Feast of fun

So we're having an open house, this afternoon/evening, ostensibly to show off our new offices. We doubled our space and moved from a single suite in our building to a double suite where we could hold all of our meetings and classes, and bring back our library, and create a physical "home" for our members. This is a huge big deal, because we had to sell our old building (a gorgeous old house on MacArthur Blvd which is now owned by St Patrick's school), for a whole bunch of reorganization/financial etc. reasons. As you can imagine, having this new office represents a step towards having a home again, and I personally have a very long term goal to help us get to the point where we could have a real building with more classrooms, more staff, even a clinic. But that's all in the future.

But I mentioned a while back that I designed the layout of this office in keeping with certain feng shui ideas, namely so that people and ideas would be free flowing. I put in a couple of fuschia colored walls to liven up the space and make it socially inviting, and also to hopefully bring in wealth (every little helps, right?). (I know, fuschia sounds gross but I promise it looks cool). I'll post a picture after tonight. So far, we've had tons of great feedback from the students who have started classes here, and everyone seems really happy, so this is the next step, to get more peripheral members (people who would not necessarily have a reason to come over) to see the space. I want to see if any of them then feel welcomed to come back and use the space for whatever purpose would be appropriate, maybe even be spurred into getting more involved in things (whatever those might be).

So anyway, we're having this open house, and we've invited all our members, all our "participants" who are students in all our programs, we've invited our "Friends of the Center" and also everyone in our building complex (there are a bunch of therapists in here so hopefully they will be interested in stopping by). We're trying to have some fun with this - we're having a raffle (2 gift certificates + bottle of wine), and a "pop quiz" (six questions, winner gets a bottle of wine), and we're offering David's skills as a photographer to take digital headshots of anyone who wants for $5 for uploading onto their profiles on the website.

But I have to laugh, because our group is not a particularly "fun" bunch - and no-one will be upset with me for saying that - the mental health field is not know for its joviality. They are all really intelligent, super-serious people. And then you have the three of us, who are completely exhausted and trying to find some energy - David's nursing a bad head cold, Mike's struggling to get some energy up after a heavy weekend of traveling and consulting, and I just feel like I am one step away from the "crazy giggle" you get when it's all a little bit too much! But anyway. I'm not feeling sorry for myself today, in fact I'm really hopeful that this will actually be fun. And that we'll meet some people, or hand out some brochures, or something.