Celebrate!

It started on Wednesday, two days ago.

Up until then, I'd been pretty cool about the outcome of last week's presentation. I was confident that we'd given a good account of ourselves, now it was in the hands of the panel. Worrying simply wasn't going to make any difference. And I was happy to be lucky enough by nature that I was able to have that thought process and not go ahead and worry about it anyway. 

But on Wednesday it bobbed into my thoughts a couple of times. Could I have been better prepared? Should I have behaved a little differently? Maybe. Was life about to teach me a lesson? Was this to be a moment of hubris?

Yesterday it was worse. Happily, I had plenty of distraction during the day but in every quiet moment, I found myself dwelling on what I'd said, the faces around the table, the slides in my presentation. Was there something more compelling I could have added? 

They'd said we'd find out today and from the moment I woke, I found myself checking my email every few minutes. In the hotel, walking up to Euston, sitting having a coffee, on the trains - to Manchester, then Chorley - and on my way to the David Lloyd centre. There was some respite while I swam - I couldn't check my email from the pool - but I was back on the phone as soon as I was out of the shower.

There was a hold up on the M6 so I went home via Gisburn and it was somewhere around there that the was a small flurry of arriving emails. I found a lay-by and pulled over to to look at my mail. And there it was: the email I was waiting for. There was nothing revealing the decision in the two line preview, so I opened the email...

... but my glasses were in the boot so I had to pinch and drag and expand it out and then move the text around until FINALLY I could see that we'd been awarded the grant. HOORAY!

It was a weird drive home after that. I rang the Minx and my colleague, Steve, to tell them and then I was just alone with my thoughts, trying to think about how I'd have felt if we hadn't got it and then occasionally simply relaxing with the fact that we had.

I wish the Minx could have come up to celebrate but she had a party to go to so it was Dan, Abi, and Milly who came to the curry house with me. But you know what? It wasn't an exuberant evening. It was a lovely evening, for sure, but what underpinned it was a deep sense of calm. 

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Reading: David McCourt's 'Total Rethink'