Looking back at last year and the years before, Grundy has long done reporting right. We gather and discuss, we hash out our rationale, and we shout over one another and laugh warmly at ourselves and one another.
Reporting isn’t work alone. It’s made more enjoyable through fellowship.
That wasn’t the case this year. Unlike years before, when we’ve gathered at the library and boomed behind closed doors with our usual raucous demeanors… or when we met at an office and enjoyed a few screwdrivers in celebration when the job was finally finished…
This year, we worked separately. Since we haven’t been capable of meeting and there has been little opportunity for such things, our 2018-2020 chairmen stepped up to help. We worked up the reports we could and forwarded them on to our club president, who will make her own final pass, use their stats to complete the GFWC Virginia Statistical Report Form & Annual Club Record, and will pass them all along to our district chairmen.
But there are no little gatherings. No noisy women chattering in pockets around a long table. It’s solitary work, reporting of the year that changed everything we thought we knew within the blink of a eye.
Speaking to our Reporting Chairman Ginger last week, I remarked on as much. It’s so odd, I told her. I worked on the Leadership report and joked that our worked in that department hadn’t seemed to falter terribly, despite our distance and inability to do very much.
Ginger made a little noise. Not really a laugh, more like my comment had given her a thought. After she had completed her report, she said our Club President Sandy had emailed her back. Apparently, Sandy had remarked on the number of projects in Women’s History & Resource and seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, realizing maybe we’d accomplished more than she’d previously thought.
That’s been the veil Covid-19 seems to have left us under, I thought. Everything we have done, all we have accomplished – it’s all shrouded under the virus that simply won’t go away. It’s harder to see our successes. Even though it hasn’t quite been a full year since we first had to undergo quarantines and masks, it feels like everything in our lives before Covid was just that – B.C., as if it was a couple of thousand years ago. We can see it all, but it has been blurred from our vision.
While 2020 has left many of us feeling discouraged, reporting has been an odd reminder that the year really wasn’t all that much of a waste. We really did do a lot of good for our communities.
And though I’ve often remarked about reporting being a good reminder of all of our hard work, it’s safe to say that reporting in 2020 wasn’t just a good reminder.
It was the only reminder, since most of us are already pretending 2020 never happened in the first place.
Happy Reporting Deadline Day to all of the clubs in Virginia!
