Living with Ambiguity

A theme in my work and training, (and life in general), is living with ambiguity. Ambiguity means vagueness, uncertainty, doubt... you get the drift. Anyway, Thursday night as I was finishing off preparations to go to Eastbourne, (a small town on the south coast of England), for a youth work conference when the Fearless Leader called from Germany. Fearless Leader and Mrs Leader had been over in Germany since Tuesday at a conference, in preparation for the community festivals we are running during the 2006 World Cup, and Timbo and Atari Man (Dan, my supervisor) were going over to help for the weekend.
So the Fearless Leader was talking to Atari Man and the rest of us were only getting one side of the conversation, but my name was being used quite a bit, (not always a good sign but this time it was ok). It appeared Fearless Leader and Atari Man felt that it would be a better use of Atari Man's time to go to Eastbourne... leaving a vacant plane ticket to Germany! Said ticket was then offered to me. I offered up a very grateful, "I'll do it!" and all of a sudden I'm headed to Germany!
Ten minutes later Fearless Leader is again on the fone to Atari Man saying he's not sure it's worth sending me over and maybe we should move the ticket to be used at a later date. Dissapointed but seeing the logic to this I agreed that it would be a better use of resources and I would go to Eastbourne with Atari Man.
Five minutes later the Fearless Leader is back on the fone saying that the ticket couldn't be moved so they were going to send me over after all! Another change of plans and mindset was followed five minutes later by yet another call from Fearless Leader to say that he had gone to change the name on the ticket and the airline had wacked a futher 200 euro's to the fare so he'd had to cancel the ticket when left with no affordable option... Yay Eastbourne?
So that's how I ended up in Eastbourne this weekend at a very good youth work conference which was a great time of encouragement and inspiration. I was a little dissappointed about the whole fiasco on Thursday night but as our whole team is going to Germany in April, I haven't really missed out. So, as ambiguity is quite a theme in my life I'm starting to get used to it. Tip for the Trip; Just be willing to work with what you get.