Today appears to be a Let's Finish Up All Braindump Loose Ends day! I'm going through the list of sentence/writing fragments on my to-flesh-out-at-some-point list and running with them until my brain runs out of steam. HOOYAH.
Of all the things I'm grateful to Rick Miller for, a big one is that he taught me (after I whined to him for something like an hour at one point) how to gracefully hold power and responsibility despite not wanting it (and actually, in my case, being terrified of it). Well... I haven't quite learned it yet. But he taught me that it's something possible to learn, something worth learning, something I should learn, and how to begin learning it. He taught me that a reluctant leader could also be a very, very good one, and how to honor that if I were ever in the same position.
Since then, on many of the occasions I've been asked to lead something, the asking (on somebody else's part) has often been followed by a long silence on my part before I answer. That silence is me screaming in terror inside my brain - aaaaaaaaah I can't do this why are you asking me I'm going to mess it up ask someone else nonononono - and then pausing and going well wait. Is this reluctance getting you anywhere? Are you just trying to take the easy way out? Can you come up with a better option?
Sometimes I'll be able to and I'll say "well, that person should be running this instead and here's why," and sometimes I won't be able to find a better way out and I'll say yes, which means "yes, and I will do the best job I can do until I find or teach someone better than me and hand the reins to them as soon as is humanly possible" (and sometimes I'll say that whole thing, too). SLOBs was a pretty big step forward; that's the first time I've actually put myself forth for something. (Yes, it was after a pretty decent amount of encouraging and prodding behind the scenes, but still. I stepped into that spot instead of inadvertently being dragged into it.) (And speaking of that spot, I need to figure out how to be a better board member - I haven't been entirely satisfied with my performance this far; it's tough to make an impact on a 3-hours-a-week budget, but I'm sticking to that because I want to hold myself to however much time I would expect most Sugar Labs volunteers to be able to put in, to see what someone can do if they don't have the luxury of spending all day every day keeping up with things. Aaanyway.)
Responsibility! It burns, and I don't want it, and I don't want to want it, but paradoxically I also know this sometimes makes me better at carrying it. I do not think I'll ever feel mature or grown - but I can feel that I'm maturing and that I'm growing, and that it (generally) gets better every day - I can tell because I make different mistakes each time.