Saying one thing and doing another

“Hi James,” said a voice behind me in the baker’s shop this morning.

I turned, and there was the new manager from work. She’s based at the other end of the country, and visits us for a couple of days every other week or so. “Oh, hi Lynne,” I said. As I paid for my breakfast and she bought a Latte, we exchanged very basic small talk. I asked if she was here for a leaving do that’s happening after work tomorrow – Lynne is replacing one of those who is leaving.

Perhaps you may have taken from my last sentence that I was asking if that was the primary reason she was here. I wasn’t meaning that, but I think that’s how Lynne took it, judging by the slightly confused look on her face. She was going to attend, yes, but she was here for other things as well. Of course I hadn’t meant the question the way it had sounded, but – oh well.

By now I’d finished paying and was wondering if I should politely wait for Lynne, as she would be heading back to the same office as me. In the blink of an eye, she clearly sensed this too, and said,”Oh, don’t bother waiting – you get off.”

“That’s fine, I’ll catch up with you later,” I said, and then headed back to the office, feeling confident that I’d made a good impression.

A good impression, eh? Hmmmm. The passage of time, and the application of some rumination means I now feel rather differently.

The problem here, is that my facsimile of chatting is just that – it’s guess work rather than having anything solid behind it. I’ll catch up with Lynne later will I? Erm, no. I won’t. My comment appeared to demonstrate that we had things to talk about, but we don’t. It’s just what I imagine people say, and in a moment where I had to find something appropriate to end the conversation, my brain chose that phrase.

There is a bigger problem here too. By interacting with people in a way that mimics what I think they would be expecting to hear rather than a way that is actually acheivable by me, I often send the wrong signals or leave a sense of inconsistency with people. I must be frequently confusing to deal with.

“Can you do this for me James?”

“Sure”

Except that having confidently said yes to a piece of work without even finding out what it involves, I’ll often find that the work is outside of my sphere of knowledge or it simply doesn’t grab me and I struggle to complete it. Confident and happy to undertake work, yet not good at completing it. That’s a bit of a conflict, isn’t it?

Life is a constant battle to obtain the right script for James the actor, and unfortunately the script writer fails to see twists and turns in the plot of life.

A metaphor, yes, but not all that far from the truth either. My tool box of stock phrases, gleaned from years of observing others are something of a script that I act out. And as I am the script writer, and I don’t often see things coming in life, I’m frequently stuck with a script that doesn’t fit the situation very well.

If half the battle is finding suitable words when communicating with others, then the other half of the battle is realising that the things I say need to be doable. Maybe saying no once in a while would help, no matter how big and scary that sounds.

Because if I said no to something I couldn’t deliver, at least I would be being consistent.

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