You Make Mistakes

A long long time ago when I was just beginning my professional life in the career I have pursued for the last 35 years or so, a group of fellow professionals got started that I heard about and I asked a colleague about it and he hemmed and hawed for a bit and then said something like "Betty doesn't want you in the group. She says you make mistakes." The name is changed to protect the guilty.

Betty was a colleague I had done a little work with who I had not been particularly impressed with. She had seemed to put a lot of focus on how her clients viewed her and seemed, dare I say, neurotically concerned whether she was liked or not. I tried to talk with her about my exclusion, clear up the question, and she put me off because she "had a headache." That was that. Though the guy who was the message carrier later apologized and said that the incident had convinced him never to "play exclusion games again." One good outcome anyway.

Brings up two things: rejection and this business about making mistakes.

Rejection happens. And it does hurt. I think there is a cognitive thing going on. You take a dislike without really thinking about it and then you just look for things to prove you right, and because everyone makes mistakes it is easy to find things to make you right, Funny how the idea of being wrong so terrorizes us... okay, terrorizes me.

I won't say that what Betty said didn't hurt. It did.

And yes, I make mistakes. I make a lot of them. Some every day. There have been times that I thought I had a specialty in awkward moments. I've had some hurtfully serious lapses in judgment that I regret much more than any perceived injury from the Bettys of the world. None of that is going to get made right. It is what it was and isn't anymore.

Two things for this nqog: I'm wondering why my reflections are going to these "rejections" and "layoffs;" and I'm wondering how much it has to do with my current unease about where I am. There is some hurt there, and probably not about the events coming to mind. I think those things are just echoes. And I don't think catharsis is in the offing.

I want to be of use, and I don't want to be frantic about it. So I guess what I think I will do is try to be of use in the moment with whatever happens to be in front of me. Don't think I can do more than that.