Tag Archives: meetings

Giving Speeches and Negotiating with Cats

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Cohort 35 has completed their program. I’m advised by a former colleague that I must give a talk, either at the beginning or end of what I assume to be the graduation celebration. Despite a battery of questions, I can’t conclude what the celebration is specifically for, why I need to address the gathered crowd twice, where the event will be, what sort of remarks would be appropriate, etc.

I spend some time trying to acquire this information. I come across two exchange students in the middle of the lake. It’s not clear whether we are in the lake, on the lake, or above the lake. After I explain why I need the information, they tell me they don’t know, but maybe I’ll find out if I jump from a height into the water. I do jump from a height into the water, I’m not sure what I jump off of.

I’m back with my former colleague, who tells me I will only be doing the opening address, as I don’t have the rank to deliver the closing address. I ask more questions about who I will be addressing, who’s attending, what the content should be, etc. There are no answers.

I find myself sitting clothed on a bed. My cousin is in the room telling me I MUST run a Discover Software class in Southbank, because that is the only program they will consider. She has brought friends to provide testimonials. Three cats jump up on the bed, an adorable little kitten, a smaller grey cat, and a huge orange tom cat. The tom cat has the most to say about the merits of the course, but turns the conversation back to the opening remarks I need to make, and asks me how I’m preparing. He then questions what time I’m planning to head to the venue, and what time the event actually starts. I tell him I have not been preparing, and I don’t know what time the event starts, or even where it is. He tells me maybe there is something that can be done, if only the Southside could access the Discover Software course. We start negotiating times and dates for the course. I wake up.

 

 

Was I at a Rally Last Night?

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I’m in a large meeting space, possibly a conference room in a hotel. There are hundreds of other people there, all managers and employees from a previous employer I used to work for. Everyone is dressed in business wear, and the mood is light. Though it’s not clear why we are gathered, I get the sense it is to hear a good news announcement of some nature. As I look around the room, each person who I settle my gaze on, I know. There is a very comfortable familiarity in the room.

Before it becomes clear why exactly we are there, several of us find ourselves riding mountain bikes, still in our business wear on a fairly technical, very muddy narrow trail. I observe one former coworker lose control, and he and his bike veer off the trail, through some bushes and toward some boulders. I stop with the intention to help, but he waves me on. The trail widens and out of nowhere a large truck is behind me. There is nowhere for me to go to get off the road so I try to pedal faster. The mud and the steepness of the trail make it difficult. After rounding a corner, there is a small trail that leads off the road, and I take that.

In the next moment, we are rejoining the large crowd, but in a new hotel that seems to have multiple entrances on multiple levels. I get the sense it is very new and fancy. There are even more people there now, and the mood has become a little uneasy. As I am greeting a few new people, I notice a group of individuals in dark suits entering. They look like lawyers, and I recognize a few past union executives and union representatives with them. The chatter falls away, and a few others who have been there the whole time, who, like me used to work with the union, or currently do including the current union president,  look visibly uncomfortable.

A few of the people I have known the longest in the room get up and leave, and I follow them. As we go outside we are now in the small town where I first started working for this employer. The others I’m with produce what looks like pickets signs, seemingly out of nowhere. The signs are facing away from me, and are all really odd shapes. They walk to an intersection on two rarely traveled residential streets and start displaying the signs. Before I can catch up to them and see what the signs depict, I wake up.