Wednesday, February 24, 2010

testing, 1, 2, me

oh, the woes of having to contend with others. the others, they mean well. i know they do. these are ostensibly smart people; for god's sake, they all got into law school. but why, oh why, oh WHY can't people just READ THE WHOLE E-MAIL before asking questions?

this is the major problem i have with being in positions of authority. i can't stand it when people ask me questions that (to me, anyway) have obvious answers. and i HATE repeating myself. oh, my lord, do i hate it. i expect people to listen when i talk, especially if they ask the question to which i am responding. i listen carefully, ask questions during the initial discussion of whatever's going on, then i go off and do it. if something comes up in the course of the event or project, i will at least try to figure out what's wrong before i go ask someone another question. maybe that's why i hate it when people don't do the same for me.

i am radically impatient, and i do not suffer fools well. sadly for me, my definition of "fools" is pretty damn broad as well. needless to say, my irritation gauge is pretty well spiked on a daily basis. i'm working on being more patient, on letting go of more, and generally on trying to be more tranquil. the path of the sanguine woman, though, is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the stupid and the tyranny of annoying people. it's my responsibility to stay on the straight and narrow without going all clock-tower-rifle-y on people. most days, this is easy. some days, however, the others test me. these are the days when i have to put my game face on. breathe in, breathe out - don't maim.

3 comments:

  1. "beset on all sides by the iniquities of the stupid and the tyranny of annoying people" what a wonderful way to put it. When I switched from journalism to public affairs and marketing some of my coworkers thought I was too...intense. I actually had to put a post-it behind my computer with the words "be nice" on it as a reminder that not everyone's dealt with a triple homicide on deadline.

    Funny story - I have friends who made a movie and the action is based on Charles Whitman in the tower at UT.

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  2. i need that post-it. seriously.

    as for the whitman reference - i definitely, while waiting to get into a springsteen concert at UT last spring, made a clock-tower reference. i felt like the biggest jerk ever.

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  3. My friend, Steve Grant, who wrote and starred in The Delicate Art of the Rifle, playing a character named Walt Whitman (yeah, not subtle), was in Austin presenting the film at SxSW. One day, while he was on a walk about town and standing in front of the tower where Charles Whitman did his thing that inspired parts of DelArt, Steve, who also looks a lot like Chas Whitman, himself was shot in a drive-by. Although he was just grazed, he said it did hurt. For this coincidence Steve made News of the Weird.

    He said it was one of the proudest days of his life.

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