My REAL answer is "do whatever is best for you." You do not owe anybody fruitcakes. Your fruitcakes are WONDERFUL, and everybody loves them -- but you should only do the fruitcake project if the pleasure YOU get from it exceeds the stress.
Not the pleasure that anybody ELSE gets from it.
This is something that often gets lost among our friends, not just you but our social group in general. We're a volunteer-y crowd, we are. We volunteer for sci-fi cons, theater groups, the SCA, our synogogues, churches, and covens, political causes, social causes.
It can be hard to remember that these are volunteer. Okay, some of these things may be so important that we must do them even if we're not enjoying them -- Jim MacDonald is a volunteer EMT in his town, and I can see that he really might go and continue to volunteer even if he really doesn't want to.
But, as much as I love your fruitcakes, they're a different category. They're more on the level of community theater. They bring beauty into the world, they are a LOT of work, and people appriciate them -- but nobody feels bad if someone says, "No, I've got too many other things going on in the next couple months; I'm not going to audition for $_PLAY."
I love it when my friends are putting up shows, and they're always good shows. But I don't resent if someone's NOT in a play. I want them to be in a play if and ONLY if THEY want to be in a play.
And that's what your fruitcake project is. You put as much time and effort, and money, into your fruitcake project as our friends put into theater productions.
You don't OWE fruitcakes to anybody, any more than Gilly, Erica, Brian Bermack, Jacob, or any of the rest of them OWE anybody a theater performance. We really like it and appriciate it when they do it, but we only want them to do it if they're doing it for THEMSELVES.
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Not the pleasure that anybody ELSE gets from it.
This is something that often gets lost among our friends, not just you but our social group in general. We're a volunteer-y crowd, we are. We volunteer for sci-fi cons, theater groups, the SCA, our synogogues, churches, and covens, political causes, social causes.
It can be hard to remember that these are volunteer. Okay, some of these things may be so important that we must do them even if we're not enjoying them -- Jim MacDonald is a volunteer EMT in his town, and I can see that he really might go and continue to volunteer even if he really doesn't want to.
But, as much as I love your fruitcakes, they're a different category. They're more on the level of community theater. They bring beauty into the world, they are a LOT of work, and people appriciate them -- but nobody feels bad if someone says, "No, I've got too many other things going on in the next couple months; I'm not going to audition for $_PLAY."
I love it when my friends are putting up shows, and they're always good shows. But I don't resent if someone's NOT in a play. I want them to be in a play if and ONLY if THEY want to be in a play.
And that's what your fruitcake project is. You put as much time and effort, and money, into your fruitcake project as our friends put into theater productions.
You don't OWE fruitcakes to anybody, any more than Gilly, Erica, Brian Bermack, Jacob, or any of the rest of them OWE anybody a theater performance. We really like it and appriciate it when they do it, but we only want them to do it if they're doing it for THEMSELVES.