Demoted

Let me preface this by saying *I AM NOT UNHAPPY!* This is not a post about sadness, depression, or discontent. It's just about the weirdness of change.
 
Last night I had my first new/old MOPS group steering (leadership) meeting of the year. It was good, but...weird. The oddest sense of déjà vu - when we left for Naperville, I never expected in a million years to be back here, much less back in my old job and going to meetings back in the same places. For this group, it's almost all new people on steering, but everything else format-wise is exactly the same. It's like the time I was gone has been erased & was just a tiny blip on the radar here. I've only been away from this group for a year & a half, but for me? WHAT a year & a half!!!
 
I am such a different person. Tougher. More hopeful. Not depressed. (That last one may have some of y'all scratching your heads, but truly, I was at my lowest when we were here last.) When I took over my Naperville group last summer, we were pretty much starting from scratch. It was SO. MUCH. WORK... but so incredibly fulfilling! I know the intricacies of running a charter of this organization now. I'm an overachiever, and I took the best aspects of my new/old group to put into our Naperville group and then, with the help of that new team of awesome women & their fresh ideas, ramped it up to another degree. It was my baby, and it broke my heart to leave. I *liked* being in charge. I liked running the show. I liked that responsibility.

Back here now in my new/old group, I'm back to my old positions: Publicity & Discussion Group Leader co-chair. And whereas I felt like an obnoxious broken record in planning meetings last summer saying, "In my last group we did this...", last night I felt like I said, "In Naperville we did this..." about 10 times. :-P That part is cool - the coming full circle. But it does feel like a step back, as well - not only going back to old jobs, but going back to an old format. I'm not looking to change the situation - this group is a well-oiled machine that's been running for over a decade; it works & is comfortable here. But I can't help that it still feels a bit like regression to me now.

I absolutely *LOVE* the two girls who are the coordinators here, and I can genuinely say I'm not jealous of their position. It just feels weird to be "demoted". Again, I'm not looking to change the situation - I think God has orchestrated it this way on purpose. #1, I'm going to be a lot more busy this year with all the kids' activities, even if nothing happens with Splitz; and #2, the way things are now, it would be very easy for us to be able to move, if another job opportunity came up at any point, w/o me really leaving this group in the lurch.

The point of this post is that I just needed to vocalize for myself how weird this change feels. Everything here feels the same for the most part...and I am soooo not.

I'm OK, and honestly, I already appreciate not being the head honcho in some respects. (It felt liberating to *not* have to volunteer to do all the left-over tasks myself last night! I had a twinge of Braveheart: "Freedom!!!" ;-) :-P) But it still feels weird... You can't ever go back to the way things were before, b/c you will always be colored by the experiences you've had since.