‘More Useful’

I spent last week trying to be useful. 

I volunteered for a writers’ conference in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where my husband, Peter, and I stay. I love writers’ conferences. I love that people will travel from far away just to talk about writing, to meet other writers, to learn about writing, to listen to established writers and to eat. It was a terrific week, although it was tiring because I ended up as the designated conference sheepdog. 

Every event of this kind needs at least one sheepdog, and since I had fewer administrative and computer skills than other volunteers, I was happy to do it. Being a conference sheepdog is exactly like being a real sheepdog except, instead of sheep, there are lost writers wandering around and getting separated from the herd – and I didn’t actually nip at their heels. 

Instead, I did my best to help them get to their workshop or other event. I tried to keep them in a tight group, and when I found a lost writer, bleating in the lobby, I restored them to the herd. 

“Are you always here?” the writers started asking me on the second or third day.

“Always,” I told them. 

I figured, in a strange hotel, in a strange country, trying to do things they had never done before, having one person they could count on at the entrance of the hotel every morning might make the whole thing a little less daunting. 

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