I signed up to be the snack parent for my daughter’s softball team because our local Little League requires parents to volunteer or pay a $50 fee. That is the entire decision tree. I was registering her for softball in the parent portal, and it said, “volunteer for one of these open spots or pay the $50 shame fine.” Okay the “shame” was implied because the whole premise is punishment. But also my ADHD loves to say “yes”.
There’s no way I was going to volunteer to be a coach, and the only other options were (a) Little League board member, or (b) snack parent. I chose snack parent because organizing a snack rotation among the families is something I can bust out in 10 minutes.
This is the part of the email where I’m supposed to tell you that being snack parent has been a beautiful exercise in community and presence. It hasn’t. I had the parents select which games they’d be available to bring the snacks (via Google Forms) and then ran the answers through Claude to populate a schedule. Easy. But then some parents had qualms with the schedule and others were surprised they weren’t assigned snack duty even though they didn’t fill out the form. Cool.
I’m also, in the same season, trying to ship a piece of software into a regulated industry. The two jobs do not feel like they belong to the same person. One job rewards precision. The other one rewards picking up your phone fast enough to confirm that yes, you are bringing the orange slices. There is no version of me that is good at both at the same time.
The job you said yes to in a moment of impulsivity is still a real job. My ADHD brain wants to treat the softball texts like background noise because they aren’t the “real” work. But they are real. The parents who reply within ten minutes are paying attention. The ones who don’t are being judged, even if no one is saying it out loud. I have been on both sides of that. And it’s weird social dynamics that I don’t respect, to be honest.
The part I didn’t expect: the snack parent thing was the only thing in my life where the deliverable is small and finite.
Confirm the snack. Print the roster. Send the reminder. There is no audit. There is no investor. There are just orange slices, and then it’s done, and the dopamine hit is real.
I think I needed something where the success criteria fit on one line. The startup doesn’t have that. The newsletter doesn’t have that. My law practice definitely doesn’t have that. But the snack rotation does, and apparently, I will take my wins where I can find them.
The softball season ended early for my kid, who decided it wasn’t her thing after a month or so. For some reason, the parents acted like the snack schedule would need to be “redone” just because I wasn’t involved anymore… I still don’t understand the logic there (you all know your assigned dates for the remainder of the season, why are you panicking?)
A question for you:
What’s the small, finite job you took on by accident that turned out to be the only thing in your week with a clean ending? I want to hear about it. Reply to this email — I read everything.
— Rachel
P.S. — We’re back to gymnastics, and the girls have missed the last two weeks because of childcare issues while I’m at work events. I’m telling you this because I’ve been thinking about it and I need to externalize my guilt.
I get it. I do all of the grocery shopping in our household and I’ve come to look forward to it. That and the dishes. There’s a satisfying “end” that I don’t get often in my project work!