nah.i'm gonna go home, shower, get in my bed (best focus place) and get it finished. i must get out of the office, stat.
You've been there for what? 36 hours?
i did step outside! Twice. once to have a smoke, the other to a convenience store around the corner. it's not like i have no life or what.
One more week?
An eight day week squeezed in seven twenty-four hour segments?
halfway done. halfway dead. ugh.
...one more day to go.
Ha! I swear I hadn't read this before you got home, Dasha. Half way done.......
it's the toughest group i ever had. they suck all the energy right out of you in the first half hour. it was a very very very hard day.
Sorry to hear it, dag. After all the work you put in over the past two weeks....
it's not necessarily bad, just very hard. most of the participants have vast amounts of experience and are tough to manage and facilitate. it's exhausting.
One more day -- Good Luck tomorrow. Are you celebrating afterwards?
I am just intimidated by the participants. The group is particularly tough, kinda competitive with each other. A bunch of conflict resolution professionals - the most difficult crowd to manage.
Also, my boss abandoned us (me and my colleague) today - sleeping through most of the sessions, which made it really frustrating, since no matter what I do, even if I stand on my head and pedal around with my ears could make that look any better. It jeopardizes my work and my colleagues' and just made me angry. Talk about sucking the energy out of the room. The worst part was that at one point, towards the end of the day, when the discussion was particularly challenging and he was asleep, I thought :"Why the f*uck do I care?" In my entire teaching and training career that has not happened once to me. I love my job and teaching in general. I put everything on the line, pull off 16 hour work days before a workshop, go through without sleep - all happily - as long as it's rewarding. I never want to think "Why do f*uck do I care?" ever again for a split of a second. I do for living what I deeply believe in, chose it over far more profitable options, so that's a big thing for me. Anyway, hope tomorrow is better. we did pull him aside and discussed it at length, letting him know how we feel about that. He was defensive and cranky.
Still, most of this doesn't have to do directly with the workshop experience the participants are having, just the behind the scenes stuff. I hope at least some are getting something out of it.Gah.
I'm glad you talked to your boss about it. Yeah, that's indefensible. Especially in that kind of a setting. (As in, it sounds like that group is especially status-conscious and looking for cues as to how to treat you -- that's not a very helpful cue.)
I bet everything is going way better than you think it is, though.
OH wow, that sounds crappy. I am also glad you spoke with H.
Dag--
One more day--then you keep the promises to yourself.
Today was indeed far better. Boss did his best, he did not sleep, though he struggled. You could see the herculean effort he's putting into staying awake and i appreciated it. And i did get a massive appreciation at the end with a round of applaus, which i also don't sneeze at.
Participants had a good time, learned from each other a lot, but by god, they were difficult to herd. i had to change the schedule today on the spot - couldn't even caucus with my team since participants didn't want a break. Instead of our program I facilitated a discusion where all of what we wanted to present came out anyway. Which is better than it coming from us, but geeze, what a tough crowd. Not in a hostile way. Just intensely engaged, and in need of sharing practical experiences. Well, I'm sure glad we have these only once a year.
On the other hand, the participants were amazing. Former combatants, now peacemakers, from Israel and Palestine, people from Cambodia, Botswana, Muslim municipal officials from Europe, Armenians, Turks and Azeri... fascinating well of life experiences. Definitely worthwhile (now that it's over, heh). And they bonded so well.
Of course they did. We started with a home cooked meal and put up 11 people at my boss's house - who does workshops that way? I guess if you pour your heart into it, people reciprocate.
Nice.
Exhausted.
Now I can sleep.
Good.
Now for your promised oasis....
