On Friday the 16th, Let’s do it! World was officially launched with a press conference in Tallinn and global press release in about 5 languages (and god knows how many more it was translated into).
What is not often visible from behind the curtains, is the fact how much work is actually behind this one-day visibility in press and a maybe one-hour-long press conference.
Being quite certainly not the only one working the previous 48 hours straight and trying to chew through the priorities, I had to admit that I quite liked it, in a way. Maybe because when you know you’re in a hurry, then you work more effectively than usual. Sometimes these magical 48 hours make synergy and creativity flow and people show up and want to do something as well and then everyone’s working like crazy at 4 am or something; then getting a couple of hours of sleep and back in the track again. Or you can take shifts – some work at night and go to sleep at 7 am (guilty here…), exactly when others wake up and take over, starting to send press releases, newsletters and giving press conferences.
And before that 48 hours was… a full year, almost two. More than half hundred people giving countless hours, energy, ideas, free time, sometimes breaking, sometimes waking, but as a general beehive, still on the track, still building the future…
It must have been about two years ago – in 2009 – when the crazy bunch of Estonians, having managed to unite 50 000 volunteers to clean the whole country from garbage within 1 day in 2008, suddenly decided that it’s time to take it global.
And by now there are more than 60 countries who already plan a big cleanup within World Cleanup 2012 campaign or are creating team for that. I remember listening in to a Skype conference in 2010, perhaps, where they were talking about the numbers. I was quite new and felt I had nothing to say, so I was all quiet. Anyway, when “100 countries and “300 000 000 people” emerged, I probably thought something like: “Oh-oh. Crazy people. How will they manage that?”
Well, now we’re half way there, and officially we started only yesterday…
Friday was amazing. Seeing those news and things happening, mails coming; feeling that everyone is talking about our thing today, and feeling part of it, and feeling it bigger than ever.
And in between that frenzy of hope, joy and other emotions, I’m glad that I still found time to call a dear friend and talk about completely different subjects. Because regardless of my sometimes over-fanatical love for my job and the people connected with it, there are some other things and people that really make life worth living for me.
Sometimes those magical 48 hours put the life in perspective… and you suddenly can do and see everything that is important for you.
kirilind 