general rant: making a commitment

[ragani]

To: anyone who makes plans with me
From: the one who is tired of doing all the planning, and getting no respect for it
RE: keeping commitments

If you make plans with me (and probably with anyone else, really), to simplify both our lives, please keep these things in mind:

• Before you make a commitment to a specific date, check your schedule to make sure you are not double booking by saying yes
• If you are unsure if you are busy or not, do not make a commitment until you are sure you can fulfill said commitment
• If you do make a commitment, and your plans change, inform the organizer of said plans as soon as you can so she can accommodate for the change
• Don't be afraid to say upfront if you are not sure you can commit to said plans so the organizer knows not to accommodate you until you are are ready to commit - personally, I would much rather hear a tentative "maybe" then a solid "yes" which really should have been a maybe - although, feel free to express an interest in staying informed of plans so you can decide one way or another at a later date
• Also, don't be afraid to say no - I can respect that you may not want to participate in plans, and, if I might ask why, it is only because I am trying to see if there is something that can be done to make it work for you (and face it, if I am disappointed, that is my own issue - be flattered I am disappointed you can't make it, and leave it at that as I will get over it)
• If you suggest a date for said event and that date is chosen, please remember that you made that suggestion, and plans were made to accommodate your needs, so make an effort to attend (remembering the points above about communicating any changes)

I realize not everyone feels the same way about needing to plan, but I wish people would please respect that planning in advance helps me to prepare, which helps my sanity tremendously, and will make for a much happier person at said event. I admit that when events don't go exactly as planned I am disappointed. But I find I am the most frustrated when I feel that I have been held back from planning to my comfort level, or left to do it all alone and left hanging by those that assure me things will be fine if I just stop "forcing them" to actually think in detail about anything.

A well run event does take some forethought, and people make careers of planning events for other people so they don't have to think about the details. In case my friends didn't know, I am not, nor do I desire to be, an event planner for a living. If you ask me to plan an event for you, expect me to want lots of help. This help could be in giving me information, bringing supplies, making food, or even (in fact especially) clean-up. I have actually helped a friend plan a party for his birthday and ended up feeling like we (myself, my boyfriend and roommate) were "hired" help, instead of guests at the party, while most his other guests (including the person who's house we were) slept in the middle of the party. I am a generous person, by nature, but really hate it when people take advantage of my generosity.

It is only February, and I am already done with planning events this year. I am not sure I will be up for planning any of my standard parties. I have one small one scheduled for later this month for a close friend, but beyond that, I just don't see myself wanting to do the work. Even that one is taking its toll, in that I have very few RSVPs yet, and it is a multi stage party that involves making reservations at several places.

Oh, and in case this point has been lost on people (and it seems to have been for some) I cannot read minds. No matter how close we are, and yes, I might see you everyday, if I am not told something, I cannot possibly be expected to know it already. Let me repeat that: If I am not told something, I cannot possibly be expected to know it already.

OK, I will stop now as I have work to do. A place in which I wish I was better at planning, as does my boss, believe it or not.

Comments

[zhaneel69.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I understand to a great extent. Maybe Taurus just like plans?

FanBoy & I drove each other bonkers for early parts of our relationships. The example of choice:

We went to an event. I assumed [bad me] that because he had arragned a way to get to the event, he has also arranged a way to get home. About 2 hours into a 3 hour event, I ask what the plan is. He shrugs, says he doesn't know, but figures we'll catch a ride with someone. I nearly lost it, having done the math on how many people going our way had already left and how few people were still here and we were "hoping" to get a ride!?!?!?! It all worked out, as he likes to point out, but it caused me unnecessary stress. So, I've learned to be a little more flexible and he's learned to plan or accomodate plans more.

Planning large events is a lot of effort and energy. I don't do it often, and I try to follow the above rules that you have when participating in an event someone else has planned. When I do plan, I feel much the same way about people participating. After being burned, I learned to just plan what I wanted [never for others, unless I wanted to plan for others] and try to understand that some people don't get what planning means to me if/when they screw up. Doesn't always work, but sometimes does.

May not be the best time to ask but:

You & I [and the boys] haven't spent time together recently. I would love to, and I think the whether is getting to the point again where a day trip to Napa/Sonoma might be fun. I think Feb is crapped out, but maybe a March/April trip could be fun? E-mail if interested, and you & I can plan our trip in all the planning goodness two Tauruses can.

Zhaneel

[emberleo.livejournal.com]

But I find I am the most frustrated when I feel that I have been held back from planning to my comfort level, or left to do it all alone and left hanging by those that assure me things will be fine if I just stop "forcing them" to actually think in detail about anything.

Mrf, as a person who purposefully avoids planning very complicated things, I will say 1 thing against your otherwise utterly justified rant: If you are who needs the tremendously detailed plan to be comfortable it is unfair to expect those of us who simply can't work that way to BOTH stay out of your way AND help to your satisfaction.

I can go, or I can stay, but I can't read your mind any better than you can read mine, and I don't already know what "planning" means in your world.

