At the moment I can’t help but want more than anything else to wring someone’s neck. A situation happened with a client late this morning and it has led an influential person there to come to the conclusion that I am trying to squeeze him for money. It basically involves asking me to do a service he is assuming to be free but is definitely not and can never be such.
As a result, and this is more distressing, the whole day hasn’t turned out as productive as I would’ve hoped. I made a firm decision to stay home today to try and work through my to do list and I was actually starting out like a house on fire in the morning. But due to the situation and the ensuing phone call where the harsh words caught me off guard, I’ve been severely distracted.
I cannot for the life of me try and concentrate on the tasks at hand and catch myself thinking about it every few minutes. I’ve tried taking a walk, playing a video game, speaking about it with Jill for a few minutes and even watching an NBA game, hoping that by the time it’s over I’d be able to get back to work, but no go.
The strange thing about this is for the most part, I’m not usually easily distracted by issues and arguments with difficult people. In fact I like to think I’ve got a technique down pat, which involves categorizing people who make life difficult for me as fools not worth my time. It’s 100% effective because from that point onwards I start ignoring even their best efforts to make it worse.
I think therefore the reason I am affected (yes I am), is that I have yet to categorize him for the fool he is turning out to be. This is because he belongs to a class of people for whom I have high respect for, and whom I had previously thought express the same for me. I cannot comprehend why he is acting the way he is, given the fact I had always been offering only my best efforts consistently for years. Sure I may have faltered from time to time, but to imply I am money grubbing and that I was trying to trick him insults me, especially in the light of the fact that I thought we had already made a previous arrangement to allow me to set terms for similar situations and that I feel I wasn’t doing other people in my industry normally do.
Well, there it is, I think. As I write this I think I’ve hit on the reason why I’ve let this affect me so.
I feel insulted that he thinks I would try to pull a fast one or to try and overcharge him. I feel I’ve given a lot of myself to servicing them. For the most part I already feel I am not duly recognized, and even more so now by his coarse reprimand.
Yes maybe that’s it.
I know this is not good writing anymore. I started out wanting to talk about not having a productive day, but as I write this I think I’ve finally hit on why I’m letting this affect me.
I think by tomorrow, when I get there, I will be able to have a firmer grasp on my emotion enough to be able to face the eventual meeting. If he chooses to further his redress, I will just explain to him everything I’ve managed to conclude here.
And now I feel just sadness that it has come to this. For sure I am not worried at all that I’m in the right. For whatever I’ve felt throughout this day, anger, annoyance, frustration at not getting things done inspite of having the time, bitterness and the unrelenting need to pound the motherfucker’s face to the wall – and oh how easy and no doubt pleasurable it would be to do just that – I know one thing, and that I am in the right.
I feel sad that a possible conclusion to this may be the rescinding of a years long agreement, but guess what, I’m not going to back down. At the end of the day we had an agreement, I was trying to follow it, I wasn’t doing anything wrong and finally felt insulted when it was assumed I was doing him one over. I know it feels so good for me to go the route of rightful indignation, but I spent the whole day thinking about this, and I know I AM RIGHT.
Believe you me it took the whole day, because if my unaccomplished todo list is to be the gauge, you need to wonder why in the hell nothing else got done.