Tomorrow is the third annual Lego Expo, and, oddly enough, I’m not panicking.  Which doesn’t make sense, since enrollment is the highest it has ever been, and this year I have a serious lack of volunteers.  In years past, I’ve had more volunteers than necessary, but this year my Special Programs Volunteers were mostly unavailable.  C—- and M—– and perhaps also M—– will be volunteering, and Jennifer and her daughter are coming in to help out (thank GOODNESS), but that’s many fewer hands than usual, and I’m still a bit puffy and pained from Wednesday’s surgery, meaning that I may not be as energetic as usual.

But I’m not panicking.  Weird.

One thing that has helped enormously is that I wrote up a four page single space document after last year’s Lego Expo with reminders to myself about what went well and what needed to be changed.  I also typed up an Expo preparation check-list last year, and that has been very helpful for keeping me focused on what needs to be done, and reassuring me that I haven’t forgotten some key detail.  All those prep errands have been run: the Lego raffle sets purchased last Friday, the refreshments purchased today (except for the mini cookies, which I’ll get tonight), and the extra tables put in the back of my car.  I’ve stockpiled all the paperwork and clipboards and raffle jars and pencils and certificates of achievement and raffle tickets in convenient boxes in my office, ready to be ferried upstairs in the morning.  I sent out all of the reminder emails yesterday, to the judges and participants and volunteers.  I walked Jennifer through those piles yesterday, so that I wasn’t the only one who knew what it was all about. 

And I’ll be getting to the library at 8:00 tomorrow morning to move the tables upstairs in a leisurely fashion before the library opens at 10:00.  I even just got my hair highlighted and cut today so that I can run out of the house in a more efficient manner tomorrow (8:00 AM is not my best time of day, and the hair has been difficult and blechy lately). 

So I’m not panicked, yet, and I’m thinking that the organizational systems that I figured out and documented from the first two years of the Expo is the reason I’m feeling a little more relaxed this year.  Last year I realized that it’s not enough to organize an event, you also have to put your thought processes in writing so that the logic behind the organization is clear for the next year, whether for your future self to refer to, or for another person to look at and see how things work.  Yet another reason that I feel so strongly about leaving a clear paper trail in one’s professional life!