Taking responsibility for ones actions…
I’m usually not one to shy away from my responsibilities, if I fuck up I’ll admit it usually and try and do what I can to minimise the fall out. That’s not to say that I do that all the time, as there are always times when running away seems like the only thing to do at the time… Usually these times are personal fuck-ups… saying the wrong thing to a friend… getting into a situation that affects others. These things a lot of the time I do walk away from, as usually just trying to fix them cascades into something much bigger, and friendships just end up being broken forever.
Relationships and friendships aren’t like work, work has guidelines, rules, contracts and defined consequences… Relationships on the other hand are usually poorly documented, and frequently don’t have contracts outlining rules and limits yet the consequences are fairly much the same. When you break the rules in a job, you get fired or if you are lucky reprimanded… Though when you break the rules in a relationship, a lot of the time you don’t even know that you have done it. Sometimes when you do know that you have done it, it’s possibly too late to fix. Expectations in a relationship seem to happen undocumented, and knowing where each party stands is guesswork if the communications department is a little slow. Sometimes the act of communicating differences is what we fear might start a confrontation in the first place.
Life is something I have yet to understand, however I can understand and respect a workplace easily because the rules are known, they are outlined for us to begin with. On Friday afternoon I fucked up. I didn’t have any difficulty admitting to my boss that it was me that stuffed up once we had worked out what the issue was. I knew were I stood, I knew that I had stuffed up things, and I knew how many customers I had affected. I also knew what I needed to do to fix the majority of the problems and I was damned if I was going to leave that for others to clean up my mess. On Saturday morning I crawled into bed knowing that I had at least done all that I could to fix what I had stuffed up.
My fear of communicating my thoughts and opinions is irrelevant in a working environment because my thoughts and feelings are irrelevant, sure they can help or hinder in the workplace but ultimately I have been employed to do a job. However a relationship is all about thoughts and feelings, it doesn’t matter how well you look after someone or whether you can provide for them… A relationship is all about caring, and sharing your feelings and desires with someone. Maybe that’s why I do OK with work, and I’m hopeless when it comes to relationships…
Originally published at Syridian's World. Please leave any comments there.