One of my girlfriends and I have a joke. We say we’re members of volunteers anonymous. We are trying to recover, and so one way in which we help each other is if we happen to be together in the presence of other women, and one woman asks if anyone would like to volunteer to help with the bake sale, or to drive to Wisconsin, or to design costumes, or to update the webpage, or to be the state contact, we shoot each other warning looks. In past years, both of us would have immediately chimed in. But now we glower at one another, daring one of us to crack. At one homeschool meeting, she could see I really wanted to volunteer to be some sort of liaison for something and that I was having a hard time keeping seated, and she actually came and stood behind me and patted my shoulders and talked soothingly to distract me. It worked.

It isn’t that we don’t volunteer anymore. Nope. We still volunteer tons. It is just that we have to volunteer consciously now. It isn’t some knee-jerk reaction that will later be the death of us, like our old volunteer ways were. There are some simple ideas behind it. Instead of nodding politely and agreeing as soon as the subject comes up, you have to look deep in to your heart, your schedule, and your motives and see if this is

a. something you really would enjoy doing.

Why volunteer to take a van load of tiny kids to the apple farm if you have allergies and your van isn’t really a roadtrip kind of car anymore?

b. something you really have time to do.

Did you just commit to be the door person every Tuesday for your child’s dance class when that is the only free time you have all week and you had already told yourself you’d use it to pay bills and study for your real estate license?

c. Are you volunteering because you have martyr syndrome, can’t say no, are afraid of disappointing your children or yourself?

If so, volunteerism coming from fear rarely leads to good energy or commitment. Trust me, I’ve been there. You can end up resenting your friends who talked you in to it, yourself for being so spineless, your family for having so many interests, your other friends who aren’t doing the job because they have so much free time, the president for not regulating a minimum of volunteer hours per person, your mother for stressing altruistic values, etc…

All of that said, what is the big deal about volunteering, you might ask? What are the joys of it? Why would anyone want to ever? Well, it is a common topic at our volunteers anonymous meetings, about how some people never, ever volunteer for anything, and how clearly they don’t understand the greatness of the concept and how much better it makes the world. And if they would just once in awhile volunteer a tiny little bit then we wouldn’t have to feel like we’re letting the planet down all of the time by leaving all of those open unvolunteered for spots. But of course, everyone knows you can’t change how other people think and act, and that change comes from within, so we have to let go of the guilt and the feeling that we can do everything for everyone. Especially when that feeling becomes so powerful that you find yourself eschewing your own family or work for your extensive list of commitments.

Now, on to the joys. When you volunteer to do something you have time for, love to do, enjoy, really want to help with, and so forth, the joys are palpable. You get to connect with people who have similar goals and interests. You get to broaden your scope of knowledge by being exposed to people and situations you wouldn’t otherwise have been exposed to. Your body gives you a dose of one of it’s feel good hormones as a reward for doing a good job. You get to keep or hone some skills that domesticity doesn’t always demand of you. You’re modeling a healthy balanced lifestyle of an adult with interests outside of the family. You make new friends (sometimes enemies too, I’ll admit). You sometimes become a mentor to a younger volunteer. You broaden your connections out there in the world of drama or horses, or music or whatever.You create relationships across generations or species (if you work with animals) and you get the satisfaction of completing a job that you know has some effect on the world, no matter how small. I could go on. Basically, I’ve surmised from the list above that volunteering is 60 percent selfish and 40 percent giving, so no need to feel all smug an braggy about it. You’re doing it for the perks as well as for the kids is all right with me.

Why don’t more people volunteer then, we ask ourselves at our weekly meetings. Usually these meetings are held on the phone at dinner hour, which we have by default volunteered to cook nightly for an undefined amount of time. Usually we are just coming back from driving our kids to something or other and we have been making phonecalls and emails inbetween the homeschooling, chores and work on our own personal projects for the past 6 to 10 hours. Usually we are pulled in 12 different directions, and we want to know how to get the other folks on board with us. Therein lies the answer I think. No one wants to join the wobbly volunteer ship when they see us all of the time manning it as if it were sinking. They’ll stay very calmly on their little iceberg thank you very much. If somehow volunteers could manage not to get in too deep, to find a nice balance of personal life, family life and communal life, then we would portray a contented image to potential volunteers who might now be tempted to enrich their lives by joining us in some of our endeavors.

Is there a way top be movers, shakers, volunteer bakers and keep our core selves in tact? Yup. Here are some of the tenets of VA that quite frankly, we haven’t really mastered yet:

Practice saying no. Practice saying “I’ll think about this.” or “Maybe” Find yourself a VA buddy who can watch your back when you are in a volunteer risk heavy situation. Chose projects that interest you. Commit to work schedules that work for you. For example, I like to volunteer for what I call one shots. If a committee wants my help and I am somewhat overextended with other things, I ask what defined one time job I could do to help. Could I prepare the mailers? Deliver something? Purchase the gifts for someone we’re honoring for their service? Also, I like to volunteer for computer stuff. I’ll maintain the lists, email the group, send out a press releases, design flyers. Those are areas of interest to me as a burgeoning computer dork. Yeah, I also like to work with kids and animals, but please don’t spread that around. I’ve just got myself down to a workable volunteer schedule of kid’s club mom, retreat committee (promo dept.), workshop coordinator for conference, secretary for investment club, list moderator for 3 or 4 lists, and my own personal pet project of pure joy, editor of Chicago Homeschool Habitat. All other volunteer maneuvers for the year will likely be one shots.

What if you are volunteer averse and haven’t really ever tried because you fear the VA label? I would recommend starting lightly with one shots. Then you can assess how much help you are, how much you like or dislike the job, and make further choices from there. We will make you an honorary member and add you to our Volunteers Who Rock wing of the VA meeting.

Now, are you ready to stand up and tell us your name and ways in which you are recovering from volunteerism and/or making it work for you ?