So in a couple of hours I’ll have them get their backpacks together - Theo has finally graduated from the character backpacks and ordered a plain black one - putting in whatever supplies I *think* they’ll need, since there’s no real guidance on this this year - and then give Bobby his “starting 7th grade” present which is a Vidiots hoodie. Then tomorrow it all begins. Early wakeups, figuring out breakfast, driving to two different schools for the first time since 2019. I can’t really wrap my head around the fact that summer is over, as far as the kids are concerned, and we’re back in “school mode”. It’s less stressful than last year’s switch to a new school, but still full of new routines. I’ll definitely be curious what Bobby has to say at the end of the day. Most likely it will be a shrug and “it was fine”, ha ha.
More shit piled on me at the end of the week - one, a person I’d been putting off formally banning had to be banned because he won a free pass to my event in a contest and was trying to redeem it, so we had to send him an email and then I hid from my email for two days, fearing the repercussions; and I posted my themes for my event, usually a fun and joyful moment, and in the middle of the night got a message from a much beloved customer that they found the theme deeply offensive, and several other people on IG chimed in as well, causing me to have to pull the whole campaign (very complex for someone like me who doesn’t fully understand how all these stories, reels, and posts work) and issue a formal public apology, which is something I’ve never had to do in my 26 years in this business. It was a mess, and there’s a right wing (these offended people are just snowflakes!) vs left wing (you have to be sensitive to people’s feelings about things!) argument on my business FB page that’s been raging since Friday and getting uglier and uglier. I’ve gotten a lot of praise for my apology, which, as much as it’s kind of people to do so, turns my stomach a little because I didn’t apologize to look like a good person, I apologized because it was the right thing to do. The issue of offense was something I never in a million years could have predicted - many people private messaged me, “I still don’t get why people are offended by this” - so it is a bit of a stretch. However, it doesn’t matter if I think it’s a stretch. I’m upset that I didn’t see this - nobody did - and as I sat unraveling all of this and feeling like a jerk, I told myself, “you know, as much as you try not to, sometimes you’re just going to be That Clueless White Lady”. It sucks, but it’s true. My customer has read, and not responded to, my personal apology to her. She may never, and I’m just going to have to live with that, the possibility that she’ll just never forgive me.
Saturday morning a fellow organizer called to ask my opinion on a situation they are dealing with, in which a competitor wore what could be perceived as an anti-Israel shirt in one of their contests and they were trying to figure out whether to hide the video or post it. It dawned on me that I may have to deal with this issue at my event, too, so my staff and I came up with a plan that hopefully we can all stand by and live with. Isn’t dance camp organizing fun??
Last week was the absolute worst. But I think I managed to get through it without completely spiraling. It’s very helpful when your baseline of happiness is already pretty high - it wasn’t too hard to get back to that, once the dust settled. I feel beat up but I’m just continuing to move forward, as I must. I have just two and a half weeks to get every single thing done. Pray for me.
Here’s a picture from a fancy dress up belated birthday dinner I had Friday night.
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