Thursday

It’s been one week¹Two weeks in fact, but only one in Canada, which is all the excuse I need for a @BNL reference. Apple put it on an OS installer CD without any such excuse, so my usage feels pretty safe. since you looked at me, cocked your head to the side and said you were defrauding your employer as part of a plan to visit me. Is that actually happening or has your scheme been foiled by implacable corporate processes?

Turns out Dave’s not coming, but I didn’t know that this morning and I’m not gonna let it dissuade me from my already composed text. I’m am disappointed though. I was going to try that thing where I imagine that people aren’t disgusted by me in person. Or maybe the thing where I imagine my life 20 years ago and my life today as happening to the same person.

I made Shanda really angry about the H debt. I feel like I get put in to situations where I have to break other people’s avoidance and then take the blame for their feelings about it. They tell me they’re anxious about a thing, then don’t talk about it for days, and later are upset when I finally bring it up. Everything was fine until I made them think about it again. If only I had guessed their specific unspoken fears and addressed those without bringing up the central topic, then they would have worked it all out without me making them feel so bad. If only I had been more patient and waited a few more days for something to change none of this pain would exist. If only I had said the perfect first sentence when I brought it up then none of this would be a problem. And then we have to stop talking because some external demand, clearly more important, requires our obedience to a schedule. Later when things are calmer the whole event will just be dismissed as irrelevant; I won’t be blamed anymore, at least not actively, but we also won’t do anything to make the dynamic better. And when it happens again the resentment from this instance will resurface, and it will be further proof that I always do this wrong, that I don’t care about making it better, and that I am the cause of all pain. Evidence that if only I was more patient and less demanding I wouldn’t hurt the people around me so much.

It’s hard for me to be accused of needing too much, or of being impatient. I spend so much of my life trying to ensure the demands I place on people are as small as possible, that I wait until things are persistently intolerable before asking anyone else to take action, and that nothing depends on me or my desires unless there is no other option. I realize that’s not always the best option for running my life, but it’s often what’s happening when stress is high, and it leaves me no room when the proposed solution is more patience or less need. After decades of practice I know when I cannot do with less or wait longer – whether other people think I ought to or not – and I’m finally mostly willing to require other people to accommodate me when that happens. But I get punished for it sometimes. And sometimes feel I deserve the punishment for not finding a way to disengage sooner and reconfigure my life to avoid the issue entirely. For not continuously reorganizing my life to be less impactful and less important to others.

I know that’s not actually what she wants. But it’s what she says she wants. And it’s dangerous territory thinking you know better than what someone says they want. Territory I’d prefer to cover with discussions instead of assumptions. That can be very difficult when talking itself is the purported problem. When the proposed solution is for me to not care.

More work today. My boss is super worried about an imaginary bug deadline. I too would like bugs done, but it’s silly to worry about a calendar date and not a project timeline. My ability to see which parts of a process are useful is often very valuable at work, and to reassure people that we can do the necessary parts, but that’s sort of the same as being good fatalism, particularly when I am not convinced any of the work is important. But I might have one great project left in my at F5, merely by virtue of me giving precisely the minimum number of shits for something people want to have happen, and then leaving other people to figure out how to keep it working after I’m gone.

Had a Melissa meeting today. Or I would have if she ever showed up on time. As it turns out Shanda was there alone while I was at the office. Shanda is better at not caring than I am so they didn’t talk about anything other than pills. Which is fine I guess; I don’t want Shanda to get overwhelmed by this stuff. I imagine that talking about things would make Melissa more likely to do them, or would reveal barriers I could assist with, but in reality that is unlikely to happen. Instead she’ll just complain about 4 easily solvable problems that she doesn’t want to address but has decided are prerequisites to any other improvements. So maybe it’s good I wasn’t there. And it’s definitely time to figure out how to mail her pills instead of meeting with her every time.

For some reason it’s hard for me to decide these are done if I’m not already in bed putting off sleep. I can imagine reasons – that I want to revise the writing or more deeply consider my day or – to try to rationalize that fear, but I think it’s just some sort of avoidance about hurting someone (including myself), and the perceived safety of not acting.

But I should act. And I should share what I know, even if I’m not done knowing it yet. Even if I’m not sure how to frame it in a way I think will be useful to others.

ZiB

— 
Sent from a phone.