They said It’d be fun…

While I’d anyday vouch for in person meet ups within work teams for getting to know each other or cross learning; but when it’s for the first time, it does seem like climbing a mini Everest in my case! Nevertheless, my new team at Dost assured me the upcoming team retreat at Goa would be ‘all fun and no work’! But was it really that?

Let’s break it down…

I joined Dost on 1st of August 2022, and it was during my interview conversations that I’d heard of the upcoming retreat on August 4th, which also happened to be my birthday! Though I mostly never do anything on my birthday, yet it’s always been a special day for me when I would ideally just want to be myself. That being said, as an introvert with high functioning anxiety, I definitely wasn’t too keen on meeting a whole new bunch of people with whom I inherently felt a need to set a good first impression…

Fast forward to me just signing up for an adventure! I reached the airport ahead of everyone as I usually do and started making mental notes with comic anecdotes to break the ice when I met people; but hey presto comedy just unfolded on its own from the airport itself, and a tiny voice inside assured me that these were my kind of people! It was funny how I laughed and panicked at the same time when some of us were so very delayed for boarding because of their never ending coffee conversations or how others just took out and shared food every 10 minutes. It felt warm & fuzzy!

After reaching Goa, we met up with the larger team and the vibe continued...

Never did I ever feel that it was my 1st time meeting these people and hence I really didn’t need to put much effort into it. Upon reaching the hotel, which was luxurious by the way, I checked into my room and my romie felt like my homie immediately! While we did have common friends, we later realized that there were way too many commonalities from food to our perception of impact to just generally life; we even had the same watch! If this sounds weird, the next two days with the team felt weirder! We actually didn’t do any work, but what we did do within our numerous group gatherings, is letting go of apprehensions & finding time and space to share feelings, emotions while getting to know each other a little better! From writing a letter to our 13 year old self from a fort to acting out fun situations that usually come up in the course of our work were fun, deep and helped me be more vulnerable with a team whom I’d just met!

A final disclaimer would be to say that I didn’t write all of the above because of how my team managed to get a  lip smackingly delicious cheesecake to celebrate togetherness and my birthday! All in all, it was a fantastic first week that let me be myself!

Here’s to DOSTI……

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