Appropriate Preparations....

The day of the office-wide meeting has finally dawned.
So I get up bright and early to make appropriate preparations...

I am fairly sure that most of my co-workers are preparing for said meeting by reading through the "Staff Re-Structuring" Report which New Boss has taken pains to circulate to us all in advance.

I have printed this report off - true - but apart from registering that Spiteful Manager appears to have been stripped off his entire team, I have been unable to register any of its other contents.

No, my preparations are slightly different....

1. I get up at 5.30am so that I can get to a 7am Support Group meeting. Husband surprises me by wandering into the kitchen just before I leave and saying that he will come too.

2. I spend an hour sitting in a draughty church hall with people like myself. Which isn't quite as grim as it sounds, as although only 9 of us are there in total, 8 of them are extremely wise and entertaining. (I am the exception, as I have Things On My Mind...)

3. I go for breakfast with the speaker at the meeting (someone I have known for 13 years), Husband, and an endearing Kiwi pal of his. I fortify myself for the stressful day ahead with bacon, bubble and beans; plus two toasts and marmalade. Feel thankful I am wearing my old baggy jeans.

5. Returning home, I realise that I can't face an on-site meeting with colleagues from another department, nice thought they are. It will just represent too much running around the Borough and I want to feel very calm  before the office-wide meeting. I email my apologies, citing "conflicting work pressures" as the reason. (When the last round of cuts occurred, and departments had 30% of their resources lopped, this became a standard disclaimer when people pulled out of meetings/failed to meet deadlines/didn't deliver what they had committed to. It's the first time I have used it myself, but it feels so liberating! I doubt it will be the last....)

6. I suddenly feel absolutely shattered. I had very little quality sleep last night, as I woke at 3am having had another nightmare - I mean the really disruptive kind, which involved me crying out in my sleep in terror and Husband having to shake me awake. (The nightmares returned 2 days before my holiday ended, when I knew I had to go back to work, and I started having the usual panic about what "they" might have done to me in my absence...)

7. So when I get home this morning, I crawl back into bed and sleep deeply for 45 minutes. Wake feeling a bit better.

8. I don a new frock. I found this 2 months ago on the sale rack in a House of Fraser - it cost under £30 ?! - and have been keeping it in reserve simply so that I can wear it to today's meeting and know that whatever is going on in my head, my outside will look ok.

9. I apply my entire collection of "product" to my bonce; and gell, coiff and blow dry my tresses into an serene and controlled arrangement which looks vaguely like the one on p184 of the October issue of Glamour magazine.

10. I take AGES with my make up, having barely bothered for the Support Group meeting. My friends can see me warts and all ("warts" this morning included spotty chin and my least appealing specs) but I am buggered if I will give The Jackals anything to bitch about. At the last minute, I add a "feline flick" (p 183...)

11. I open up my new book - "Recover Your Balance" by Ann Lewis (another discovery Twitter has facilitated). I read through the first couple of chapters, and am stunned to read the references to Patsy Rodenburg and the 3 Energy States. Wow! I learned about the Energy States in a drama class decades ago, but haven't thought about them for years. The chapter makes a lot of sense to me. I can't wait to read more.

12. Finally, I log onto my laptop and write all this down; so that I have something against which to (hopefully) measure my progress by the time the next office-wide meeting comes around.

Because deep down I know that all these preparations are not "normal". That most of my colleagues won't think about this meeting (much) until the moment we all have to get on the bus and head towards it. But I have developed a chronic, irrational anxiety about this quarterly get-together of co-workers and managers - which of course includes all the department's bullies - and all I need to do now is to get through it. 

And then I can come home.