Grant Update

Today I got an email stating that we made it past the initial step in the grant process (for the Dallas Women's Foundation grant that I was stressing over about a month ago) and will be scheduled for a site visit within the next couple of weeks. On one hand this is very exciting. On the other hand I am extremely nervous because our group has been struggling since the Christmas break. With all the scheduling changes, I haven't really gotten a consistent group back in place. I also tried to expand our meetings to Mondays and Tuesdays after school so that we could have more time for reading, discussion, and blogging...but so far, that is not catching on at all. I'm afraid if I don't get a good strong group established and some functions in place, our site visit will be embarrassing. They'll be like "You're asking this much money for what????" I have such an active imagination and can envision all kinds of wonderful things, but turning those ideas into reality is so HARD sometimes!!! I can make it look and sound great on paper, but an acutal observation.....that's a whole lot harder to convince people with.

I am going to confess something I have been struggling with lately and that is just a feeling of wanting to just be....average. Of wanting to be okay with mediocre. Sometimes I just want to do my job and that's it. I want to not care sometimes. Lately, I have just felt so at a loss. It's like I want so much to be doing things that matter. I look around me at people who are being so effective and passionate and who are so creative and really know how to bring people together to do some amazing things...and I have no idea how to do it. And trying to figure it out exhausts me. Sometimes I'm just tired and just wonder why I can't be one of those people who can go home at the end of the day and leave their job behind. Why can't I just stick to my job description like everyone else? A part of me wants to give up on the grant thing and the P.E.A.R.L.S. and just say I don't know how to make this work. I don't know how to make this a truly effective program. I don't know how to make it grow. I don't know what to say, what to read, what to do. Part of me wants to call the grant people and just withdraw our application. But I just can't seem to be okay with that. So therefore...I stress! And hope that someday I will wake up and have the sudden ability to turn ideas into something real!

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. - Marian Wright Edelmen