Now, what this usually means between you and me is that I ask you periodically what you expect me to be doing, and then try my best to do it, and we're fabulous, which is probably why we get along so well, historically speaking. So I don't have any complaints about how we actually interact.

But it made me twitch, so I'm pointing it out in case it comes up later.

THAT SAID

My sister is a planner, BIG TIME, and she has this thing that she gets from the Union (Equity, in this case) called Work To Rule: If she's not getting perqs out of all the work she's doing, she stops doing any work that qualifies as "extra".

What it has meant for the one relationship I'm familiar with her ever calling it on is that if you call her, she calls you back, and then it's her turn to initate contact again sometime later. If she contacts you and you call her back, but don't ever take the initiative to call her first - if you don't volunteer to keep her in the loop - you'll eventually fall off her radar as someone who doesn't want to try and keep up with her.

I don't think this would quite work with your social circle - Fen/FaireFolk/Gamers/etc. tend to be somewhat flakier than the kind of folks who surround my sister. But the idea that a person is not required to continue going that extra mile when there's no special cake at the end of the road is pretty simple.

Take a break! You've earned it!

*hugs and love*
--Ember--

[ragani.livejournal.com]

If you are who needs the tremendously detailed plan to be comfortable it is unfair to expect those of us who simply can't work that way to BOTH stay out of your way AND help to your satisfaction.

I can see why my point (you quoted above) might come across that way. My issue is more when people tell me "don't worry about it, everything will work out in the end" when I ask for assistance. One of the things I am doing is trying to make sure it works out in the end by figuring out what needs to be done to prepare. I am not asking them to read my mind, usually I am just asking them to brainstorm with me and help figure out how they can help prepare. This is often so someone is not running out at the last minute, or asking a guest to pick up some ingredient for something they could have picked-up on the way home from work the night before.

On many occasions, I have seen abditus scrap a plan he has to make some lovely dish for an event because planning the details is too much like work, so when it comes right down to it, he is unprepared (mind you, he is great at planning when it is his work). This may not be a big deal (and I usually just flow with it), but there are times when this means he is not there to help me set-up the rest of the party because he is taking an extra long time making something that could have been done the night before, so the meal starts late, and the guests are hungry, and I get harassed for this.

I could go on, but I am not surprised that my comment about "forcing people to think in details" got a twitch. It is a point that was driven by a lot of anger and frustration from lots of different occasions where I keep getting told there is something wrong with me for even wanting to plan, and yet those very same people seem to think it is OK to take advantage of my need to plan and leave all the details up to me, expecting it to "all go smoothly" without any help from them. If you asked them, I am sure they will say: "but she wanted to plan, so I let her" (which has been said). What they are not mentioning is that I did ask for help, and they told me not to worry. So I want to know, who exactly IS going to take care of those details?

[emberleo.livejournal.com]

If you asked them, I am sure they will say: "but she wanted to plan, so I let her" (which has been said). What they are not mentioning is that I did ask for help, and they told me not to worry. So I want to know, who exactly IS going to take care of those details?

I can read this a few different ways. I guess to me it depends on what they had planned before you stepped in to plan things in more detail.

e.g. My birthday parties: They work pretty well with relatively little planning. If somebody came up with an idea and offerred to come run a more flamboyant affair that required more planning, I probably wouldn't object.

If, in the process of planning, they caused there to be a great deal more work than my plan had involved, get really worked up and stressy about it and stress me out in the process, and then got mad at me for not being happy with the amount of work that's involved, then I'd get irritated.

At that point my perspective is much what you've described: They wanted to plan, so I let them, but then they wanted me to do a whole lot of extra work for a plan that wasn't mine, and then got mad at me for it, and that's not ok.

But if the extra complicated party was MY idea, and I asked for their help because they're better at planning than I am, and then proceeded to not help them make my idea happen, then yeah, I should expect them to be mad at me. (You'll notice I rarely attempt to plan things that are drastically beyond my ken in the first place for this very reason.)

The thing is, the kind of people who don't plan a lot ahead of time are often the same kind of people who really don't find it all that stressfull to handle changes at the last minute. Running to the store for the thing I missed on my last trip is no big deal in my world. So if somebody is stressing at me about it, yeah, my response would be "don't worry so much".

In that case it's a tone of voice thing. "Oh, darn. Could you run and get milk please?" gets "Sure. Anything else?" but "We didn't make a list, and now we have no milk, where is the milk going to come from?!" gets "Calm down, it's not that big a deal!" because the fact that the person is stressing out is a much bigger problem than the fact that there's no milk in the house.

If you're the only one who wanted to plan ahead AND the only one who is inclined to stress about it, while you're hardly more wrong than the people who don't plan because they don't stress, you're definitely not on the same wavelength.

What becomes a problem are the people who don't plan, but *do* stress when their lack of planning causes problems. That's just not ok. They either need to learn to chill, or they need to learn to plan ahead.

I have some areas of my life that are like this, and I'm working on fixing them, and it's slow going, because I'm usually inclined to just chill and let things go, but there are a handfull of things that I'm not supposed to just chill and let go. (Most of them involve money, and the government...) :\

--Ember--