I’ve written the introduction to the conference program for four years in a row, and each year I like to share it on this blog. For those of you who didn’t make it out for the 2015 Float Conference, here are a few of my thoughts on the work that float center owners do, and the questions they may face in running a float tank center.
I’ll see you next year, August 20-21st, 2016.
There are so many potential ways to introduce the Float Conference in this program.
“Welcome to the 4th Annual Float Conference!” comes to mind as one possible start. Or a variation: “Welcome! To the 4th year of the Float Conference!” (You’ll notice that this second option has two exclamation points, which I like a little better since it more accurately represents my own excitement for this gathering).
I could open by telling you a couple small stories from past Float Conferences, like having float researchers pulling practical jokes on us, or hearing an entire room full of people laugh uproariously at obscure salt jokes.
One version of the introduction begins by sharing how, from childhood on, driven partially by a love of astronomy and partially by a strong and persistent insomnia, I have found myself on deserted streets and deserted beaches, staring up at the night sky and finding comfort in its incomprehensible vastness. How, through float tanks, I have discovered that same limitless expanse inside myself, and how I’ve learned to look inward to that for comfort, rather than solely outward.
It is a big decision how one writes the only introduction to the only 4th Annual Float Conference that will ever be held—but in comparison to the limitlessness of my self and of the universe, it is not such a large thing. Am I going to write the best version of this introduction that could be written? No. However, in the end, imperfect decisions must be made, and often the act of choosing anything is more important than the final choice.
We are a growing industry, and every new center that opens faces certain, unavoidable decisions. Will we refund an expired gift certificate? Who is going to fix the leaking pump system at 2am? Where do profits from our business go? How much of our information do we share with other float centers? How do we talk to a new float center opening in our city? Are we in this business primarily to help people, or primarily to make money? Will our actions be motivated by generosity, or by fear?
Are you going find the best answers to these questions? No. In fact, you’ll have major regrets about some of your choices, even long after you’ve made them. But, again, given the limitlessness of your own being, and of its small part in the grand fabric of time and space, try not to let it bring you down too much.
When I have to make an especially tough decision (like plucking from the ether one specific incarnation of an introduction from the infinite possibilities), I think of something one of our team at Float On wrote (about what she would tell her past self, if they were to somehow meet):
You will fail sometimes, and that’s okay. Try not to replay your failures in your head over and over. It doesn’t really help anything.
It doesn’t matter if people think you are weird. It matters if they think you are kind. The only thing you will ever really regret about growing up is all of the times when you could have been kind and chose not to be.
And with that, it seems that in struggling to find the beginning of the introduction, I have somehow reached the end. There are so many ways to bring it to a conclusion. “Welcome!!” comes to mind. Although, reading back on it now, it seems somehow inappropriate at this point (despite the stylish and daring addition of a second exclamation point to this simple, single word salutation).
Perhaps this will be the ending:
The companies you help to create are miniature worlds, and although I’m having a difficult time deciding whether to relate our industry to a solar system or a galaxy, it is nonetheless a metaphorical bubble in which we make the bulk of the decisions about our own rules and conventions.
Let’s go out there into our worlds, into our bubbles, and make mistakes. But let’s make mistakes we can be proud of. Let’s make tough decisions, but, with all other things being equal, I put forward the humble suggestion that we follow in the footsteps of decades of floatation tradition and err on the side of generosity. And trust. And kindness.
When we make these tough decisions, let’s make sure, whether they turn out to be the right ones or not, that we can be proud of them.
Graham Talley
Co-Founder, Float On
P.S. Welcome to this year’s Float Conference.
