attend and pay good money to attend them, but why the hell do these other people get involved if they don't want to do the work?

Sounds like you need to get out of this. Any chance you could go into paid (commercial/government) event management? No pissing about with volunteers, and a commercial incentive to at least try to be long term!

Or else set something up from the beginning, so it is yours and you can fire/kick out anyone who is behaving like this? Your main problem, after all, seems to be spineless "management", who let all sorts of shit run things into the ground.

Weird hobby though I dont really understand what the hobby is. Do you think you get too carried away with things that others see as an interest you develop into a crusade. Cant you just take up golf or something.

I think i know you ..........

And this is all voluntary? Sheesh.

Honestly? I think you need to learn to walk away from situations like this before they get really bad and impact on your health. I know you want to help the community but I don't think anyone in the community would want you to be going through all this nonsense on their behalf.

You can usually tell pretty early on whether people are going to be awful, that's the time to be assertive and walk away if things can't be fixed.

If you want to volunteer perhaps it's better joining up with some established and well-run organisations?

That's entirely possible, catinabox, I do talk about the embolism quite a bit because it nearly killed me. And if you were at the same event I was at recently in Coventry, you probably heard me mention it then....

I like working on these things, I like giving back to my community and it gives me a chance to be creative, as well as a nice feeling that I've achieved something when the attendees have a good time. Plus the events raise money for charity and I'm very passionate about that. But I keep running into people who seem to be mostly in it to get (female) attention but don't want to do any actual work.

OK, you need to sit down and think about why you do this. this isn't a job, you aren't paid, you chose to do all this work and put yourself through a lot of stress over and over. I do understand wanting to complete something once you've started, but why do you then volunteer again the following year? What do you get from it?

I would hazard a guess you enjoy being the one who isn't useless, the one who makes it work.

I don't think you are able to stop doing this now, because you're unlikely to be the sort of person who can just let things fall apart (mind you, the others might step up if you don't do it all). However, can you give yourself a break? Perhaps refuse all event involvment for 12 months. Just go to events and enjoy them, not run them.

This sounds like a classic case of being treated how you allow yourself to be treated - if you are the one who always bends to the will of others, then they will always assume that you will pick up their slack. I think you need to make your expectations clear and state from the outset that you won't be involved unless x, y or z happens and mean it.

You sound very driven - which is good - and a bit obsessive -not so good...

When you work with other people, whether in a paid work environment, or voluntary (I've done both) you are always going to be dealing with people different to you, work-wise, idea wise....

The fact that you have a health issue is not a good sign.
Could it be the effects of stress?

Do you like being in charge of everything and feel if you are not there everything will fall apart? i.e. are you a control freak?

Take a step back, take a break, do some yoga or something. It won't all fall apart without you. Other people will just step up. Life is change too.

If you feel guilty about dropping out if/ kucking up a stink in the middle of events which benefut tge community, it's time to re-view it from a diffrrent angle.

Going along with the wankers, not challenging the pervs and letting the weak "managers" coast (nit challenging the wankers either, nor ensuring that things get done) have the following negative effects for the community:

• enables pervs and attention/seeking but lazy arses and manipulators to flourish (unjust, innit?)

• devalues the "cause"

-pisses off and demoralises volunteers. Not only are these people probably undeserving of such treatment, they may be trying to better themselves through volunteering (so it's not just a nebulous "community" suffering, but, say an unemployed young person with little CV experience, an underemployed single parent calling in childcare favours to try to network into a better job, an older person struggling to keep a CV "fresh" after redundancy, or someone just like you, who wants to take part in community events).

• pissed off volunteers can be "lost" to that cause, and to other causes, as they withdraw their help from charity/ community altogether

Sorry that's rather harsh, but it seems you're not listening to your experience, to your own body and to the interests of others around you. My mother does a lot of volunteering and doesn't tolerate bullshit like this, so she's generally fairly happy!