Impressive

The conference was fantastic. The information was interesting and useful, and most of the presenters left me feeling inspired and excited. Plus, the conference was held at a SPECTACULAR camp. A camp utopia really. 6000 acres of land, every program area imaginable, state of the art facilities, and millions of dollars in funding each year. I was blown away.

I had a really funny experience the first day. Because of flight schedules, I arrived a day early (as did a handful of other people). I joined in a tour of the facility with a group of Outdoor Educators from the community. At lunch, myself and another woman who had come early for the conference and I were speaking with a guy we'd met on tour. He asked us what we were doing and we told him we were there to learn about fundraising, etc. After several minutes, he asked us what our positions were and we both told him "Executive Director".

Now, I like to blog about my cool title and I like to admire my fancy business cards, but the reality is, I work for a struggling little camp and, other than my mom, no one really cares about my title. And so, in real life, I rarely mention it.

So when I told the guy I was an Executive Director, I figured he'd smile and nod politely like usual. No. Craziest reaction EVER.
"Executive Director?! Both of you? Here you are saying you're just fundraisers and you're Executive Directors. Whoa. Executive Director. Yeah, fundraisers, uh huh. Executives..."

And then he shook his head in awe and kind of walked away. It was weird, hilarious and kind of fabulous, because let's be honest, impressing someone is always kind of cool. Especially since I'm used to apologizing for something my lame camp did wrong.

Anyway, the rest of the conference was lots of comparing camps with other camp directors, listening to lectures and taking notes.

Now I'm back home with my darling baby who is now 16 pounds of bulldog. She doesn't like to go potty outside because it is too cold and my queen size bed is barely big enough to accommodate both of us and she somehow manages to get me to the edge of the bed and off my pillow every night. Either that or she sleeps with her face covering mine. But I am very happy to have her back.