A little slow on the mark, hopefully it's not too late

Hello everyone.

I have a sinking feeling that I may have been too late in participating in these blogs but I won't make any excuses about this as I have had ample time to post blogs but have neglected them due to being purely overwhelmed and also due to laziness. So there is the first thing I have learnt; there are consequences, and penalties, for leaving things to the last minute and often comes in the form of stress and despair, which is something I am feeling right now.

Putting all this aside, I have been organising a fashion show on behalf of Colosoul Magazine, a new, WA, youth independent magazine that encourages and acknowledges young, local talent across the areas of music, art, photography, fashion design, and creative writing as well as delving into issues and concerns of the young people today. My fashion event is called 'Make Your Mark' (MYM) and is being held on Wednesday November 26, 2008. We are showcasing four local designers; Joanie Wong, Julia Silk, Lesserlantern and Igor & Katja. I also intend on incorporating at least one student designer to tie in with the premise of the magazine of acknowledging and promoting young, local, up-coming talent.

I have involved since late July and cannot say I was fully committed until about late August. I suppose I took for granted the amount of time I had and was probably too scared and overwhelmed to begin working on it when I should of. I felt a little lost at first seeing as I was not working under someone who was giving me tasks, I was appointed as being the person who ran and organised the ENTIRE thing, with little or less than no knowledge or experience. It would be an understatement for me to say that it has been a steep learning curve, one that has been extremely challenging and constantly tested my professional, emotional and mental capabilities.

Prior to being involved in an event so big I had toyed with the idea of entering the PR field and specialising in event management, and while I haven't been deterred completely, I have found event management to be a lot more difficult and stressful (to say the least) than I first anticipated. I have learnt that there are a lot of people who aren't willing to help you out, especially when you do not have the financial resources for the expenses endured in an event like a fashion show but then there are the select few that are willing to give you the time of day - and these people are often contacts you already have or the people that your contacts know. So that was my second lesson - use your contacts as much as you can and make sure you maintain those relationships because they are so valuable and can come in handy when you need them most.

I have been able to work from home on this project which can have both it's benefits and it's downfalls; the main benefit that springs to mind is the fact that I have been given the freedom to work on MYM in my own time but at the same time I have found this can also be counterproductive. I suppose I would have preferred to have been made to go into an office where I am given the time to purely focus on this task at hand, because the way I have been doing it I have not been able to delegate specific amount of time to completely concentrate on MYM and have been distracted by other things - family, boyfriend, friends, other uni assignments, work, rehearsals and studying for exams. So in that respect I would have opted, if given the choice, to have to come into an office space where I feel obligated to fully commit to only doing tasks in preparation for MYM.

I am currently still in the organisation stages, and am ridiculously behind schedule - right now I should be promoting the event, but because of a number of set backs not a lot of progression has been made. I am currently extremely stressed out but hopeful that everything will turn out OK. I'm quite confident that everything will fall into place if I put my head down and get everything done that needs to be done.

I will be a lot more specific about the challenges I have faced in organising MYM in my next blog, but for now this was just a brief over view of my experience so far.