I read a lot of research. When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 14,300 abstracts.
I wrote yesterday about "The fourth morning: honouring my mother". Now at home again. Lying in bed this morning feeling happy. Warm and content.
The last morning of the group. I wake a bit "troubled". This is the ebb and flow of the group. Feelings tend to be more intense here. As the "group river" flows its four day course, I know that I'm likely to move through a series of different emotional states. I lie in bed for a bit sensing what I'm feeling. What's it about. The overall "smell/flavour" of my mood seems contributed to by a mix of things. One factor is that I feel, what seems to me, a low key grumbling unease going on between me and one of the other people in the group. A second factor is a discomfort I have about how another person expressed themselves for a while in the group yesterday. A third is a concern I'm feeling about another person seeming to get too "isolated" in the group. And there's something too about the group ending - both saying goodbye to the people and saying goodbye to this
Third morning. It's after 7.00am. Yesterday I wrote on "Authenticity & feedback". The group seems to be "speeding up" now. That's partly because I've got less time this morning. Fairly typically at home, I try to have my light off by 10.15pm and get up by 5.15am. Last night we were dancing till about midnight. Brilliant. Such great fun, but not a big encouragement to be up only a few hours later. And partly the group feels it's speeding up because, like being away on a few days holiday, experiences start to blur together. And partly I feel it's because the river of emotion and openness is running more strongly. As happens so often, many of us - me included - seem more fluid, more easily touched by strong feeling, more easily "triggered" by the depth of what others express.
Yesterday in "A 3 layer view of intrapersonal & interpersonal judgement" I wrote about the first morning of this four day residential group. Now it's the start of the second day. What happened yesterday? I began in that "on-my-own" familiar way - getting up quite early, washing, writing, meditating, plunging in the stream. I tried running up the Drove Road, but slightly pulled my calf muscle again - a recurrence of a strain from earlier in the week. I walked/hobbled back down through the fields. Lambs, cowslips, beautiful hares, calls from the curlews.
Nearly every year for the last twenty years I've come down to a four day Spring residential "Mixed Group" in Cumbria. I wrote about this group last year and the year before, and I'm also involved with a similar pattern of autumn "Men's Groups".
I'm woken by a particularly loud owl hoot close by. "HOOO. HER-HOOO". And again. And again. Becoming more distant. I lie listening to the dawn chorus. There are voices in it that we don't get at home. It's a bit after five in the morning and I feel I've slept well. Content. Lovely down sleeping bag and a sleeping mat. Gosh camping can be a lot more easy than when I was a kid.
