I have written in the past about loving my job and this last week recharged all of those batteries. My work life is segmented between management, training, and coaching. The retreat last week focused on training and these are some of my favorite people on the planet.
We were housed at the historic Stouts Island Lodge and since we have been there before it’s now known as Trainer Island amongst this team. You have to get on a pontoon boat with all of your bags and ferry over to the spot but once you are there it’s pretty cool. Time to just work on getting better at what you do is rare in the majority of the working world so I count this time as precious.
There is also time to just enjoy the fact that we are all parts of a high functioning team. I was presented with an incredible honor but it was a surprise and I honestly got a little salty which might seem at first read ungrateful but let me explain:
As I said this part of my work life is training and we were at a retreat to improve our storytelling. We brought in a professional facilitator and he did a great job during the day. At night there is time to practice and drinking while telling stories is kind of my jam. The night before we sat around the enormous fire pit (24 people in adirondack chairs oval big. the pit itself was 5 feet wide by ten feet long. Now that's a fire...) and a good time was had by most. I say most because I’ve been told that this is an intimidating group to try and fit in, which means the new people amongst us have a harder row to hoe.
I do so love telling stories but by night two, after two full days of training, I was almost storied out so I seriously considered skipping out on the festivities. I decided to go and things were progressing as expected except the first two speakers included stories about ME.
I hate being talked about.
It triggers all sorts of shit inside my broken brain so this was literally a nightmare come to life. In an effort to stop the full body cringe I jumped up and told a story despite an attempt to make me wait until the end. What I didn’t know was that another trainer and I had achieved something pretty special. I was just pissed that people wouldn’t shut up about me. At one point I considered the creation of a payback list but I gave it up and climbed into a bottle. Eventually the stories were coming to an end and I was starting to smell a rat. My first thought was this might have been some kind of highly organized form of payback and I kind of admired it for working so well. I decided to just ride the rest out.
At the end the other person and I were awarded something only 4 other people before us had achieved and it felt pretty good. I wont bore you with the details but I do need to tell you that the symbol for this is a samurai sword and for some reason they ordered ours sharpened. Luckily the trophies were collected and repacked for safe travel home shortly after awarding to prevent any accidental need for medevac choppers to attempt a night rescue.
It was an incredible week.