Extemporaneous Ramblings

It is amazing how some people can’t take a hint graciously, no matter how clearly and politely it is delivered.

I held a post on a volunteer (let’s say that again loudly, VOLUNTEER) board of directors for a few years. In that position people tended to suggest that ‘we’ do things, of course meaning that in the end I should do them because they were busy or whatever. The end result was months of often singular and invisible labour, lots of blame from those that didn’t actually do, and eventual burnout.

Sooooo, in the end, after a few years of service, with the beginnings of stress related health problems, I politely resigned.

Although some were most gracious, as in “sorry to see you go and good luck”?, there were others who responded “you can’t go until we approve” and “you OWE more service”. They were of course in most cases the ones on whom the responsibility to do stuff would now actually fall. What planet are these people living on? A volunteer, particularly one who has sacrificed much more time and grief than they have, OWES them nothing, nada, zilch, zero…

Anyway, it is truly amazing how self absorbed people can be. No wonder people don’t volunteer readily for some things.

Go figure…

I was just amusing (and educating) myself by adding some WordPress features to my blog set-up, and I got to musing about blog content vs the medium. That, of course, lead to Mr M and his famous “the media is the message” statement. Although there is lots of great content out there, he was so correct in relationship to the time we spend on the blog set-up. The presentation is so much of our message. If that wasn’t the case, there wouldn’t be a market for 1000s of themes for WP alone.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that this is a bad thing. In fact, it should spur on even better theme development. But maybe it is something that can be born in mind as we create.

Also, it might help us to NOT put the medium above the message content. Drivel by any other name is still drivel (witness this post…).

Now, back to interesting WP widgets…