WEEK     JOB: ASSOCIATION EXECUTIVE

LOCATION: AUSTIN, TEXAS

“SEAN, WHEN ARE you available? We want you in Austin, Texas! There are twenty-four thousand professional associations in the United States. We have sixteen hundred associations in Texas. This will be the best week of the year for you!”

When I got an email from Beth, president of the Texas Society of Association Executives (TSAE), I was excited at the chance to go to Texas. Then I asked myself, “Do I really want to work for an association?”

I imagined a week of long board meetings, luncheons littered with those HELLO MY NAME IS … stickers, and networking events where the highlight is seeing who can amass the most business cards. I had enough One-Week Job offers that I could keep going for another three years, but I only had a few weeks open and wasn’t sure what to choose. Beth continued to sell me on the idea in a follow-up email.

It will really be an eye opener for you—from CEO of an association, to lobbyist, to professional-membership director, we can have you experience everything about the association profession.

You will also get to see beautiful Austin, stay with wonderful people, eat real Mexican food and BBQ … and you might get to see one of my son’s baseball games! Please say “yes”—let me know when we can talk about confirming your trip to Austin.

Even when we spoke on the phone, I had a difficult time wrapping my head around the job and what exactly an association does. “So, you’re an association?” I asked.

“Well, yes, though we are the association of associations,” Beth replied.

While I was intrigued simply by the fact these actually existed, I wasn’t intrigued enough to work for one and didn’t give it much more thought.

Without a doubt, Beth was the most persistent person I’d encountered over the year. She never failed to deliver more convincing, fun-filled facts with each email. A few weeks later, she wrote again.

Our offer is still good for coming to Austin. You would learn so much about the wonderful world of associations—did you know there are over 1 million people working for associations? For every job you have had, there is an association representing and educating that profession or trade. Learning about what an impact associations make in this world would be a great way to end your year long adventure.

We’d have a great place for you to stay, wonderful food, great people and Texas sized hospitality. I am keeping my fingers crossed!

I wrote back and said that her persistence put a smile on my face. It felt good to be wanted. She sounded so keen to have me.

Hi, Sean, OK … you’ve left the door open a crack, so now I’ll push it a bit more … Let me know what you have in mind and we will make it happen. … What you will learn about associations will be very interesting and fun. Don’t forget, Austin is the home of Lance Armstrong and Michael Dell (Dell computers) and everyone who comes here loves it (but maybe not in August and September ’cause it’s hot).

Not only are my fingers crossed but my toes too!

Admittedly I didn’t have a great association with associations. But in truth, I didn’t have any reason to associate associations with the negative associations I’d previously held. Besides, maybe an association of associations would be different.

It didn’t matter anyway; Beth’s persistence paid off. I already had visions of Texas barbecue, night cycling with Lance Armstrong, and discussing produce with Michael Dell in the supermarket. The decision was made. I was going to Texas.

On the plane from Washington, D.C., I sat next to a woman in her late twenties named Heather. She was coming back from visiting her boyfriend, currently in boot-camp training with the army. They rarely got to speak on the phone, let alone see each other. And so we connected in sharing stories of the hardships that accompany long-distance relationships.

“How long have you and your girlfriend been together?” she asked.

“Well, let me think. We met in Week Eleven. So … I guess about thirty-eight weeks.”

She laughed.

“Yeah, that does sound funny.” I smiled. “This year my entire life has been organized in weeks.”

“Have you been able to see much of each other over this past year, with you traveling all the time?” she asked.

“Not too bad, I suppose. We’ve managed to make it work somehow.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

I had to take a moment to think about it. Then was surprised when I figured it out: “Wow, I haven’t seen Danna in over two months.”

I hadn’t really thought about it before—Danna had been my girlfriend for the better part of a year, but most of it we’d spent apart.

I gazed out the window and thought back on the limited time we’d spent together. It was as if we were living in a fantasy world, forever trapped in the honeymoon stage, only seeing each other for short stints in extraordinary circumstances. A week in New York City. A weekend in Vegas to attend a Hollywood premiere. Her picture was on the desktop of my computer. But did I really know this girl? I questioned if it was the longing that comes with distance that had kept us together. Perhaps I was simply in love with the idea of being in love.

I continued to stare out the window, watching the moonlight reflect softly off the tops of clouds, every few seconds rhythmically joined by the light fastened to the plane’s wing. Heather decided to change the subject. “So for the entire year your life has been organized in weeks?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” I said, turning to face her again. “If I thought of any day this year, I could pause and think where I was and what I was up to.”

“That’s really cool,” she said, hanging on the thought. “It seems like as we get older we tend to organize our life in years. Months somehow don’t mean as much—it’s more about the change of seasons. It’s like when I was younger, there was no way I could think past the next holiday. But yeah, now many of us can make five-year plans and think nothing of it. Our perspective gets longer, I guess.”

