Never again.

I'm nearing the end of a three-year term as the president of a regional scholarly association. It has been, on the whole, a decent gig, marked by collegiality. And I think I've contributed something to the association: I've found a permanent home for our records, I've streamlined the organizational documents, I've increased our profile in the wider scholarly community by doing some joint things with other associations.

I don't know how I got suckered into it, but I'm co-organizing this year's conference. A few years ago, we needed a host site for 2011, and a very prolific, near-living colleague of mine who happens to be an independent scholar said that the two of us should organize it together. I shrugged and said, "Sure."

I don't know whether it's that we're organizing this conference in an executively transitional year (in which the president-elect will take the helm at the upcoming conference, and a new secretary, and all this just after the treasurer's position having transferred last year), or that the unaffiliated status of the lead-organizer means that we're doing it without the conference being attached to an institution (also, my institution is too far from the conference site to host, really, and it was the independent scholar's baby in the first place), or the fact that this independent scholar seems to be taking advantage of my own responsibility gene and leaving a lot of the details (like how in hell we are to take registration payments) to me....

Whatever it is, it's living hell, and I'm never ever going to organize a conference again.