Where's wally?

Well I find myself currently in the southern climes of our fair city this sunny lunchtime. Where exactly? Let's call it Southrockogville for the sake of my story. It is on the way to the Gong anyway, if that narrows it down for Sydneysiders. Anyway. I arrived here this morning, not just on time but EARLY! Yes, actually rather unbeleivably, I made the trip from the Blue Mountains to the City and then here by 9am, so I could have a coffee before commencing my workshop at 9.40.

I wandered out from the train station and marveled at all the cool dumpling shops and then stopped marvelling and starting cursing as I realised that there was narry a coffee shop in sight. F it. Not to worry, kept walking, following my map (in the wrong direction as it turned out but hey, whavetever, good for my step count) and finally found a little cafe serving lavazza coffee and full of lots of grumpy male barristas and long suffering sandwhich making wives and sisters. Drank coffee. Finished writing notes. Set off in eth right direction. Got to workshop. Delivered workshop.

Now, it has been a long while since I delivered a workshop that wasn't somehow related to art stuff - printmaking workshop, felt making workshop all good, but an actual 'what do we all think about this? Let's tease it out together' kind... ugh, I was rusty. It used to be something I did fairly often for work.. 'community workshops'. Recently I have given 'talks' at work, complete with the darkened room, some participation and lots of slides projected onto wall of said darkened room, for like an hour. But it's a bloody long time since I ran a 3 hour workshop, on a tricky topic, with a rag tag bunch of people from 9 different organisations. By myself. In ridiculously high heels.

There were the usual mix of folk present. The 'talker' who jumps in all the time and speaks over people and you have to sush. The moody 'seen it all' before who you just KNOW is thinking 'oh this is crap, as if you'd use that group excersise technique, that is so 1999', and is just one body language step away from sitting with their arms folded over their chest or actually leaving. The 'whoops, what was the topic again?' (self explanatory). And me, trying to lead them through long minutes of chat, go deep, go broad and rescusitate them when they seem on verge of collapse (stat! nurse, some adrenaline please).

Feel tired now, and a bit flat. It wasn't the best workshop ever, and I always hope these things will get in the groove and become one of those things that just flows, an incandescent experience, an exciting coming together of minds, a revelation. Sometimes they do you see - I've had ones like that. But no - there were no revelations. It was more a half arsed flickering candle than incandescent. It was a bit of a chore to keep it going. Good content out of it (lucky because there's a report to write), but don't think I'll be winning facilitator of the year based on today's performance. I especially liked the feedback from the client. Me: 'so, (their name), how did you think that went? Did that cover the ground you wanted? How does that sit with your objectives for the program?' Client: 'Well they seemed to like it'. Oh. Uhuh. Like that is it?

But here, exploring south'ville - bloody lovely. Warm gorgeous 'oh that's right that's what summer feels like' day. Noodles for lunch. Eying off half price shoes. Wanting to have an afternoon nap. Quick blog entry in my lunch break then back to the office. Must remember to come this way again for shoe sales, live fish restaurants, incense and snow domes featuring feng shui goldfish - for the particularly bad at keeping fish alive? Oh right, that would be me! (remember my feng shui goldfish experience way back when? There's a post on it somewhere in here).