Managing
And also... not managing
In 2019, I joined a choir I’d heard about through a local musician I followed on social media, and I decided to turn up to their first meeting on my own despite my tummy-knotting fear that the posts were wrong and maybe there actually would be auditions, held in front of everyone else who’d come along.
It was fine: I wasn’t asked to sing on my own. And I loved choir nights! I’d missed singing in a group after leaving the church, so harmonising in an echoey hall once again felt like a healing gift from the universe.
As the weeks went by, I was approached numerous times by a woman who’d say lovely things about the dresses I wore, or tell me her daughter had recently cut her hair short like mine. I was wary of her friendliness; I decided she was most likely a keen Christian trying to convert me. Why else would she cross the room to start a conversation with me? It was weird and disconcerting.
It took more time than it probably should have for me to discover that this person was kind not because she had an agenda but because she is a Labrador in human form: all energy and enthusiasm and curiosity. She befriends everyone.
I love her now, too. We go for walks and discuss parenting and neurospicy brains and the books we’re reading, and I try to make her read my book and she lies and tells me she totally will, she’s looking forward to it. (She has had versions of the manuscript in her emails for several months now.)
This friend is the reason I started playing soccer again in 2021. She asked if I’d be interested in joining her team to make up numbers after a bunch of players were injured early in the season, and saying yes to this question was possibly the best thing I’ve ever done for myself (apart from studying psychology and changing my name and putting that shoe rack together on my own).
Last year, it was this friend who commented on the fact that I was now in organiser-type roles at both our soccer club (team manager) and choir (door bitch), which – even though she mentioned this in an extremely casual way – started me wondering why I’d taken on these positions, when others like her hadn’t even considered it.
The answer to this Why? question is what this post is actually about.
(I think The Rules would say I should delete everything before this, but I won’t; this is my blog, and we will therefore be following my rules, the first of which is to forget about any so-called ‘rules’ and the second is this: As much as possible, posts should have long, wandery introductions about my favourite people.)
My first answer to the Why? question sparked by my friend’s comment was this: I like being in organiser-type roles because this soothes my always-alert, very yappy Manager parts. These parts of me like to have access to information and answers in order to avoid – as much as possible – any sense of uncertainty. They’re also huge fans of ethics and efficiency and things making sense. All of this is easier to control when you’re one of the people influencing decisions and the ways these are communicated with others.
I’d thought this was the only answer to the question until later last year, when our family’s schedule changed so that I could no longer arrive early to choir or stay late to figure out tickets and payments. A few weeks after handing the role over to someone else, I realised that the weirdness I felt had nothing to do with any Managers in me wondering what was going on behind the scenes.
Instead, I felt vulnerable, like I didn’t know my place anymore now that I wasn’t part of the organising team; did I still belong? Would I be rejected from the group? It was less clear now I had no job.
I became The Organiser in the early years of my relationship with Alan, too. I’d remind him of his parents’ birthdays, write cards from both of us for all our friends’ weddings, buy presents for his nieces at Christmas. Analysing this over the years, I’d always thought I’d done all of this to turn myself into the kind of Good Christian Wife™ I believed Alan (and God) wanted me to be.
After the choir incident, though, I floated back through my memories of all the different times I’d taken on manager-like roles in the groups and relationships I’ve been part of, and I started to notice this: in every case, I’d been working hard to earn my place, like I’d be unwelcome otherwise.
Somewhere along the way, I decided that being needed could make up for the fact that I was unworthy of being loved.
I’ve now managed my way out of all my manager roles, and I’m doing my best to care myself through the flashes of freaked-outness that come each time I start to question my place in any of the groups I’m part of.
And I’m seeing a new psychologist now, to continue working through wounds old and new, with the goal of helping me feel — in the deepest parts of me —that it’s enough just to show up in the world as myself.
This is so beautiful, thank you for sharing.