Life-Love #28: Group-work late into the night

Working late alone can be a trial. The night grows longer, your lids grow heavier and droop. Your head nods from the fatigue and you catch yourself drifting off, just as your chin alights on your sternum or shoulder. Working late in a group is different. If you’re working to deadline on a project, and you started the day together fresh and full of vigour in the morning. Except for those who aren’t morning people, of course! The beauty of group work among friends who know and respect one another is that as the morning people begin to fade in the afternoon, the evening people are just kicking it into high gear. The flow of jokes and friendly teasing moves away from the mouths of the morning people and slowly trickles into the language of the evening people – the torch is passed, the morning people can relax until coffee and some food grant them a second wind. The real moment of group support happens when nightfalls, and the project’s resolution lies at a horizon that hovers several hours in the future – a hazy oasis, made hazier by the warm waters of exhaustion rising up to envelope the head. It is the push through this haze and the moments of inspiration and mutual support, the quiet smile of the person still working when she glances at a  team-mate who has dozed off in his chair. Or the good-natured laughter at the mini-tantrum of the colleague who has reached the end of her wick and has to express her frustration at working, with the group, in the room, rather than snug at home with her partner, under a duvet. But then, as group members drop off, capable only of cheering on those who remain the project nears its completion, and a special moment arrives in the deep blue darkness of the night: the moment of completion. Everyone stares in stunned silence for a moment and then quietly, slowly, slide out of the room into cars, onto buses and subways, only to disappear, satisfied but exhausted, into the early morning.

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