Tag: lessons learned

Life(cycle) of the Party

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“You knew it would be hard and it would be uncomfortable and it might be awkward and you did it anyway. That’s courage.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger

I did it. We did it, I should say. We threw a backyard birthday party for Mr. D’s sixth birthday and hosted 21 kids under the age of eight plus about a dozen parents. And the we? I hired Miss O and two of her 10-year-old friends to help. I also had the invaluable assistance of a young woman who was Mr. D’s pre-school teacher and has become a great family friend.

Here are ten things I seem to learn and re-learn about the life(cycle) of the party.

  1. Parties are a great forcing function. I’m guessing it would be easier to rent a party venue. But I love the opportunity to invest in my home. I try to do a home improvement project and a purge project before every party. I don’t think I sat down for three days leading up to the event. But I laid more pavers to expand my backyard seating area and filled eight bags of dishware, textiles, and toys to give away. That alone made the party a win before it even started!
  2. You have to sleep on it to learn. I walked 22,160 steps on the day of the party. At the end of the day, I was too exhausted to know or feel anything…other than tired. The lessons learned didn’t show up til the next morning.
  3. Even the happiest of events will exhaust you. Mr. D loved his party. It was a fair theme with Crocodile Cave water slide on one side of the yard, an inflatable hot tub on the other and in between a bottle-ring toss game, Skee ball setup, fishing game, and a flipping rings game. After lunch and birthday cake, we made shaved ice cones, cotton candy, applied tattoos and had a ballon art station.

    Mr. D almost fell asleep in his dinner.
  4. You plan, plan, plan… and then let it happen. Miss O had beautifully drawn out the time table for three party phases: WET,  DRYING, and DRY. We had roles assigned for each. We were about 15 minutes into the party when we made our first substitution.
  5. There is that guy at parties regardless of age. In one terrifying moment, I came eyeball-to-eyeball with a six-year-old that said, “I’m going to open the gecko’s cage.” I had to race the kid to the keys. I never thought twice about leaving the enclosure key in the door like we always do.

    The party shtick of that guy (not meant to be gender specific) starts early.
  6. The messy middle happens every time. There was a moment right before birthday cake where it all felt impossible. We took a deep breath and made it through.
  7. No one naturally markets their stuff. Each of the “fair activities” had its own arc. But when the lines at a particular stand ebbed, nobody wanted to be the carnival barker to attract an audience.
  8. Mixing up the ages benefits everyone. In this case it was letting older kids take care of younger kids. It made both ages feel special.
  9. Save time for the after part. My favorite part was after all the guests left. The workers, Miss O, and Mr. D got to really enjoy the fun.
  10. There are a few people that will go the extra mile to appreciate the effort. Keep them close. All the parents were lovely and grateful. A couple went out of the way to tell me afterwards what they appreciated. I suspect these are also the people I know, online and in real life, that take the time to leave good reviews. I want to be more like them.

Looking this over, I think it might be the lifecycle of all the hard things I’ve done. What do you think – is there a predictable arc of big to-dos? Did I miss any lessons learned?

(featured photo from Pexels)

You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wynneleon/ and Instagram @wynneleon

I host the How to Share podcast, a podcast about collaboration – in our families, friendships, at work and in the world.

I also co-host the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast, an author, creator and storytelling podcast with the amazing Vicki Atkinson.

Milestone Moment

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“The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.” – Walt Disney

I’m celebrating today. I’ve published a post every day for a year. And since late October of last year, I’ve also written a weekly post on the Pointless Overthinking blog as well. That’s about 400 posts total.

Looking back on the experience, I realize that what happened to me over the year was a far different thing than what I thought going into it.

Write What You Need to Read

I was reminded of this adage somewhere in the middle of this year of posts and connected it to what I’m doing here. I’ve been writing what I need to process and remember this precious time that is so busy it could go by without notice. The posts that I imagined I would write – clean, full of poignant phrases, powerfully evocative – are not at all what came out. But what came out was something like little snapshots of learning, appreciating and searching for the depth and richness of life as it is right now.

Themes

I imagined that I would write a lot more about faith and God because this was going to be my meditation journal for parenting. But it turns out that I can’t easily find the words to describe this core but non-denominational factor in my life. I suspect that because my beloved dad had such a definite view of God through Presbyterianism that I imbibed that deep belief but have trouble intellectualizing the faith, hope, and optimism that keep me going.

Instead I find myself writing about friendship, learning, trying, failing, confidence, feelings, the precious lessons I see unfold in my kids, meditation and breathing, imperfection, healing. And though they are all colored by my faith, hope, and optimism, they reflect life as I process it in all its messiness.

Community

I expected that writing posts would help me practice to become a better writer. But I had no idea I was joining a community. In many ways, the beauty of this experience had very little to do with the keyboard and everything to do with finding a network of interesting, inspiring and invested people. Writing blog posts has helped me remember this year of my life – but commenting on them and other people’s post filled a need I didn’t know I had for daily interaction with grown-ups that I wasn’t getting from my professional or family life.

As an example, in the beginning, I had my Gravitar website pointing to an outdated URL. Fortunately, Ab pointed that out to me, I fixed it and we connected. He has commented on every single post of mine since which deserves its own medal. Thank you for that gift, Ab!

That experience multiplied by many including Alegria, Ally, Art, Ashley, Betsy, Caitlyn, Chaya, Claudette, Cristiana, Deb, David, Dr. Stein, Dutch, Endless Weekend, Fred, Gary, Grace, Jane, Julia, Kathy, LaShelle, Mark, Michael, Michelle, Nancy, Natalie, Rebecca, Rosaliene, Susan, Tamara, and so many more is a treasure trove of goodness for which I’m so grateful. Thank you all!

I’m going to go celebrate. See you tomorrow – because even though my experiment is over, somehow I still have more to say… 😊  

(featured photo is of my kids celebrating a few years back)