Day 042 – Challenging Myself

Welcome to Day 42!

My energy was much better today, although I was a little tired.  A summary of events: my first cab ride with a broken ankle, rumour of the meeting with robust conversation from Day 039 has gotten around; and another meeting put me in mind of looking at what the difference is between control and parameters.  

Before I get into the taxi ride, I was incredibly proud of myself for being able to negotiate going out to the tap to fill up the water feature.  It was scary, but also rewarding.  Speaking of another scary but satisfying moment, a cab ride without assistance from husband or neighbour!  

In this day and age, I am familiar with Uber’s existence, but I opted for a cab so I could relay my circumstances. I needed assistance and the consistency of vehicle sizes used by taxis were a better option with respect to getting me and my kneeling scooter to work.  The whole experience was seamless and I got to work with a minimum of fuss.   

Interestingly, I have had quite a bit of feedback from the session where things went around in circles.  There was feedback on feedback, if you really want to know.  The most interesting thing was that I got comments from people that hadn’t attended, saying they were sorry they’d missed it!  Really?  At least the meeting wasn’t boring.  I also garnered a bit of empathy, which was unexpected.

This put me in mind of asking, “what is the difference between control and parameters?”.  This in turn cast my mind back to the days of sharing accommodation.  My favourite places to live in, were the places that laid out clear ground rules right from the start.  The first time I encountered this, I thought is was a bit controlling.  

Nonetheless, after the initial laws of the house were communicated it usually meant there were no surprise adjustments as you lived there.  They were the boundaries, if you violated them then you’ll be pulled up on them.  The requests weren’t unreasonable once you got past the initial “whoa!” moment.   It was stuff like: pay your rent on this day of the week, this is your shelf in the cupboard, this is where you can put your food in the fridge – do not take other people’s food stuff.  If you do use someone else’s stuff let them know and replace it, if you don’t hear from them.

There’s a kitty for household shared items such as milk, eggs, bread and cleaning equipment/ detergent and this is paid into kitty on the same day as the rent;  bins go out on X night of the week and there’s a roster for taking out the bin, if you can’t take out the bin, you need to swap with someone.  Same went for shopping, cleaning bathrooms and main areas.  Cooking you did yourself for yourself, what you dirtied you cleaned.  If the house has shared meals occasionally, everyone pitches in to cook or clean or both.  

In one of the places, there was only the one shower for four people and when I joined the household everyone got together and discussed their preferred shower times.  We all made a 15 minute adjustments to our preferred shower times to cater for the limited hot water if we all needed a morning shower.  

Back in the day before mobile phones were able to be carried in your pocket, there was a communal house phone.  In one household you needed to put how long you were going to be away on a whiteboard next to the phone.  This was in case you had people calling for you and other housemates needed to the caller when to expect you back.  I was a bit put out at first, but after spending a weekend at home answering the odd call for such and such, I appreciated the rule.

This sounded all controlling, invasive and daunting.  It was worth it, when I first heard all the rules, I thought I was entering a controlling hell.  So, there was some behind the scenes grumbling to friends and family.  However, later those same rules garnered respect and there was a surprising amount of freedom.  Much like having a budget seems rigid and controlling of your money, it has the opposite effect.  You know the reality of your situation and once you’ve paid your bills the rest is all for your to spend.     

On the other hand, the places that irked me the most were the ones that left “hints” so blatant they were offensive for the display of cowardice it showed.  Mainly because it made you feel that you were such a horrible person and so offensive and scary they couldn’t just ask you.  In fairness, it took me a long while to understand that the style of fiery european argument’s with the “kiss and make up” afterwards wasn’t how it worked everywhere. 

For instance, one person I moved in with needed someone in the spare room.  After moving in it turned out that the person had to get someone in because they had run up quite a credit card bill and needed a flatmate to help pay it off.  (As an Aside: the parents of this person didn’t want their child to live in a place they couldn’t control, so they bought the unit for their child to live in.  The child was a little resentful of this kind of passive aggression but it was the only form of communication they knew, too).  Back to the story, once the finances had been repaid there were little hints like newspapers “casually” left on the breakfast table open on the “Rental Accommodation” page.  

I’d also mentioned to someone at work that I would have liked to be a camping assistant for a summer camp in the USA.  The next day, we hadn’t spoken, there was an application on the kitchen table beside the newspaper.  For me, I felt that this was a way of communicating that I wasn’t pulling my weight around the flat.  

I began to clean everyday, Made sure my toiletries were packed away, leaving as little impact as possible.  Made sure I put away all my dishes, wiped the stove, mopped and vacuumed the floor every third day but none of that was helping.   I’d left notes asking if we could catch up.  Then at work, I got the then equivalent of a “text break up” in an email, asking me to move out by the weekend. In short, I’d served my purpose in helping get the finances under control, said parents were no longer an issue and my usefulness had been outlived.  Nothing when I agreed to move in was I aware that the room was conditional until finances were paid up.

Just to be clear, the passive aggressiveness encourage a similar response from me.  So, I started to push back in my own way when requests to meet to discuss were being ignored.  I hadn’t resorted to sending a work email to communicate how I felt!  Nonetheless, I let it snidely slip out amongst a group of partygoers that said person went to bed early every night, it made its way back to said person and they were not pleased.  

Of course, I didn’t and don’t think there’s anything wrong with going to bed early, I do it now. It’s different strokes for different folks.  I know, it was mean.  I knew the person’s credibility wouldn’t suffer but that they might be a bit peeved by it.  The fallout had been greater than I had expected because I actually got one of the few in-person comments from them on the subject!   

The other time I got a rise, was when I was “sleeping” with a guy – and I mean actually snore sleeping not hanky-panky sleeping but they didn’t know that.  Especially since I may have insinuated that the sleeping was of the “hanky-panky” kind.  Not sure the other would have been believed anyway.  Okay, so I could be a ratbag!

It was clear, in the end, that I was a means to an end.  No real rules were applied it was just assumed that my values and understanding were automatic or magical.  If you don’t communicate what you want clearly, there’s room for misinterpretation.  

Nonetheless, this is a bit of what was going on in my mind since we’re setting up a new team dynamic.  To me it’s a similar scenario.

Let’s see what the cards had to say about today!