11 Jun At eye level

I put the bucket with the mop in a corner and look around. The floor shines, the windows look out generously. The earth-red wall, which occupies an entire side, leans kindly against the empty space and looks invitingly at the next tenant.
This space was my workplace from 2012. There on the right was the table where the individual coaching took place and tears were often wiped away. That table moved years ago when I decided to only do group sessions. On the left, the large extendable table is timelessly empty. At this table I received the groups.

Many hours of coaching
This morning I drove to Nieuw-Vennep with a car full of binders to have them shredded. I had already started manually myself, but my wife, who was kind enough to help me with the move and is more decisive than I am in these matters, shook her head. She took the calculation tool from her phone and calculated how many hours it would take the two of us. On top of that, I couldn’t stop myself from taking a look at the contents every now and then. All these pages were just as many hours of coaching. You get to know a client well during a process. You point out barriers on the path to the client and encourage them to step over these obstacles. The factual account and all those intense hours passed by here at eye level.

Snippets
I press a bright yellow bell next to which there is a threatening sign ‘Day and night camera surveillance‘. After minutes of respectful waiting, the roller door slowly opens. An employee dressed in a blue overall beckons me in with car and all. The door closes just as ominously as in an operating room. The boxes with all their contents are irreverently dumped into a waste bin on wheels. Now the blue tall man who does his work in this place of disaster stands still, leans on the box and looks me straight in the eye. He provides transparency. ‘Look‘, he says and points to shreds behind a glass plate ‘this is what it will look like later‘. For a moment I take in the snippets. I also have to be pushed over an obstacle. ‘That’s fine‘ I say as if it leaves me indifferent. I hear the roller door behind me start moving again. I don‘t have to attend the shredding itself.

New workspace
My workspace on the Domselaerstraat had been pure luxury for a while. I felt privileged to give my online training courses and write my texts in this old high hospital room. I wrote three books in this room. At the same time, the spacious room was no longer right. Since corona, I do half of my training online and you don’t need all those chairs for that. The other half takes place in monasteries on weekends.
I now move into the new garden house behind our house. I look out over the garden, see the bushes bloom and the cat perform perfect feints. In the trees, a blackbird answers the cheerful rollers of a song thrush.

*This post has been automatically translated from Dutch