Taking Lumps

[hollyking]

Last year I was involved with the Redmond ARES group. I went to meetings, joined the weekly radio nets and participated in a couple of training exercises. Then pretty suddenly I stopped. I stopped because I volunteered for more than I could handle at the time and instead of admit it I just quit participating. As time passed the feeling of failure grew and it became harder to motivate myself to participate. Even writing this post is an exercise of will because it’s easier to hit the delete key and ignore the whole mess. Easy, but I think it’s the wrong answer.

First, I should stand up and face the music. So I screwed up. It’s not the end of the world. I’ll make mistakes in the future. The key is admitting to them and taking corrective action. Learning from them as it were.

Second, I really enjoyed playing around with the radios. I liked being ready to help out in a disaster. Providing support for bike rides, parades and other public events was also a lot of fun. There are a few challenges to operating radios when you live in an apartment but part of the fun is figuring out a way around those challenges. How do I get three days worth of supplies and equipment into a small portable pack?

Tonight is the monthly Redmond ARES meeting, but I have already promised to help cheesentoast move. That means I have until Sunday evening to rig up one of my radios to join the weekly net.