Tired But Happy

Jeezalou, it's Monday already?...

What an amazing weekend. As I have mentioned here a couple of times, the Buddhist centre I attend co-hosted a conference over the weekend on the topic of Mind & Its Potential. We had 600 attendees, many from the medical or mental health professions, and a great collection of speakers from scientific, religious and philosophical view points. We kicked ass man (in a caring, non-violent way of course). The conference ran without a hitch, or more accurately with a serious small hitches that the punters never saw, and the venue really came through for us and did a great job on catering for the delegates and making sure that everything ran smoothly for us. Out of 600 delegates we got 1 unhappy feedback form, based on something quite unreasonable, so not bad going really!

The bookshop was my domain, and it went great. We exceded expectations quite dramatically sales wise, and got lots of great feedback from the attendees. We were so busy during the break times that we couldn't actually serve people fast enough, and people were buying 5, 6, 7 books and CDs at a time. Without exception everyone was kind and patient, and in retail that's not a very common thing.

I managed to keep my shit together, even though I had the stress of a queue of customers breathing down my neck, a bunch of volunteer sales people (some of whom had never even served a customer or processed a credit card before) and anywhere up to four or five people asking me questions at the same time. There were a few points where I had an exchange that went something like this (additional thoughts that ran through my head but I didn't say are in italics):

Everyone, just slow (the fuck) down, and ask me one (goddam) question at a time (otherwise I swear, so help me, I may just cut you).

OK, that's an exaggeration, but at least when the stress got to me a bit my Buddhist practice gave me enough mental space to take a step back and watch my frustration as it arose, and not just snap like I might have in the past. So, that's a good thing.

An exhausting weekend of long busy days and early morning starts, but a very rewarding one.