Retreat

Today I'm attending an all day off-site retreat, an 8-hour meeting of brilliant and highly educated people, and me. This is just fact, not false modesty. I'm the only person here without a medical degree or a PhD. A few of these overachievers have both, with an MPH or an MBA or a JD just for sport. I myself was full up on formal education when I received my BA, but these people don’t know when to quit.

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One thing that some successful people do not know how to do - at all - is dress casually. The retreat organizer specified casual dress for today. For the military officers, I think that means anything but their uniforms. Most of us didn't even bother with the casual directive. We wore pretty much what we’d have worn to work anyway, with maybe a more comfortable shoe, or a cardigan rather than a jacket. It’s not a terribly formal workplace in the first place. A few people did attempt a look more relaxed than their usual workwear, with mixed results. I guess if a man usually wears a suit, then a sweater vest layered over an oxford shirt with khakis and loafers will pass as casual.  Maybe for a woman who usually wears a suit, a cashmere sweater layered over a silk blouse with a brightly patterned silk scarf knotted smartly at the neck is as casual as it gets. Well, everyone seemed happy and everyone looked nice, and I’m the last person who should be critiquing anyone’s look. I just think that if you are more at ease in more dressy attire, then that’s how you should dress for work. Comfort is relative. 

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We do these offsite retreats on a fairly regular basis, and I always try to think of ways to get out of attending, but it’s hard to make a case that you’re too busy to leave your desk when everyone else in the group is a military officer or an MD or both, and they all seem able to make the time to get out of their offices. And of course, it’s not the offsite itself (most of them are pretty great), it’s the large group interaction. Introverts like people just fine - we just like them a few at a time, in smaller time increments. Faced with the idea of hanging out with 50 people - some of whom I don’t know well at all - in the same room, for an eight-hour day, and I will brainstorm pretty much any ridiculous excuse to get out of it. And then I’ll enter the resignation and acceptance phase, steel myself for the ordeal of enforced camaraderie, and show up with a smile on my face and appropriate semi-casual, semi-business attire. And 90 percent of the time, I have a pretty good time. 

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And as usual, I did have a pretty good time, but I said too much, and I’m not the only one. The whole thing was very confessional (adjective), and I only do that here, or in an actual confessional (noun). I’m still a little stressed out about having over-shared. Well, it’s all out there now. Nothing I can do about it now, except maybe go for a walk. 

I’m a little stressed out about everything, really. I wouldn’t mind retreating from the world in general, just for a few days. But that is not an option. A walk is the next best thing. Going for a walk is my cure-all, for myself and others. It’s what I do when I’m anxious and worried (100 percent of the time) and it’s what I tell everyone else to do. It’s an early December Tuesday now, the trees dark colorless gray against a white-gray sky. I worked from home today and am about to finish just in time to walk a few steps outside, racing against sunset, which gets earlier every day now. But only for a little while longer. In two weeks, the tide will turn. The days will begin to lengthen and the darkness will be pushed back a tiny bit each day until there’s more light than dark. Maybe that’ll happen to the whole world, too - every day it'll get a little less dark. We can't retreat from the world; we can only hope. Right now, I can only hope. And walk, of course.