Volunteering

When I moved back to Seymour over thirty years ago, I began to volunteer for a myriad of projects. I chaired the ecumenical Christmas concert committee. I started and ran an arts council. I helped revive a community theatre, acted, directed and did publicity. Then there were the cartoons I drew for the “ghosts of Seymour past” at Halloween, the trees I helped plant as part of the Seymour Greenway, and on and on and on. At each new project, I was told "you are so talented."  I fell for it every time.  

Now looking back, I think, what an idiot I was.

From the earliest days of my childhood, I wanted to be a writer. I wrote my first book in the second grade. In my senior yearbook, I said my goal was to be a writer.

But somehow, other things always came up. Marriage, a child, being the breadwinner, and volunteer work, and here I am, in my 60s, without having completed the novels I wanted to write. True, I was a writer, but it was not fiction. I was a journalist and essayist. It wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. I should have used those hours, days, weeks, months and years differently.

So now I am trying to catch up. Over the past two years, I've quit every club or organization I volunteered for, with the exception of directing the choir for the Methodist Church.

I have been very firm on this. Slip once, and I would be sucked back into volunteering. One thing always leads to another so I ended it all. I no longer go to meetings for any group because I have too many good ideas that slip out of my mouth and suddenly I am heading yet another committee. Even a simple thing like putting up a poster leads to putting up posters for everyone.

My thought was that everyone would say thank you for your work and that would be the end of it. Instead, I was met with anger. Who will do it if you don't? You can't do that. 

Well, yes, I can. And it makes me wonder why I did it in the first place. Would Stephen King be expected to make cupcakes for a PTA meeting? Would Dr. Seuss be expected to sit on the city council?  

If I had been one of the hundreds of citizens who never volunteer for anything, no one would be angry at me now.  

I am a writer and a writer should write. It is as simple as that.  That is how I intend to end my life.