steffan

Went to see the cat that sleeps for a thousand years today with D and our friend A because the cat itself (enormous thing that is lit up and moves slightly and snores and purrs (more when you rub its belly!)) was made by someone they know who does big clever electronic things. It was such a clever way to tie in so many kinds of museum objects, from cheetah skeletons to ornamental vessels from Japan to Peru that had cats on them.

And then we had cake and beer/cider and a lot of good chats and it's lovely to have nice friends and the best boyfriend.

I can hear lots of geese honking overhead. I'm so jealous of them getting to warmer and brighter places for the next six months.

Post-restructure, my little team (which ofc got unconscionably smaller) is part of an even bigger team. Ever since, the big bosses have been saying we need an away day "to get to know each other so we can work together better."

Far be it from me to greet this with "skill issue, get gud." I know other kinds of brains from mine work better face-to-face, and I don't want to denigrate that. But... I just don't get this.

It might end up being a moot point anyway, because now they've realized how expensive it is to get us all to London for two days, the away day might not happen at all. So today we got sent this survey, asking us how to make it worthwhile.

I'm really stumped by one of the questions: "Overall, what would make the away day a success for you?"

I'm trying to be a good sport here, I'm also trying to introspect more about work for my own sake even if I don't tell anyone else what I think because it's good for me to know what I think and that hasn't felt easy to me lately.

And...as far as I can tell, success doesn't make sense to me as a characteristic of an away day.

My ceiling is "...it was only the expected amount of exhausting?"

I dug out this thing I wrote (almost exactly two years ago; is it something about this time of year? sheesh) about talkers and writers because I've been thinking about it ever since:

It starts with a vague anecdote about "a small group of leaders" gathering most of their people for two days of talking about "big changes to their organisation's mission."

The writer goes on, "These leaders were talkers. At the end of the second day of this, they were amped up and excited about the plans that had been hashed out." She contrasts these "talkers" with "writers":

The writers were on the whole befuddled and exhausted; they weren‘t sure what had been decided on, and when they tried to reflect on all that talking, it was a blur. They could feel the energy of the room was such that something exciting had happened but they didn‘t quite know what to think of it. They were uncertain if they had made themselves clear; they were uncertain of what they had wanted to make clear. They wondered if they were missing something, but they couldn‘t articulate what it was. They too sent thanks and thumbs up emojis, but they went home with a vague sense of dread.

That's me. I truly can't imagine it being anything else, without the whole organization getting the restructure it needs (rather than the one it got).