Anxiety Aunt: Help! I’ve managed a supper membership for years and now I’ve to give up, nobody is taking my place | USAEMALL.com

Dear Aunty,

I am part of a little supper club we have going where once a month we meet up at someone’s house. The person whose house we are meeting at cooks the main meal, one person brings entrees, another is responsible for dessert, and everyone brings what they want to drink. Since the club started about four years ago, I have been running the spreadsheet of whose turn it is to host and who brings what. At the start of the year, I got a promotion at work and upped my hours. I told the rest of the club that I would no longer have time to manage things but would do it until someone else stepped up. Three months later and no one has put up their hand even though I have given four or five reminders that I need to opt out. I feel let down that no one is willing to take my place, even in the short term, but I don’t want the club to stop meeting. What should I do?

Yours, Unimpressed

Dear Unimpressed,

My dear, you have to take a leaf out of Elsa’s book and “let it go”. While you keep doing what you are doing, no one is going to stop you. Why would they? You are making their lives easier and who doesn’t want or need life to be easier? The answer is to pull out of the role, let the chips fall where they may, then see who swoops in like a seagull on a different kind of chip to keep the party going, as it were.

Your Aunt used to be in a similar position when One volunteered on the bingo committee. One used to quite enjoy organising the monthly sessions and the occasional social events. The wine tours to the Swan Valley One organised were particularly popular, but we did have to keep changing bus companies after the drivers complained that their retinas were damaged from all the flashing of granny undies. One knows what you are thinking, but no, we weren’t hiring those buses with the poles, it was just that we were so unused to day drinking, by the time we got to our final destination we would all tumble out of the bus and land in a pile of upturned skirts, revealing far more polyester, lace and frills than the poor drivers could bear.

Apart from having to endlessly google new bus charter companies, it wasn’t the organisation One found tiresome but rather the internal politics. Honestly, what does it matter what your role is as long as you are doing what you signed up for — helping out? But those old dears would get so territorial over their designated tasks that sometimes things got quite nasty if anyone else dared encroach on their area.

One got sick of having to split up skirmishes between two people who were old enough to know better, so One packed it in. What is the point of staying on when something that is supposed to be fun turns out to be more work than it is worth?

So back to you, Unimpressed. If everyone else is as keen as you are to keep the club going then someone will most definitely take up the mantle. In fact, surely some AI program could do all this work for you, so all any of you have to do is turn up and not get as trolleyed as a bunch of retirees on a day trip to the Swan Valley.

However, if no one is willing to step into the role, or work out how technology could do it for you, then it may well spell the end of your supper club. But that is not the end of the world. Indeed, think of it as an extra night each month where you can pursue new opportunities. You could go and see a movie, join a book club (just don’t get roped into organising that!), learn a language or take up cancan dancing. The possibilities are endless.

And who says your little supper club can’t continue to catch up once a month (or perhaps less frequently if you are worried about finances) at a restaurant, bar or cafe, where minimal organisation is required.