My Time IS Valuable, Dammit!

I’m sure you’re as sick of hearing me bellyache about not having time to get anything done as I am complaining about it. But that’s the fact, Jack, and adjustments must be made.

Toward that end, I’ve embarked on some interpersonal housecleaning. If you don’t bring anything of value to the relationship, you’re outta here.

For instance, I’ve fired a couple of freelance web clients in the last couple months. When their needs and the stress they produce outweighs the number of DVDs I can purchase with their money, it’s time for them to go. One lady I gave a definitive heave-ho to, and another relationship – with someone who used to be a friend as well as a client (no, Cliz, I am NOT talking about you here, you still rock and I salute you!) – I am allowing to die on the vine. I have a family now, and I only have so much time for client hand-holding, and both of these ladies exceeded their limit.

But what’s really got me hot under the collar right now is an old, old girlfriend. Not my first, but the one I lost my cherry to, currently a middle-school teacher who never escaped the inclemite, backwater, poverty-stricken, crime-ridden helltown of our mutually miserable childhoods.

Out of the blue, she fires off a pissy email chastising me for not keeping in touch to her satisfaction. Fair enough. She'll get no argument from me - I have slacked.

So I write back, explaining the work/family situation, and pointing out that I have a blog I endeavor mightily to keep up to date, so even if I don’t have the time I used to to compose epic-length personal correspondences, she can still keep up with me and mine at our mutual convenience on my blog.

Her reply goes from pissy to huffy and condescending. I try again, starting to get pissed myself: “Everybody else working a full-time job from home while raising an infant without the help of any friends or family and whose wife is 2 months and counting to having to finish her dissertation and still gets less than 5 hours of sleep per 24-hour period can chew me out all they want."

Then I get to feeling bad. I decide I was an asshole with that reply, so I decide to try a different tack. I write back, “If YOU had a blog, I’d check it every day, and enjoy the ‘sound of your voice.’ I’ve talked several of my similarly overcommitted friends into doing the same, and it’s really cool checking in with them at my convenience, and them posting at theirs.”

She writes back, from the summit of Mount I’m-Much-Better-Than-You, “I think your intentions are good, but you're way off in terms of me on this one. I'm not interested in doing the mass communication thing with (seemingly) close friends. Anyway, the blog thing works for you and I'm glad it's kept you in touch with your many, many "close" friends…”

And on and on in the same condescending vein.

Glutton for punishment that I am, I decide I still haven’t made myself clear, and write back again, “I was actually thinking, you could write anonymously and with passion – and to an audience of interested peers – about all the school goings-on you’re always so caught up in. You speak eloquently and care deeply about middle-school-teaching specific stuff – there’s certain to be an online community of people out there just like you, people who care about the same things you do and are brainstorming about what to do about it. A discussion that you’ve been dying to have for years is currently taking place.

If you don’t want to be a voice in that community straight away, then don’t. But you could at least listen in. Take the time you would spend replying to this email to Google middle school teacher blogs (or whatever).

I’m telling you, as someone who’s known you forever, your skill set and the needs of this community are ideally suited to one another.

Knowing you, I’m sure any time you spent in this endeavor wouldn’t curtail your personal emailing and phone-calling time either.

I write MY blog as a loose-cannon wise-ass wannabe media-critic... Who cares? For me, it remains an exhilarating form of public masturbation, safe because I’m sure no one’s looking.

But you could write – well – about stuff that matters. Become part of a community of voices, and perhaps ultimately influence outcomes.”

Pretty decent attempt, right? Plus the fact that, in spite of my best intentions, I’ve now spent the better part of an hour writing personal emails to her!

Also bear in mind, my track record with giving her advice is rock-solid. I told her she should leave her abusive, cheating, bisexual, alcoholic boyfriend for 15 years – when she finally did, she admitted I had been right all along. I pushed her into AA when her drinking was spiraling out of control – that worked great too (till she broke it off with her boyfriend and hit the bottle again). Again and again, I’ve offered sound, sometimes revelatory advice – by her own admission! – so I figure she might actually consider my proposal.

Silly, foolish little man.

Her reply opens with, “Honestly, is you weren't so self-righteous, you'd be hilarious," and just gets more haughty and arrogant from there.

...

Dude, I am so out of here. My time is valuable, and by Grabthar's Hammer, I swear this post is the last of it I’ll waste on her.

Happy trails, babe. Thanks for making this one easy.