Ah… Staff Day!
The lessons learned on these informal retreats can often be profound and invaluable can’t they?
It’s so important to have a day dedicated to refreshing yourself, rebuilding that team spirit and cementing the camaraderie for the coming year, isn’t it? It’s typically a day exclusively devoted to recharge and reenergize as well as to bond with your colleagues particularly when an unpredicted revival of a lost art form happens to take center stage.
Once the baby of the agency at age 22, I have now matured into the Mother of the office at a very spry and energetic 54. Through the years, despite a few tell-tale signs of aging, I still feel so young at heart that almost nothing holds me back. (Though, if truth be known, I do so wish my body knew this!)
The highlight of our team-building exercises was a wonderful, harmless old-fashioned game of kickball. Everyone plays. Well, mostly everyone. The smarter, wiser older staff tends to sit on the sidelines to serve that very important role as cheerleaders for the rest of us who need our competitive spirits fed with their ever enthusiastic screams of advice, hoots, hollers and wild applause.
Without question, staff day is a day for learning too. For some, lessons can actually be a painful experience; providing a great deal of enlightenment into some very hard truths. This year, I personally found this day particularly insightful; learning many excruciatingly important lessons in the course of just one eye blink.
My precious lessons learned:
1. One must always consider the current functioning of one’s entire physical state despite how well you are mentally prepared for a challenge.
2. Never, ever borrow anyone else’s over-sized Crocs because they immediately turn your feet into big, unwieldy Hobbit-like appendages that make pivoting and rapidly negotiating quick turns extraordinarily difficult.
3. First base can be very, very far away when your knee cap is popping right off your leg.
4. You don’t need much experience to slap a knee cap back in place, just an elevated state of excruciating pain and desperation.
