don't rock the boat, baby....

[rock the boat!]
don't tip the boat over!

i am not a drama queen. i do not like confrontation. but if it's important enough, i will stand up for what i believe in and make my voice heard, no matter how unpopular my views may be. okay, even if it's not so important, i'll weigh in with my opinion, but i don't do it to be obnoxious or offensive. i do it to make sure that all sides are heard. i do it if i feel that something is unjust, unfair or just plain wrong.

recently i joined a craft collective (who shall remain nameless because i don't want any of the other members to google that shit and end up here!) to meet other cool, crafty people and work together to build/promote our little crafty businesses. honestly, my main objective was to find other crafty chicks to hang out with -- none of my friends get into the crafts like i do! well, imagine my surprise when i meet some of the women in this collective and they are nothing like i'd imagined them to be. NOTHING. a few are awesome -- funky, indie, interesting, creative, potty-mouthed.....everything i was looking for when i joined. a few are, uh, not so awesome. these would include the person who started the collective (basically she got permission to use the name, which is an offshoot of the original collective using the name in another state) and someone who showed up wearing mom jeans and white sneakers (who i will now refer to as mom jeans). oh, and who makes jewelry that i hate. i have no idea what the woman who started the collective makes....let me start calling her the founder. i do know that they are both stay-at-home-moms who live in the suburbs FAR from DC (which is part of the collective's name and, obviously, identity). i won't get into the boring details, but these women and i seem to have reached an impasse. on the group listserv i expressed my displeasure with all the tedious rules of linking to each other and the fact that i'm not interested in promoting someone else's work when i don't even know what they do. i called the founder out by name on that last point. mom jeans said i was being "offensive and less than tactful." you can see where i'm going with this, right? these women don't have their shit together (the group site is ugly, there is no cohesiveness [is that a word?] to the group), and i don't have time to fuck around with a group of people i don't like! so my first instinct was to get the other cool chicks to leave with me and start a new group! heh. i'm such an instigator! but they seem to think that sticking it out is the way to go, and eventually we'll be able to take over. so then i think, okay, i can stick it out. then i read more tedious bullshit emails on the listserv, and think about how much i don't want to work with the founder and mom jeans, and think FUCK THIS. how will we take over without being total assholes? god, i feel so elitist and exclusionary saying this, but the fact is that certain people in the group do not represent what i feel this particular craft collective is about. but i'm not into hostile takeovers. i'm not into hurting people's feelings. i'm not into telling someone that i don't like their work. i respect anyone making things for the love of making things, but just because you craft does not mean i want to work with you! i just don't see how sticking it out and being lumped in with uninteresting product is helping me. oh yeah, the main thing it seems that other people want out of this group is promoting their businesses and getting exposure. that's all well and good, but the people who like mom jeans' jewelry are certainly not gonna be into the skull and crossbones i stitch up, you know? and vice versa! SIGH.

so now i don't know what to do. maybe it's really not so important to be part of a collective? i can still hang out and talk shop with the cool crafters i've met from the group, right? but then if the group ends up being really cool and the boring ones drop out, i'll feel like i fucked up a good thing. ugh. today i'm leaning towards sticking it out, but i seriously don't know if i can keep my mouth shut for that long. if i stay, i'm not going to blindly follow the founder, and that's going to mean i'm gonna say some very unpopular shit. gah, why can't i just be a follower???