Sometimes You Just Have a Bad Month
Ever had a bad day? What about a bad week or even month? Sometimes things just go wrong in our lives. Well it seems like I’ve been having a bad month (or two)! But in my head it will never end. The majority of my problems revolve around budgeting and money. Lately it seems like that is all my parents and I fight about. What made it a million times worse is how depressed it made me. It was scary to see how close I got to recessing back to old habits that used to be a pain releaser for me. Thoughts like that is never a good thing. Luckily I was strong enough to get through it like I did a year ago when I stopped. I understand how bad it is to even be thinking like that but you cannot change the past. Even though I have been wicked depressed most of the time, some good things have changed in my life! I now have a job and my license! 
This makes me extremely happy! Yes it’s not the best job but I love who I work with and I have only been there less than a month and they are already talking to me about a promotion! I am a drive thru cashier at Taco Bell! I work with amazing people and get great food on break. I feel like my life is turning around for the positive and adding our work on Pride Space just makes it that much better.
For the past month not much has happened with Pride Space so I thought that I would talk to you guys about the thought and writing process behind our mission statement and by-laws. These are the two main things we need to work on in the next few weeks for some of our paperwork to show funders and the general public how our group works and how serious we are about everything. The mission statement is a general statement that tells the reader who we are and what we plan to do in simple terms. This small paragraph is one of the hardest things to finish because you have to have the right wording but the good thing is that we can change it at any time as long as all the members of the board agrees with it. The biggest thing with this is that it has to go along with the group; we cannot write this based on anyone’s individual wants/needs. I read that this is one mistake many people do – they write it thinking about what they as a member of the organization want instead of what the whole foundation is there for. It is important to make sure that if some random person stumbles on our organization they would understand what we are trying to achieve. The mission statement is similar to the vision statement but they are actually very different. The major difference is that the vision statement is more emotional and tries to pull at the readers heart strings when on the other hand the mission statement just tells people the facts. The mission statement and the financial plan is what the funders are going to look at so you need to word it perfectly! Even if the funders are the nicest people in the world, no one is going to be eager to open their wallets and throw money at you. (Even though that would be awesome) In order to make sure ours is written right and comes across the way we want it to, we are planning on looking at similar organizations statements to compare. Our mission statement as of this very second is:
Pride Space is reaching out to the LGBTQ youth of Central Connecticut. We provide many different services to help them out. Such as – a place to stay if they get kicked out or bullied, HIV testing, GED services, different types of therapy, or just a place to keep safe. We want to put a smile on everyone’s face and help the upcoming generations.
But like I said before- this can get changed at anytime. Laurin is actually supposed to be working on rewording/adding to it.
The other thing we started working on is our by-laws. This is a document that states all of our “rules and regulations”. This tells everyone (the board, active members, and inactive members) what they can/cannot do and how to do it. It is extremely long and wordy. We have to go through every single detail within this whole organization so it will probably take a long time to finish. This is supposed to be kind of like our ‘Bible’; if anything happens within the group we have to be able to go to our by-laws and get the answer we need. When Laurin came down to see me and do some work we went through an example and wrote out a type of rough draft that really helped. Since we did this – we got to talk about all the important details and put them on paper to say we agreed on them. Since we don’t see each other a lot we are supposed to be working on them when we have time but we both have jobs and lives so it’s hard to put this into our schedules. Lately I have been going to my work place with my Pride Space work and just sitting there for hours getting things done so I am not at home with so many distractions. I have been super focused so I am hoping to get a lot of writing done because I am not sure if I need the by-laws for the paperwork we are filling out right now to become a legal organization. I wanted to add some of our by-laws in here but I want to finish them first so wish us luck.
If you have any specific questions or want to reach us please don’t hesitate to email us at pridespaceinc@gmail.com. We are still on facebook under Pride Space Inc and we are still hoping to raise a bunch more money for our paperwork. If you are interested in donating some money, goods for the house or even for our auction please email us! It would help a ton!
But still…..
Have faith in me….
Kat
