Categories: uncategorized
Date: 29 March 2007 11:47:57
I was told I'd made a mess.
It was a difficult situation and so I'd thought very carefully, and consulted with a number of knowledgeable people before acting, so I felt moderately confident of what I'd done. But still one of my many superiors decided that I'd made the wrong choice and had made a complete mess. The ins and outs of that particular situation are neither here nor there; what really hit and hurt was that this particular superior started his attack by saying that I had a habit of making such messes, that I habitually made such wrong decisions. I can undermine his reasoning and probably convince almost anyone that he's wrong about that, but the problem is that I know there is some truth in what he says.
It came up again when I tried to take some action earlier this week. Someone asked me to achieve something and I tried to do it in such a way as to minimize the work for everyone else. I failed, making a bit of a mess that someone else then had to sort out. So I got it wrong, as I usually do. And as I also usually do, I'd tried to make life easier for others and I'd ended up making it worse for them. This is such a recurring theme in my life. I'll step backwards to make plenty of space for someone to pass and, in so doing, tread on someone else's toes or something like that. Again and again and again.
So, the accusation stands, in my mind at least, that I keep getting it wrong. The decisions I make are bad ones. But my real difficulty is in knowing how to respond to this fact.
My instinct is to shy away from making these mistakes. Which means not deciding. Which means not acting. That was why those hurtful accusations eleven months ago screwed me up so much, because the only watertight reliable appropriate response was to do nothing - paralysis. So, in fact, that day I crawled home and hid under the duvet. It seemed the only safe thing to do. It was a while before I could face coming out from under the duvet, and it took me a good few days to overcome that feeling and become able to function again.
And the problem is that that still seems the logical and appropriate response. Given that I consistently make wrong choices and do things that are not only unhelpful but positively harmful, isn't it better that I just hide under a duvet to minimize the damage? Only by forgetting these facts am I able to function at all. Good job I've got such a lousy memory I suppose.