Today’s artwork: a set of gluebook pages for a blue challenge on the Facebook gluebooks group. Probably not great moments in art, but I’m glad I finally made myself do some pages for a challenge there. The group is getting a little bit more active, which is always sort of a rolling snowball. More activity begets more activity. Contributing to the snowball is a positive thing.
On the flip side, after only a month, I decided to close the mixed-media mail art group I started on Facebook, just as soon as the open projects wind down. The group quickly became a time suck for me, which is a shame. I felt good about taking on swap organization, but instead of making it easier to keep track of projects, Facebook made it harder and more chaotic. I work really hard to keep chaos out of my life, because I need order to stay happy and productive. People signing up for projects and disappearing always sort of makes my head explode. People signing up for projects, disappearing, and causing their swap partners to hammer me with private messages expecting me to hunt them down, solve their problems, and make them responsible citizens was more than I could take.
It always mystifies me when people expect me to be The Mom, even when I’m the organizer of things like groups or projects or whatever. I’m a very self-sufficient kind of girl. If I have a question, I grab my phone or my keyboard, and Google. If someone makes a reference to something I don’t recognize, I Google. If I want to know where to buy something, I Google. I generally give links in reply to questions about how to do or where to find, rather than answering in writing myself, to encourage people to look for those answers themselves next time. Because they’re out there. All of them. All the answers to all the questions are out there. You just have to type the right words into the right search box.
For some reason, I attract a lot of people who are the opposite of self-sufficient. I attract people who are needy. Not that all of you who have managed to read this far are needy. In fact, if you read this far, you probably aren’t needy, unless someone else is reading this to you because you aren’t good with computers, couldn’t find your glasses, and really have trouble with all those words.
Anyway. I seem to attract people who need me to solve whatever problems are arising that day. Can’t figure out how to use a Facebook group with your phone? Ask Lisa! Never mind that I have a different phone, and use a different app, and that Facebook looks completely different on my phone. Never mind that it would be faster to Google how to do whatever it is than wait for me to come online, see the comment, and say that I don’t use your phone or your app, so you should probably Google it. Can’t find the mailing address for your swap partner? Please do send me a message saying it’s not on the mailing list and ask me what to do, rather than figuring out on your own that the next logical step would be to send a message to that partner asking for it.
So. Perhaps I should stop putting myself in situations where I am The Mom, because it’s not good for me. That might mean not organizing swaps or groups for a while. I need less of the chaos that attracting needy people brings. I need more strong, self-sufficient people around me while I’m solving my problems. If anyone knows how to attract them, please let me know…