Lap Wars and Walking

This morning's Matty lesson: affectionate kitties and laptop computers don't behave very well together.

We're off this morning to the new school's Walk-A-Thon fundraising extravaganza. We didn't ask very many sponsors, but hopefully it's "enough". It's so amazing to be involved in a school with such a strong sense of community, there really seems to be a much higher level of parent/family involvement here than we have ever experienced before. Today should be fun. I plan to walk with my daughters, at least as far as the younger one can walk! I might relax in my lawn chair after she gives up...

There will probably be some hard emotions for me today. I make beaded jewelry as a hobby that might be growing into a small business, and I donated some jewelry to today's silent auction. I'm happy with the necklace/earring sets that I made for them, they turned out really nice. The hard thing will be handling the feedback that I get from people, especially in this type of situation. I donated jewelry to a fundraiser a few years ago, and it becomes a very weird headtrip to see people competing to try to win something (or not competing to try to win it, as the case might be!). It turns what are already challenging emotions - handling people's feedback about something creative that I have done - into something very challenging, when it's almost like they are voting for how much they like it.

You know - in writing that paragraph, I was able to better define for myself why this is challenging for me. I think that really admitting that it feels like I am watching people vote for the popularity of the thing that I have made was key. Putting it in those terms highlights the absurdity of the situation, and should allow me to let go of it a little bit more. That, and maybe I just won't walk through the silent auction tables very much!