So Holy Week is over. Now I am looking at many weeks without my boss around. This is not a pleasant thing to contemplate. Of course it is much less dire for me than for her as she recuperates from surgery. I, on the other hand, need to bounce back from burnout and cultivate constructive approaches to my job in the absence of good leadership.
I hope to address the first by a doctor’s visit today and subsequent time away at my brother’s house. I have some ideas about how to be constructive in Jen’s absence mostly centered on not fucking up by addressing problems too directly.
Our office administrator continues to make many mistakes in the bulletin. Some of these are repeats, some new. I am thinking of asking her to email me a pdf of the final bulletin in time to try to catch some of these. Originally i had thought of trying to train her better, but the fact that I have to ask her to correct the same mistakes over and over has led me to wonder if that’s a constructive approach. Maybe I only need to keep a bit closer eye on the final product.
Anyway, this morning I am planning on emailing her next Sunday’s info with the request that she send me a pdf of the final bulletin in time to catch mistakes.
There are some other problems that have emerged over Holy Week. I have a choir member who has taken it on himself to run the sound system. During the Triduum he hovered at the back of the church supposedly monitoring the quality of the sound. He was also definitely distracting the celebrant, myself and the choir. This is tricky to deal with. He is, of course, well meaning. But also not very self aware.
Jen had asked him not to do this before leaving for surgery. Hah. I’m not sure what I can do constructively about this. I fear that a direct approach will do more harm than good.
Anyway, this week will have no choir rehearsal and I will be OUT OF TOWN. That’s got to help me.
I have been finding myself drawn deeper into my Greek studies. I am going over chapters and trying to learn them better. Also reading in my Norton Anthology of Greek Literature edited by one of my heroes, Bernard Knox. This morning I picked up Robert Graves’ charming little book, The Greek Myths and read in it a bit. I find that the Greek stuff is as constituent to Western Civilization as the Christian stuff. 
I am listening to Bach Easter cantatas while preparing this Sunday’s info for the office. life is good.
We can talk some while you’re over here this week but I thought you might be interested to know that, at St. James, we had no less than three proofreaders for every weekly Sunday service booklet. The administrator would finish the bulletin on Wednesday and the send PDFs out to three volunteers who would proof it and get back to her by Thursday. She printed on Thursday afternoon or Friday. I seldom proofed the bulletin because we had those volunteers. I would bet you all could set something like that up.
We also two wonderful volunteers who had a love for (and sophistication about) liturgy who worked directly with me to put together special service leaflets: Holy Week, Burials, Weddings. They produced a product that was as good as the weekly service leaflet and it took a lot of pressure off of the administrator. The trick is being willing to put the time into training volunteers. Too often admin people see it as too time consuming. But once the time is invested the volunteers can save tons of time for the administrator. We had a 30 hour / week administrator and five to six office volunteers. The volunteers loved it because it put them right at the heart of a thriving organization, making contributions that were clearly valued. And the administrator increasingly became more of a volunteer coordinator and my personal assistant. Wins all around.