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Here I go, waxing metaphorical again. Alas, this is a thing I have been trying to say since the 1964 Girls-in-Gifted-Math-and-Science Debate tied my speech defective 10 year old self in knots. Half a century and many "Non-Traditional Employments" later, I still don't have words which are safe to say on the subject. Everybody has pressing opinions and potent experiences on the subject. Flight intensive soul that I am, I keep dropping out and hiding from the whole multi-dimensional mess. As always seems to happen when I run from who and what I am, "there is no hiding place down here." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etYHWZyRSMU
The toughest conflicts in my own experience are the ones where everybody is right, but nobody is "playing from the same sheet of music." I think this is one of those conflicts. Person A is right on their sheet of music, Person B is right on their sheet of music, etc., etc. Multiple players, each playing their own sheet of music perfectly, are still making an awful racket. Most recently I have been calling this particular chaotic refrain, "The Engineering Puppet Show."
The most immediate, personal and real world reason I am exploring this topic is that the tractor still needs fixing and I am still dissociating to the max every time I approach my tool box. Maybe I should just hire it out. If I were paying myself an minimum hourly wage, hiring a qualified man for the job would already have been cheaper than the hours I have already spent trying to get that damned puppet show in my head to shut up long enough to get my freaking tool box open!!! (still no women I know of available for hiring. All the qualified women I have known are also in hiding. I understand their wounds entirely too well to hunt them down.)
Sigh. Don't know if I am making sense. Utterly fearful of triggering yet another -- debate? soapbox marathon? slogan swapping session? dogma dip? Whatever. Insert inspirational quote from Nelson Mandela here.
just ranting...
The toughest conflicts in my own experience are the ones where everybody is right, but nobody is "playing from the same sheet of music." I think this is one of those conflicts. Person A is right on their sheet of music, Person B is right on their sheet of music, etc., etc. Multiple players, each playing their own sheet of music perfectly, are still making an awful racket. Most recently I have been calling this particular chaotic refrain, "The Engineering Puppet Show."
The most immediate, personal and real world reason I am exploring this topic is that the tractor still needs fixing and I am still dissociating to the max every time I approach my tool box. Maybe I should just hire it out. If I were paying myself an minimum hourly wage, hiring a qualified man for the job would already have been cheaper than the hours I have already spent trying to get that damned puppet show in my head to shut up long enough to get my freaking tool box open!!! (still no women I know of available for hiring. All the qualified women I have known are also in hiding. I understand their wounds entirely too well to hunt them down.)
Sigh. Don't know if I am making sense. Utterly fearful of triggering yet another -- debate? soapbox marathon? slogan swapping session? dogma dip? Whatever. Insert inspirational quote from Nelson Mandela here.
just ranting...
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I don't really know how to label this but I having a rough week and I can't say it's one thing.... I have a lot on my plate which is nothing new and I try to cope in many positive ways and do but I still have my moments.My kids more so my daughters talk to me about everything which I know it's cause of comfort and we are close.... however I really struggle with the venting about their dad which...
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I did the dumbest thing today. I charged my earbuds, unplugged the block and put the block in my little bag instead of the earbuds. I wasn't happy about that when I got to the gym. What a dummy!
I'd say if it's causing this much anguish in you---fuck it, Arfie, hire it done and be done. You have enough going on without this worry atop it.
BTW, that metaphor is exactly right. Every instrument in the orchestra is tuned correctly and playing wonderfully, but nobody's playing the same music---I hit this with my mom in fact, last week. She was arguing from "Polish Culture Norm" and I was arguing from "My Boundaries!" and when I realized we weren't having the same argument? I walked away from it. Meh. Eff it.
"The toughest conflicts in my own experience are the ones where everybody is right, but nobody is "playing from the same sheet of music."
That reminded me of another thing you wrote a while back, "you can be helpful or you can be right." I taught that one to my nursing students yesterday with credit to you. I think that's a good way to get out of that logjam when everybody's right. What is the most helpful right thing then.
Rather than figure out the "rightness" in all this, could we focus on what is kindest and takes the best, gentlest care of you? If we make kindness, gentleness and well-being for Arfie the priority here - as it should be - then what is the best path forward? It looks to me like hiring out the work. How does it look to you?
He and I spent uncounted hours in the barns of the abandoned farms my parents rented throughout the US, tinkering childishly with all that plethora of abandoned farm equipment that gets left behind when farms grow up to be investment properties. I sometimes believe that my mechanical talent is a big part of who and what I am. My brother certainly believed it.
Yes, continuing to hire it out might well be the sensible thing to do. My father-in-law would certainly prefer it, if he knew the tractor was broken and this is his investment property, after all. My husband - the very individual who derailed the car rebuild in 1985 and wants to make amends - is encouraging me to give it more time.
Thanks guys. This feels like actual progress... Framing the issue in cohesive form...
Best of all, methinks my beloved really does want to make amends. He is being incredibly patient with this round of brain freeze. Is there anything finer than a supportive partner???