Where Personal and Professional Life Collide...

Still thinking this morning about discussions last night. We're praised in most cultures for energy, for involvement, for taking an interest (intellectual and emotional) in things, and yet for so many of us that involvement often ends up paralyzing rather than freeing us, the poison of Too Much thickening in our veins.

And yet, to "let go" of all that means a certain and significant abandonment of responsibilities and self-determination - letting others determine the shape of your life and your world.  That's a hard thing to do and I'm not sure it's a good thing, either.  The world is an active place. I'm a part of this world, I choose to engage with it, as a citizen, as an artist, as a social creature. I'm not ready or able to accept the Four Noble Truths of Zen Buddhism just yet, because discontent leads to positive change as well as suffering, and desire can be beautiful and enabling... pain is not always bad.  But yes, I see the wear that engagement leaves on our minds, our hearts, our souls.

Can we be passionate about life, actively engaged in our world, and still disengage from the things/emotions/thoughts that bind us? How to remain involved, but not be overwhelmed/owned? Still working on that.

There may need to be a longer post with meanderings on this, eventually...



(and, not coincidentally, I'm seeing these themes in much of what I'm writing these days.  The self-aware writer cannot hide from herself.  This is yet another reason why we drink.)

Some interesting exchanges on Twitter yesterday, and reading various updates around the social networks, plus an impromptu dramatic rereading of "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" this morning over coffee, and my brain is being all Thoughtful 'n shit.

And the end result?  I am very thankful that, for all the crap life has handed me and all the crap I've handed myself, that I was also given a sense of humor AND developed a sense of perspective about All The Crap. Because otherwise, it would be really easy to become bitter and angry and afraid, and bitter and angry and afraid are terrible ways to spend your life.

Especially since we get no points, style or otherwise, for anger, and few of us are really witty enough to get points for bitterness, no matter what we want to believe.  And fear, while it keeps you from being eaten, can also keep you from everything else.


(That does not mean, however, that I do not have occasional, utterly enjoyable, wallows in bitterness. Also, envy, fear, jealousy, and general fuckitallity. Because, yanno: human. And it adds piquancy to the rest of life, in small doses, and that informs the writing, eventually. Then I get out of the wallow, dry myself off, and go on. )

So, a while ago, I said I was going to blog about The Thing That Happened A Few Weeks Ago. And then Life and deadlines and Kickstarter happened and ate my brain, and now it appears I have a Spring-onset cold. I also have Nyquil, beef broth & whisky. And Cary Grant on DVD. That cold doesn't stand a chance.

But That Thing is still sitting in my brain, wanting to be dealt with.

So. Here's a piece of life-learning from Auntie Practical Meerkat.

When you're trying to juggle the bits and pieces that make up life - personal and professional - sometimes you drop a bit or a piece. I did. I screwed up (it happens), and someone felt insulted by my actions or lack thereof.

It wasn't intentional, and when it was brought to my attention, I felt terrible, and apologized immediately.

[occasionally, I insult people intentionally. They get a very different response. And it's usually quite pointy.]

Based on the silence since then, my apology was not acceptable/not accepted. This person chose to be offended and insulted, and nothing I would do or say could change that.

This sucks, on several levels. Nobody wants to be the bad guy, especially when they didn't mean to be offensive. And this was someone I had hoped to build a better relationship with, not burn bridges.

So that rejection, coupled with my original screwup, dumped me into choppy emotional water. And like any true Virgo, once I begin to analyse, I can't stop the what-ifs and maybe-thens. For the next day or so I kept thinking "what could I have said, that would have made it better? What did that person want, that I didn't give? Was what I did so terrible that I can never be forgiven, ever, no matter how unintentional it was?"

And the answers were, respectively: probably nothing, possibly more than I am morally responsible for, and no, it wasn't.

(I've skirted that level, I've seen that level. This was just a screwup.)

And here's what, after those emotional capsizes, I remembered. If someone chooses not to accept an honest apology, there's nothing you or I can do to convince them otherwise. We can only control our own behavior.

There is a mantra I learned during therapy, when I was in my 30's and going through a metric load of emotional crap: When rebuked, consider the charge fully, and then either refute it, or accept it. Use the rebuke to look into your behavior and/or words, and do better, as and where needed. Then let go, and move forward.

Or, in shorter words: we can't fix things that want to be broken. Don't, in trying, let yourself get broken, too.