Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Goddammit, I Might Be Too Late

So the biggest event in my alumni club's calendar is coming up, and last night I went to Caffetto in order to finally post it.

It's happening in less than a month.  Is that bad?

I don't exactly know how I got to this point.  The party is not a once-in-a-lifetime thing.  It happens every year; I know it because I'm the one who plans it.  Moreover, this year the family who hosted it last year is hosting again.  While it was great to switch venues annually, last year I feared not being able to find one, and these guys did a spectacular job of throwing a party, and having someone I can (famous last words) rely on to do this important event is a huge burden off my shoulders.

But there is the process of promoting the thing, and I have to admit I think I dropped the ball.  The family formally agreed to hosting back in April.  I was able to submit the form to the alumni association just in time.  But I swear, and I continue to swear, that I needed an OK from them before I could start advertising this event.

Then ... well, life got in the way.  I needed to hear back from my contact, who isn't as on the ball as I need her to be.  Meanwhile I was working the Final Four, I had a trip to Dallas, then I picked up this night scoring job.  I can tell you that as I was in the mode of, "Wait until she gets back to me," I didn't give publishing the party online much of a thought.

Now that the night job is over at that we are past Memorial Day and into essentially summer, I had to revisit everything.  Last week I had finally gotten around to e-mailing my contact about an OK, and she still hasn't gotten back to me.  I got that itch of, "Oh, man, I need to do this, don't I?"  And then I sat down and looked at the date the hosts selected for the party.  Now, mind you, they had told me this before, but because I was in wait-and-see mode and I was doing other things, it occurred to me over the holiday that the party was happening ... in less than a month.

Fuck me.

I couldn't wait any longer.  I don't know if I had advertised this event with less than a month to go before, but it doesn't seem like it.  My anxiety went into overdrive when I realized that the event page I created (back in April, but again, I haven't advertised it) had zero RSVP'ing.  All these thoughts of no one showing up started filling my brain.  And finally, last night, I got around to publishing it on all our social media platforms.

My God, I might already be too late.  I already got one no.  Another person said he would have come had I advertised it sooner.  And then we got into a back-and-forth of how could I have not told people about this until now.  Man, I really don't have time for him to bust my balls.  It is just extremely difficult for me to live my life while at the same time organize all this.  This is where I could use, really use, another person to help run the club.  But nope, it's just me.

Meanwhile, I need to admit something: Looking back, I'm not sure if there is an OK I need from the alumni association after all.  I've always believed I needed one, but thinking back ... you know, did I wait for an answer in previous years?  I don't fuckin' know, man.

I got it all done last night.  There's nothing more I can do now.  It's not as if I can create a time machine like Ant-Man and redo everything.  But while I have a sense of accomplishment, I need to bring myself down to reality: There is a possibility that I posted this so late that everyone who could have come have already made alternate plans, and that -- Christ -- no one will show up.  And then the host will be disappointed in me about how she thought I was going to take care of everything and obviously didn't.  And then I will shrug my shoulders and say, "Well, I did my best," and I'll do it with such insincerity that both of us know I don't believe what I'm saying.

I fucked this up.  Totally fucked this up.

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