II. Play Website with Me?

This is Part II of a Series on Contributing to this Website.

In my last post, "Global, Local, Conscious," I suggested what you might expect from this website. Now, for the flip-side, let's consider what you might have to offer that could make it happen.

Like all LCGG and GTiA activities, this website is a volunteer effort. In one of my earlier manifestations I was, for 15 years, a trainer and supervisor of volunteers (as crisis hotline workers, team-family therapists, teen advocates), so I hope I've learned a few things worth sharing.

One thing I've come to know is that volunteers, if motivated and supported, can be as capable as any professional. For example, you might not think you have what it takes to write for a newspaper or magazine. I'm just as sure that you can and I'm willing to help you prove it. After all, a website like this one is today's local paper or national gazette. And you've read, heard or seen ten million news articles in your lifetime. Do you really think you can't write one? 

Another thing: Volunteers need to get paid. Of course I don't mean in dollars or even pesos. If you get paid it's called work, right? Then, if you're not paid, the cynic says, you're just playing. I think the cynic is wrong, just as Freud was wrong was to name just Love and Work, without Play, as life's primary aims. Love and work are complemented by play, and we are more complete with all three engaged. I've even come to believe that play gets more done in the world than work—witness all the novelists, genealogists, and artists around Lake Chapala who have put in their 10,000 hours to become Maestro/as without much thought they'd ever make a living that way. (We won't even mention the volunteer social service providers.) As I have written elsewhere, "The task freely chosen is slavishly engaged."

So, how do volunteers get paid? Pay for playing is the meaning it makes for the players. The common currency for rewarding volunteers is some variation of what we normally call fun. (Green Transitions in Action seems to recognize that fact—its brochure is filled with green activities that have been, I've heard, both hard work and a blast for the participants.)

Like any potential volunteer, I gingerly circling the idea that I might like to involve myself further in Green Group. I enjoyed designing this website, though it's been largely solitary play so far, and I'm willing to stick around to put the features in place that members want. But these "features" are now just placeholders for the meaningful fun you might fill them with. If they are not filled, a website, like a group or organization, dies on the vine.

In other words, I think I might like to play "Green Group Web Editor." Does anyone want to play with me?

Bob Craft, Editor

Continue with Post III, How Can I Play?