New friend, new perspective

Today fellow blogging.la-er Colleen Wainwright and I finally met - after several attempts and water gun wet threats. Sometimes you don't meet someone until it's the right time, and I think that's why it took us so long to meet in person. It was well worth the wait. We had a great time learning about each other and found a lot of common ground.

Before heading over to meet her, I skipped over to her blog to catch up. In my skimming, these paragraphs jumped out at me. She's talking about one of her acting teachers.

One day, having hit his limit with some slacker inanity or another—actors showing up without the props they needed for their scenes, actors not showing up at all—he launched into us about hard work and commitment. About how we didn’t have any, and about how we were kidding ourselves if we thought we were going to slack our way to any kind of real acting talent or real acting career without Doing The Work. And then, lighting on my trembling face, he said: “Of course, those of you who need to hear this won’t…and those of you who are already doing all this are beating yourselves up for not doing enough.”

My shrink had to give me a refresher course in this yesterday. For some reason, my response to being unable to perform at my usual level of energy and competence (i.e., being sick) is to beat myself up for being unable to perform at my usual level of energy and competence. I was gently reminded that when I am not feeling my pretty best, calling myself “loser” is probably not the thing for getting me back on track.

This really resonated with me in light of the current dog crisis. I was kicking myself saying I should be able to handle all this, especially since G was dealing with a lot more, when it was really too much for me. So I kept drowning doing damage control on my end until it was a crisis. It was only when the situation reached crisis mode that G paid attention to it. That's because G was dealing with her own series of crisis and mine didn't register on her radar until it became a major one for her.

Seeing it like this, makes me understand her perspective more, and I still wonder how the situation could have been played out so that it didn't reach a crisis. I wonder if that would have been possible? Could I have been clearer in my emails earlier the demand it took on me and the impact it had on my life? I didn't think I had to explicitly spell things out.

But maybe so. Because miscommunication happens when assumptions are made and communication is not clear. And when emotions are in flux, the situation unknown and a different language spoken, it makes clear communication all the harder.

Anyway, this is the last I'm going to write of this situation. The analyization and recapitulation is over.

Comments

[Colleen Wainwright]

You are wise, little grasshopper. Or, as I used to say to my to my old boyfriend, thrusting my arms upward in a football-victory dance, THE STUDENT OUTSHINES THE MASTEEEEEER!!!!!

[Melissa]

I felt the same way at work and I finally walked into my bosses office and said "Please take of this stuff away!" She did and I feel better, although stepping back and realizing all the things I did overlook due to the overload is not as pleasant but at least I know that I'm able to speak up and someone will listen.