Maintenance · call recap
Year two has no headlines
1 September 20247 attendedHeld by Benedikt
Seven people, all of them at least six months steady, and the problem with the call was the problem with the whole subject: there is nothing to report and that is the finding. We spent the first fifteen minutes with people apologising for having no news. By the end we had agreed that having no news is the outcome, and that the reason nobody writes about it is that it does not make a story.
Where the room started
Slightly embarrassed. Matt said his only news was that his Wednesdays are just Wednesdays. Ottilie had joined the call to see whether she was allowed to be in a circle when nothing was happening to her. Romy said maintenance is her favourite word and then had to explain why to a room that mostly agreed but had never said so.
What sat under it, in four of the seven, was an identity question they had not expected. For a year or more this had been the project. Then the project finished and the thing that replaced it was Wednesday.
What came up
Appetite signals coming back in an odd shape — not the old hum, something quieter and less insistent, and for two people something they found unnerving rather than welcome. How often people actually see a prescriber now, which varied enormously and had nothing to do with need. The cost question with no end date attached, which is where the room got serious, because two of the seven are self-funding and have no idea how many years they are budgeting for.
And the grief of not having a project any more, which Ottoline named and which three people said they had felt and assumed was ingratitude.
Where we left it
With the honest evidence position, which I always state in this circle. The trial windows do not reach where these members are living. Long-term maintenance beyond a few years is not well studied, and anybody who tells them otherwise is guessing. That is uncomfortable and it is better than pretending.