Three years and 12 days ago I moved from my home in Woodlawn to a house in Stonebridge. Even when Ali and I were sleeping at Don and Jerry's and the boys were sleeping in the motor home in the driveway during the remodel, I knew I was home. Our first Sunday morning, I walked out the front door and the combination of the moist humid morning, the honeysuckles and Folgers coffee smelled just like my mimi and pawpaw's house in Watervalley, Mississippi. I was home. We lived there for 8 years and I was sad to leave.
However, we moved to a beautiful, small neighborhood that I had always admired from a distance. Since we moved just a couple of weeks before school started, I had to unpack and settle in quickly. As our first few months passed, I thought it would be nice to get involved in the community of the HOA, and on the same day that I defended my dissertation, I was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the Stonebridge HOA.
Honestly, the drama of this position is beyond description. Board members get mad at me, get mad at each other, get mad at their neighbors over issues like how long the sprinklers run, whether or not homeowners keep their trashcans out in front of their garage, parking in the street, airsoft guns, four wheelers, guards or no guards, flowers, Christmas decorations, signs, weeds, trees...everything. And some of these frustrations might be legitimate.
Very quickly I realized that I want to be on the HOA board about as much as I want to be on a church board. Being too close to the machine that makes an organization work is harmful to happiness unless you are called to that position. I feel called to be neighborly and involved in my neighborhood, but not in a leadership capacity.
The fact that I wrote about this for one of my fifty posts amazes me. Really?
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