Maintenance · call recap
Nobody claps for a flat year
3 May 202614 attendedHeld by Benedikt
A call about the social side of the boring part, which turns out to be where the difficulty actually lives now that this circle has some long-standing members in it. People stopped asking. Some found that a relief and some found it a bereavement, and the two groups had a genuinely useful argument about it that I mostly stayed out of.
Where the room started
Split. Peggy, who told nobody for six months at the beginning, said the silence now is the best part of the whole business. Rin, who journals daily, said she had not realised how much of her motivation had been other people noticing until they stopped, and that the flat year had been much harder than the year of change.
Neither of them was wrong and I let that stand rather than resolving it. Two people said afterwards that the disagreement was the useful bit.
What came up
What replaces it. Three people had deliberately built something else with the attention they were no longer spending on this — Rin has a walking group, Matt has taken over the reorder logistics for two people in his village who cannot get to the chemist easily, Romy has started coming to the plateau circle to be the person who is further along.
Also the practical: reviews getting further apart, and whether that is right. Two people had gone a year without bloods and both wanted to know whether that was normal. I said what I always say — I do not know your history and your prescriber does, and that question is a good use of the next appointment.
Where we left it
With the observation that this circle is quietly becoming the most useful room on the site for people in month four, and none of them know it exists. Two members are going to go and sit in the first-twelve-weeks circle once a month and say nothing unless asked. I think that is the best idea anybody has had here in a year.