No.

I mentioned a while ago I was going to a retreat where I would have to split my life into 10 chapters. And last Saturday I went on aforementioned retreat, was a great day and I loved having the time to reflect on my life. I may come back to the 10 chapter titles but right now I'm going to focus on the one I labelled 'No.'

'No' was the from MYC 2008 to the start of Feb in 2009. It was the time that I stopped doing a lot things and actually learnt to say no. I stepped off of the YPS reference group, and exec finished, I didn't become a DYE. I was offered a position at a group at uni and decided that it wasn't right for a number of reasons so said no to that too. This time ended with me agreeing to take the job I have now. But those 3 months where I said no prepared me to start saying yes ago. I would like to point out I had just started a relationship at this time - saying yes then was good! :D Also during this time I watched the Nooma Shells which I thought sums it up well.

My aims for 2012 have a mixture of Yes's and No's in them. Saying no to non-fair trade chocolate isn't always easy, but I am really trying!!

I've nearly been here 3 years and with the change over of staff I've spent more time reflecting over my time here to enable the new staff to understand my role. Quite a lot of these conversations include me saying, well there was work there but I stopped it, or it ended. Maybe that is my place, to stop things, give it some time and enable work to restart refreshed in the future. One example of this is I let one of my volunteers sit down, I had a meeting cancelled one evening in January 2010 and went round to see this volunteer, we chatted and she talked about how she wanted to step down and was actually planning to move out of the village - and country! That evening when I could have easily been at home or elsewhere meant that she could step down from a role she had had for many years. And yes we coped without her, it has enabled others to take a lead so it all worked out well.

In the same way my new youth club has just started up and has 10 on the books in 2 weeks!

Things must end, there must be a time to rest and then new good things can grow in the place.

I've found saying no generally does more good than harm, as long as it gives you the chance to say yes to the right things.