Anxiety
Well, we have nothing new to say about Kingdom Hearts, so I guess I can explain about this table display stress thing I keep mentioning. See, on Saturday, our stake's having a Relief Society...thing...a conference or something, and the theme is Gifts of the Spirit. The term is sort of synonymous with "talents," so as part of the event, they've been asking people to sign up to make table displays showing a talent of theirs or someone else's. Every time they mentioned it, we thought it sounded like a neat idea, so we signed up, and then we stopped thinking about it, because we had a lot of things to do.
A little while later, Athena was asked to arrange food for some kind of a brunch in relation to a funeral for the father of somebody in the ward. It's not that random; she's the compassionate service committee leader. But in a young single adult ward like ours, that type of thing doesn't happen very much, which we suspect is part of why the Relief Society president called Athena instead of taking care of it herself. She's the do-it-yourself type, but probably wasn't sure how to proceed due to lack of experience, and so she delegated.
So Athena did her best! As far as we know, all our ward was responsible for was supplying food, which apparently was to be dropped off with the family. Athena made a sign-up sheet, and passed it around during Relief Society. RS President told her it was perfect, and she also volunteered to collect the food for dropping off, and so, aside from the anxiety of being the middle of a process, the stress was pretty much done...or so we thought.
That night, one of the older ladies in the ward called, ostensibly with a question about what was really wanted. When Athena confessed to not having many details (RS President told her all she could, which wasn't much), this lady took that as license to think out loud about how Athena had done it wrong (she should have had different categories (main dish, dessert, side) for people to sign up for), and then offered to take the whole matter out of Athena's hands. On the one hand, it was nice to be relieved of the stress, but on the other hand, the reason we're perfectionists is that we've somehow been convinced that the slightest mistake will mess everything up forever and all time, leading to lifelong ostracism and general being looked down upon...ness. It certainly didn't help that we thought of this lady as a friend, and the fact that she showed absolutely no faith in Athena really hurt.
We probably are overreacting, but it was a sore spot. Anyway, ever since then, we've been more socially anxious than usual, and even more afraid to do anything in public that isn't something we do all the time (like play the organ in sacrament meeting). So of course we're terrified about this whole table display thing. And guess who else signed up to do a table.
Tomorrow, we'll be going to help out at the bishop's storehouse with another, much less intimidating person who signed up to do a table display, so maybe we can talk to her and share some ideas and boost each other's confidence and stuff.
Today I'm thankful for the extra deliciousness of the dark chocolate Hershey kisses we had last night, finally making it through that world in Kingdom Hearts, making good progress on Love Hina, the lovely rainy weather, and getting to watch Last Man Standing last night.
A little while later, Athena was asked to arrange food for some kind of a brunch in relation to a funeral for the father of somebody in the ward. It's not that random; she's the compassionate service committee leader. But in a young single adult ward like ours, that type of thing doesn't happen very much, which we suspect is part of why the Relief Society president called Athena instead of taking care of it herself. She's the do-it-yourself type, but probably wasn't sure how to proceed due to lack of experience, and so she delegated.
So Athena did her best! As far as we know, all our ward was responsible for was supplying food, which apparently was to be dropped off with the family. Athena made a sign-up sheet, and passed it around during Relief Society. RS President told her it was perfect, and she also volunteered to collect the food for dropping off, and so, aside from the anxiety of being the middle of a process, the stress was pretty much done...or so we thought.
That night, one of the older ladies in the ward called, ostensibly with a question about what was really wanted. When Athena confessed to not having many details (RS President told her all she could, which wasn't much), this lady took that as license to think out loud about how Athena had done it wrong (she should have had different categories (main dish, dessert, side) for people to sign up for), and then offered to take the whole matter out of Athena's hands. On the one hand, it was nice to be relieved of the stress, but on the other hand, the reason we're perfectionists is that we've somehow been convinced that the slightest mistake will mess everything up forever and all time, leading to lifelong ostracism and general being looked down upon...ness. It certainly didn't help that we thought of this lady as a friend, and the fact that she showed absolutely no faith in Athena really hurt.
We probably are overreacting, but it was a sore spot. Anyway, ever since then, we've been more socially anxious than usual, and even more afraid to do anything in public that isn't something we do all the time (like play the organ in sacrament meeting). So of course we're terrified about this whole table display thing. And guess who else signed up to do a table.
Tomorrow, we'll be going to help out at the bishop's storehouse with another, much less intimidating person who signed up to do a table display, so maybe we can talk to her and share some ideas and boost each other's confidence and stuff.
Today I'm thankful for the extra deliciousness of the dark chocolate Hershey kisses we had last night, finally making it through that world in Kingdom Hearts, making good progress on Love Hina, the lovely rainy weather, and getting to watch Last Man Standing last night.