I love my job. I really do. Let me rephrase that, I love MY job. I love what I do. But man, sometimes I really, really hate my field. I'm not talking about just substance abuse, I'm talking about the Non-Profit and Prevention worlds in general. Why?
Because 95% of the time 95% of the people in this field do absolutely nothing. No, really. They sit around and talk about this meeting they went to, this other really cool meeting they are going to next week where they get to listen to some suits talk about the meetings they've been going to for the past couple of months. Oh, oh, then there are the "strategic planning sessions" where people sit around a table and talk about some general ideas and themes about things that should change in the community, and who should be at the table who isn't at the table, and how we'll communicate to the community how we just had this strategic planning session, blah, blah, blah. But then, nothing fucking happens. There isn't a point where somebody actually straps some boots on, goes somewhere, and does something that produces something tangible.
Unfortunately, I have to go to these meetings about meetings and strategic planning sessions about bullshit that nobody will ever do. It's part of the job. It's part of the dog and pony show. I just sit there, I'll throw a couple morsels of input, you know, just to make it look like I give a shit about their useless nonsense, and then I go back to my office to work.
Yes, WORK. I'll go through the afore-described motions, but I'm also going to get some stuff done too. And thankfully, there are enough people like me who actually find a way to cut through that crap, that we actually can get some stuff done. I just did this collection thing where we got half a ton of expired or unwanted meds out of peoples homes. It took me one, ONE meeting to get that shit organized. Some phone calls, e-mails, and then just some good old-fashioned elbow grease and feet hitting the pavement to make it happen.
I didn't need to have meetings to schedule meetings. I didn't need to review minutes. I didn't need to go through some bullshit strategic planning session. We sat down, said A, B, and C need to happen, and Joe, Mary, and Bob are going to do those things.
They say talk is cheap. No, it isn't cheap. It's expensive. It wastes large amounts of time where people should be doing stuff. If we don't have the money to do something, if we don't have the leverage or sway to do something, if we don't have the capacity to do something....forget about it. Just fucking forget about it. I'd love to change the world too, but goddamn it didn't you notice it's kinda big?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have vision and goals. Certainly we should. But we need to have a better balance between talking about them and actually doing them. Because pretty soon enough is going to be enough and I'm just going to troll the fuck out of these meetings with puns. I mean, if I'm going to be stuck in these things where nothing gets accomplished, I'm going to need to call upon my other talents to contribute to the work of doing no work.
:mittens:
I average 4.5 meetings per workday, that each average 1.5 hours. This leaves me 1.25 hours to actually get things done.
Most of the time, the meetings are in my office, such as right now. They think I'm taking minutes.
I'm not.
Fuck yeah, RWHN. This is exactly why I couldn't stomach the corporate food world. Tell me what my end goal is, give me some basic guidelines as to what is or is not considered acceptable means to reach that goal, and then leave me the fuck alone.
:mittens:
It's to your credit that you can be that nimble in that sort of environment.