making connections

Service and Volunteering

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Tonight I was talking to a woman, face to face, about how she’s thinking about downsizing, and it was a point of discussion that happened to come up.

I serve on two boards, one as the Treasurer and the other as the President. I’ve done various forms of non-profit/volunteer work since I’ve been in real estate. It’s been an effective way to meet and mingle with people that I otherwise wouldn’t.

What follows is referrals and direct business from people that I work with in these different volunteering roles.

When I was early in real estate, my mentors at the time instructed me to find things that I was interested in and to volunteer in those areas. An important caveat was to not volunteer for things I wasn’t interested in.

Coming into real estate, I was a writer and an avid reader. Still am. My broker looked at me and basically said, “Well, you’ll need to either find some other things you’re interested in that involve people, or maybe things that have to do with reading and writing.”

So, I proceeded to get involved with the local library which was, at the time, raising millions of dollars for the construction of a new building. That works.

I had one child in the public school at the time. So, I got involved with the PTO.

The town I lived in has a Welcome Team that greets new residents at their homes and gives them a hand-woven basket filled with local goods and pamphlets. Pretty neat service to have in a small rural town in New Hampshire. So, I joined the committee!

I have an interest in buildings and architecture as well as history. So, I joined the Heritage Commission in another town where I lived later.

Most of these were in alignment with what I valued. They all were, really. It was more in the doing of these things where I was able to learn what groups I felt more comfortable in, and weeded them as I moved and as I did different things.

A friend called a couple years ago (who I met through my service in the local Kiwanis Club, which I joined very early in real estate) and asked me to help his organization search for a building to buy. The organization is a local transitional shelter.

We found them a building and they bought it and we went our separate ways. But I later had the idea that it might be a good board to be involved with. Any future purchases they involve me in, while I’m on the board, I won’t be able to financially benefit from. That’s okay with me. I liked the idea that it serves a population that I can’t otherwise help in housing. It counterbalances my work such that I feel like I’m able to help everyone with housing in my community.

Kind of cool.

And finally, the Kiwanis Club. I have been a member since I got into real estate, and last year I formally joined the board. Now, I’m the President of the club and my term begins next month.

These things are good things to do as a community member, but they also help me to build more relationships and relationships with people from varied backgrounds. It was an invaluable suggestion early on that I’m grateful I heeded.

Service and Volunteering

Bringing It All Together

samuelabbottiii, ,

Recently I read something that resonated with me. It explained a problem in my life that I didn’t have a name for, providing a solution that I knew I had. In reading, I discover lots of information. Occasionally, I receive insight, and I’m working to develop my ability to read for understanding so to increase the frequency of insight.

“Outcomes have replaced insights as the yardstick of learning.”

Lowell Monke

With all the reading though, much of that information is funneled into my conscious mind, but quickly sneaks back out. Besides this, there’s also a disconnection between the information and it serving immediate function. In other words, the information I consume doesn’t always have an immediate practical application.

For this reason, the letters and words that give my life such deep meaning are fragmented – all floating around in seeming disarray, without tangible connection to one another.

What I mentioned above that I recently read, spoke to resolving this fragmentation through creative work. This woman wrote about her creative process – how she starts with raw materials and combines them; how she gives them form through movement; how she finishes with something that’s not only uniquely original, but whole and complete. Metaphorically rich, it immediately resonated with me as I’ve illuminated above already, further validating the need for me to write.

I write anyway, so it wasn’t a call to do something new, per se. But what it did was give my writing deeper purpose, and gave this style of writing – blogging – new function.

I used to dabble on Medium.com a couple years ago. I recall being impressed by one particular writer’s little two-sentence blurb about himself, visible at the top of his posts just below his picture. Everybody had catchy little writing-related aphorisms that made them seem worldly – at least to me. I can’t recall exactly what his was, but it was something to do with walking through life and trying to write his way through it.

Anyway, I thought it sounded really clever, and so I adopted it into my vernacular repertoire of witticisms, but I didn’t really get it. What writing allows me – among many other things – is the ability to take an idea or question or concept, and really dissect it. Perhaps at first this is only superficially, but with inventorying anything, I can really take it apart piece by piece. At the time it was over my head, but that’s the point. I don’t need to have all the answers. In writing in and around something, I can discover truth, insight, understanding. I can create bridges, connecting seemingly unrelated ideas or information, giving meaning to a new combination of notions – a new train of thought.

I’m able to bring it all together, perpetually cultivating deeper and deeper meaning in my life. Reading feeds the writing, and writing feeds the reading – a cycle I look forward to residing in indefinitely.

Bringing It All Together