“And do you think that’s a bad thing?” I asked.

“Well, no, not necessarily, but it can be—like if we start to focus so much on the long term that it causes us to neglect the present.”

Perhaps Heather’s right, I thought. We fixate on the future to provide meaning to the present. Doesn’t much matter what that future is, as long as we believe that it’s better than our current reality. Things will be better when exams are over. When this semester is finished. When I get my degree. When I find a job. When the kids move out. When I retire. Days blend into weeks, weeks into months, and before we know it it’s time to make a new five-year plan. We wish our lives away with the hope that better days lie ahead. Until one day we might come to the cold realization that the better days we’d longed for are now in the past, and that amid the noise we somehow missed them.

As John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

It’s important that I always maintain a vision of my long-term goals and ideals to guide me, though I need to focus on enjoying my present situation—doing whatever it is that I’m doing in that moment, the best I possibly can. In the end, that’s what will allow me to achieve those long-term goals; that’s what will allow me to lead a more fulfilling life.

I arrived in Austin, uncertain but excited to be there nonetheless.

I spent my first morning at the TSAE office trying to grasp the intricacies of association life and the vast number of acronyms that pepper every conversation.

But abundant acronyms and overusage of the word association aside, I must admit, once I drew an organizational chart and got my committees, boards, chairs, co-chairs, and subcommittees sorted out, the semantics started to make sense.

TSAE provides educational training for the professionals who work for all the associations in Texas. Basically, they help the people who manage associations manage them better.

Associations are generally formed when a group of people within the same profession or trade come together to further their cause. Many associations will form for legislative reasons, since a larger body can have a more significant impact on legislation than one indiviual. For example, a main priority of the Texas Medical Association (TMA) is to monitor legislation to protect the best interests of doctors. This allows individual doctors to focus their time and energy on providing quality care instead of on fighting to defeat bad laws.

Another important function of associations is to provide networking through social events so members can meet like-minded individuals and learn more about their industry. Beth told me that they also offer continuing education for their members to help them stay current in their industry.

I never realized how common associations are and was surprised to learn that nine out of ten people have a membership in some association. Driving downtown, Beth pointed out all the buildings where various associations were located. Previously, I would have paid no attention to such landmarks. Now, with a tuned eye, I suddenly saw them everywhere. As Beth often said, “There are associations for everything.” And she was right. She was not only the president, she was a member too—of a national association called Alliance, an association for presidents of associations of associations. Seriously.

In the end, Beth came through on her promises. Austin is a beautiful city, everyone was very kind, I tasted some great Mexican food and Texas barbecue, and spent some quality time with a wonderful family, as Beth, her husband, David, and their son, Matthew, showed me some tremendous southern hospitality.

The TSAE annual summit in Texas was scheduled for the following September, and Beth urged me to attend. “I’d love to,” I said. “But these days I have difficulty committing to anything two weeks in advance, let alone six months.”

When I’d met Danna nine months earlier, I needed to decide in those first few weeks if I was up for the struggles of a long-distance relationship. I hadn’t questioned that decision once, until now. It had been over two months since I last saw her.

I decided that I’d go and see her in Banff for the weekend en route to my next job, and called her to tell her the news.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Danna, how’s it going?”

“Good. Haven’t heard from you in a while,” she said coolly.

“Yeah, sorry. I’ve been really busy with everything,” I said.

“Not checking your emails anymore either?”

I remembered that she’d sent me a heartfelt email weeks earlier when I was in New York City. I’d made a note to respond when I had the time to write her a decent response, but I’d never gotten around to it. It had now been over a month.

“Ouch. Sorry I didn’t get back to you. I don’t know, I just had lots on my mind I guess.”

“I understand.”

“So guess what?” I said, deflecting the subject.

“What?”

“I’m going to come and visit this weekend,” I said, anticipating her excitement.

“Oh,” she said. “Uh, okay, sure. But I’m kind of busy right now with work.”

“What, you don’t want to see me?”

“No, of course I do,” she said. “But this weekend they have some events at the restaurant. And, I don’t know, I don’t want to get in the way of the project. You’re so close to the end now.”

“But I’m willing to come all that way,” I said, slightly agitated.

“What? Why are you angry?”

“Sorry, I just want to see you.”

When we were leaving Trois-Pistoles, I’d said I’d go anywhere in the world for Danna once I was done with the project. Maybe that hadn’t been realistic. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea that I come then.

“Sean, I don’t mean it that way,” she said, now irritated. “It’s not always about you, you know.”

“Fine, whatever. Go.”

There was silence on the other end. I waited for Danna to say something.

Finally, I broke the hum of the receiver, “Hello?”

There was nothing. She’d hung up.

I packed up my suitcase and shipped out. To join the air force.