Things seem a little quiet around here to me — do they seem a little
quiet to you? Yeah. Something to do with being busy in
meetings all day/evening every day for the last 10 days. I think
it was a productive trip; I think the meetings moved stuff forward,
which is a win. But there’s something about constant
concentration and trying to get the next meeting prepared even as the
last one is just ending that sucks the life out of you.
I don’t think it’s just a question of being tired (though big dinners,
nice wine, staying up till all hours and then getting up for 8am
meetings might have an impact
;-) ). A positive spin is that level of engagement in the
activities simply pulls you in every direction and squeezes out every
bit of energy[*]. I always say, “better busy than bored”.
But, here on Sunday evening, the meetings that ended Friday morning
seem like they were a month ago — as we transitioned into the
weekend’s meetings’ context around noon on Friday.
Another way of looking at the “level of engagement” and intensity of
the meetings — intense flashbacks. Last week’s meetings were in
a hotel where we’ve had 6 (of 30) week-long meeting sessions in the
last 10 years. Yes, we’ve been there for 6 weeks, or 20% of our
meetings. The flashbacks occured as I walked by meeting rooms and
could mentally replay intense discussions that had been undertaken in
many of them: which BoF was held in which room, and what the key
objections had been (and who had them) — some of these from as long
ago as 2002, at least.
There’s also definitely an element of the impact of adrenaline (how
else to get through 12-14 hour days? appart from 4 shots of
espresso in the morning, of course?).
But, for now, my immediate concern is how to stuff a queen-sized
flannel blanket into luggage as we head to an entirely different
context for the next week.
[*] It’s definitely some kind of reflection on the state of my
mind that this seems like a “positive spin” :-)
