I’m not in the mood for anything today. Fantasising about where I could go. The thing is, wherever I go, this is going to happen again and I will feel worse. Remember the feelings I had when I sat opposite GEC during my lunch hour, temping for a small engineering company across the road. I wondered what things would be like had I stayed. I’ve had the same feeling at other times in my life, too. So stay.
Morning supervision (Karaj, Calvin, Michelle, Simran, Ishwar, Dev and me.) Simran isolated himself straight away. He was the last into the sunken garden for the meeting. Check-in and plan for the day: cut hedges and dig buckets of earth from the utility block.
In the end, we cut three hedges and shifted over 300 buckets. It was good to get involved in the work, but also to have some space to myself in all of it. We showed good teamwork. Towards the end I started to feel the effects on my body even though I was in the middle of the bucket chain, which is easier than either of the two ends.
We had various supervisions throughout the day. I noted the following:
- Challenge to Simran for not taking charge in the garden.
- I contributed but I am still fairly quiet compared to my normal state. Nonetheless, I am staying with the process no matter how I feel. Simran did not say a word.
- When things are good, this is the best place to be. When things are bad, the same is true: this is the best place to be. I am calm in the face of of all that is happening to me becasue I know it is part of the whole process. Karaj: ‘But still ask me how things are for me (and George and other elders). We are all going through it.’
In the evening I went through Serena’s appraisal with Karaj; helped Michelle on PC7, making sure she wrote down the start-up procedure; and Ishwar, Dev, George and I spent a couple of hours looking through Ishwar’s European Excellence Model (EEM) documentation. Dev and I looked at the section on policy and strategy. As with most business documents, I lacked interest and understanding, but working through it with Dev eventually brought some of both.
By that time, there were six of the men present and we spent the final two hours of the night in the session with Michelle and Serena. Simran was challenged heavily again: no verbalisation and no presence. He typified his character when commenting on Michelle’s five-page letter to her dad. He ignored all the words which she had written, concentrating instead on the one two-line quote from the bible. He always ignores others and their contribution. Arrogance.
As yesterday, people left shortly before 01:00.
Summary: A good steady day. Feeling calm about where I am. Feeling much better today. Slowly getting back. It is the verbalisation and the company which has helped. Don’t get cocky.