Debriefing

My debrief continues today with a meeting with the Operational Advisor and the Watsan FSU guy and maybe even a meeting with my temporary replacement. We will see how all that goes.

Of course EVERYone wants to hear about my story. I don't want to talk about it as I find it embarrassing and quite a failure (against my own high expectations you can imagine). Also I believe that this kind of event is unacceptable, quite unacceptable and talking about it ... or trying to find out triggers or events leading up to it smacks of too much complaining and excusing. There is no excuse for this thing. It is and it was. Where does one cross the boundary from explaining to excusing and justifying???

So in the end I suck it up and we talk about it I play the game and it makes them feel better about me. So far everyone is quite sympathetic and quite supportive (with their own stories of similar near-disaster). All, that is, except the HRM personnel Advisor. I have rubbed her the wrong way sometime somewhere and this event sure has justified her feelings. Gosh, I am at a loss to figure out how to fix this one. She continues to bang on me 'why?' about the communication thing and the event itself and the lack of team-work and I perceive a belief that I was the cause of all the failures. Now maybe she is trying to help me see something, help me resolve internal struggles...but I am having some trouble seeing anything with such a frontal barrage.

On the other hand, I feel as if she is wishing me to ‘spill the beans’ regarding the general team dynamics and events within the mission. I have not, in any way, alluded to the day-to-day functioning of the team because it merely drags things unnecessarily in the mud. Or more accurately, changes the dynamic of the HQ/Team into a parent/child type of interaction. Clearly she is offended at my too frequent “all is good’ comments; but really, where does normal discussion/conflict/decision go beyond normal and into the realm of ‘non-functioning team’? Who is to say, in a team of first-missioners, where the threshold of communication failure breached? Who says communication was breached at all? Where is the expertise and guidance from the Capital team? I feel as if she is looking for ammunition for something I am unable to finger – is it me or somebody else?

In my discussions with her I receive the universal "but" way too much and it is telling me that my career here, as far as she is concerned, is over. As you know, I am prone to leaps of imagination and fabrication so I DO try to filter my feelings against these tendencies.

I am ok with that. I believe, in some small corner of my mind, that in spite of the HOM recommendations, the LogCo support, the Logistics FSU belief in my capacity, the PSY psychologist recognition that one bad day does not make a global failure, that this is a very real potential - that I never be invited back. Or in a best-case scenario be invited back only in a very particular project with a particular team with all the bad beginnings of a fettered history. I am not sure I would like to work in that (hostile?) environment. We shall see.

Today I went to wash my face (I still don't shower every day...something left over from the mission where the cold water was too much and the sweaty conditions too universal to worry about washing every day) this morning and went naturally to the cold tap and turned it on and started to lather up....then I realized that the hot side works!!!! So I turned it on and voila...burned my hands.