Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Planning on/with Hope

 


My beginning of the year ritual has included the making up of my planning calendar for the year following.  I have one calendar that is the current year, and one for the next.

In past years I needed that next calendar because I was booking events that far in advance - craft fairs, fibre festivals, teaching.

Last night my guild executive asked if I would continue the Sunday Seminar Series into 2022.  I had been thinking that I might, under certain conditions.

a)  Covid.  If we are still in precarious circumstances with Covid, then I would consider booking more presenters for the following year.  When asked if I would be one of them, I explained that I was holding myself in reserve in case of a last minute complication that prevented the person booked for that day not able to actually do theirs.

b)  If the series makes money for the guild.

c)  If people are interested enough in the series and it looked like they would be willing to continue purchasing registration for the seminars.

With all that in mind, I finally sat down (squatted, truth be told) and cleaned off 2020's planning calendar, dug out my dry erase markers, and started filling in the dates for 2022.

Right now there are zero entries because I am not doing shows or fibre festivals and I'm not booking teaching for workshops.

However, all that said?  I am open to doing Zoom presentations.

I am fine-tuning my Zoom chops for a mentoring group I started (it's full) and getting some practice in a) crafting the presentation appropriate for on-line learning and b) getting comfortable with this method of conveying info.  Of the presentation done on Sunday, one of the people there commented that they would never have known it was my first Zoom.  

Well, technically it wasn't, I did a presentation for the Black Sheep guild in November, but I had great support from the guild.  Since then I've been practicing holding meetings and visits, and then spent several hours punching buttons on Zoom figuring out how it worked.  Sort of.  For certain values of...

I have two Zoom presentations scheduled, one for Feb and one in Oct.  One is a guild 'workshop', the other is a seminar for a fibre event.  In the meantime I expect to do monthly Zoom presentations for my mentoring group, plus be an audience member for the Seminar Series.

I anticipate the current mentoring group to continue throughout this year and then?  Then if it seems that others would be willing to join a mentoring group (yes, I would expect some kind of remuneration) I might consider running another in 2022.  Based on my book, The Intentional Weaver.

So, regardless of what happens with Covid?  We will continue to learn.  To explore.  To grow.  Old dogs *can*learn new tricks, as uncomfortable as they may be.

And so today?  Today I prepared my planning calendar for 2022.  With hope and anticipation.

1 comment: