Stronger Notes, Hopefully: Clearing The Fatberg
Recognising the realities:
- I’m not full time, so balancing everything is tough
- There are big, existential things we need to confront to move forward
- The environment is hostile
Monday:
I was determined to have a better Monday, but things break which need to be fixed. People break too sometimes, but you need to give them time to fix themselves. Not only have some things broken, but some of the people we work with are really struggling.
So my job is to placate those frustrated with the broken things whilst protecting the people that need time to fix-up. There’s no glamor in it, it won’t win you any plaudits, but you can’t preach kindness and not practice it. Our rewards will be in heaven, hopefully.
One of the great things about having a team is that we can cover for each other, so that’s what we do. Emotional labour is still labour, but the rewards come in different ways.
Tuesday:
People generally don’t think we’re a business, and we give away the vast majority of things we make, so maybe we’re not. That said, the tax man thinks we are, Companies House thinks we are, so we do need to do accounts, to pay tax and to pay VAT.
Tuesday was spent going over old ground, looking at how we account for some of the projects that we did over the Covid lockdowns, and how we make the figures stack up. Over Covid we saw demand for our services rise exponentially, and it was if people finally understood why we do what we do.
We did a big Solidaritech project over lockdown. We purchased mobile sim cards to get digitally excluded people data and we ran a Leeds-wide donation drive for unused tech. Unfortunately the ~£20,000 of tech we managed to get donated by the people of Leeds was stolen in a burglary. Thanks to the Yorkshire Evening Post we were able to speak to the good people at Leeds United and, with the help of their star striker (who auctioned the shirt he scored his 100th goal in) we were able to raise £20,000 via a crowdfunder to replace those machines.
A lovely story, but to the accountants it looks like we just made £20,000 profit, so we had to find a way of accounting for it. We finally managed to find a solution, and just like that the fatberg was cleared.
Wednesday:
Things progress, things change, but as Socrates once said; the unexamined life is not worth living.
The Power to Change and Third Sector Lab programme we’re on means that we’re asked to write weeknotes in an effort to do more open communications. Through this programme we’ve been gently teased into thinking more aloud, and I’ve found picking up blogging after all this time to be incredibly useful.
Taking the time to organise your thoughts into a few scratchy paragraphs per week is turning out to be a useful discipline. It’s helped me to find some measure of distance, and to also overcome some of the fears about my idea-cakes coming out the oven before they’re properly cooked.
I also had some lovely feedback from the last two posts, so that feels good.
Thursday:
Thursday has always been a liminal space where you’re desperate for the weekend but know you have to go again. I used up the last of my energy talking about Solidaritech at the launch of Power to Change’s Discovery Fund.
I didn’t get much time to reflect at the dentists after that :)
Friday:
Friday bought better news. as a project that spanned most of lockdown and went badly off of plan because it was burgled. We finally managed to get confirmation that the funder was happy to sign the report off and we’re officially able to file our accounts as a result.
Conclusions and Theme Finding:
To precis the above, fatbergs do need to be cleared from your sewer. The big things need to be dealt with, they need to be overcome rather than ignored. You need to give people their space and time, it’s usually all they need and they’ll thank you for it. Fatbergs come in all shapes and sizes.
However, when you finally clear the fatberg you also need to be prepared for the torrent it unleashes.
But feeling the rain on your face afterwards is definitely worth it.
