it's gonna be a long dragon boat season. our leader since the beginning has left us. since we're a team that doesn't like to discourage people from joining or rowing or watever, we've always had too many leaders. but the leader of the leaders was philip. when college started we lost a lot of people, so a few high school teams joined together. since our hs team had the most members left over, our unofficial new team captain was philip. all the original team leaders were added in to our leadership, so we had like 8 leaders for team of less than 40 people (i kno, it's too many. but eh, we mostly got along, and since everyone handled different things, it worked). as the years went by, the team lost both leaders and members (some people joined other teams, some people just quit). last year we had three full time and three part time leaders. at the beginning of this season we were left wit three full time and two possible part times. altho we've managed to hold onto a lot of rowers, most of the leaders keep leaving because they have different priorities. our team isn't one that practices year round so we're not very competitive. this, of course, bothers some people. up until last year, anyway, that was basically the way it worked.
but we had a couple in the leaders. they had been dating for a good many years. and at the end of 2005(?) they broke up. the breakup was a messy one that was further complicated when the female from the couple immediately started dating another guy from our team. because some of us were good friends outside dragon boating, some alliances formed and loyalties were tested. not every friendship withstood the breakup.
this, of course, affected the 2006 season. the male of the broken up couple became a part time leader and later moved away for school. when the female exerted more power over the group (making some questionable decisions), the already frayed friendships deteriorated even faster. and so, this year, philip decided not to join the team. and then there were two..
i'm closer to philip than i am to thy (the female from the relationship, and the other leader of the team), and i have heard a lot of things from him, so i sometimes wonder if maybe i'm not just biased against her. i'm normally not one to give too much credit to hearsay, except that have seen her in action. and i gotta say, she does this that are sometimes pretty damn inappropriate (eg holding practices without informing me of them, making majorish decisions without consulting with other leaders). in any case, i'm basically ready to quit anytime. i would normally feel bad about just dropping my responsibilities at a moment's notice, but she knows that 1) i was hesitant to db at all this year and 2) i am a lot more sympathetic to phil than i am to her. and i don't kno if she actually knows this, but i will basically only leave if i feel that i too just can longer work wit her. and that will only happen if she crosses me one too many times. i'm okay wit disagreeing wit people and how they do things. but if she makes any major decisions without consulting wit me first then that's just crossing the line. and yet, i can totally see her doing it. i guess at this point i'm just seeing how far she'll take it.
we haven't officially started the season, so phil hasn't addressed the team yet. he's planning to say that he's too busy. (i kno, i'm writing this on my site. but truthfully, how many of you, dear readers, are dbing? i think close to none). if i leave, however, i won't be so diplomatic. i won't name names but people will be damn sure that i'm leaving because of political reasons, not personal. (btw, phil does kno that i'm planning to be artfully blunt when/if i leave. so i don't think i'll be much of a problem, wat i'm writing here)
this is where rip comes in. i told him the entire situation and asked him if he would continue to row if i quit. he said "probably not" but that he wasn't sure. and i don't think i'm over-reacting when i say that i think he should quit. it's not like i'm leaving for purely personal reasons (i'll be too busy or vacationing or watever). i'm leaving because i feel like i can't deal anymore wit the way the team is being run. that's not to say that it'll be run poorly or anything; things might even be better. but i'll basically be leaving because thy will have forced me out. and how can you, as my boyfriend (and as someone i introduced to dbing), stay on such a team? i think phil said it perfectly with 'i wouldn't have thought this would be a difficult decision...'
another complicating factor, an old friend of reep's will most likely be on the team again this year. nearly every year, the deciding factor for reep, of whether or not to row, has been if tom was gonna do it. i'm assuming that he will; his girlfriend is the captain of the boat, after all. now that reep has two friends, wat will it matter if i'm gone? ...it's a weird feeling. knowing that your boyfriend doesn't have your back. maybe this summer, in more ways than one, it'll be the final straw.
edit: i forgot to mention that reep is very half-ass about dbing anyway. he's lazy and goes to, like, half the beach practices and nearly none of the pool practices (of the nine practices we took roll for last year, we went to five total). and even still, homeboy can't decide if he would quit. that's just fucking great.
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