Today was a bit of an up and down day.
After waking up for the last time, I stayed in my room for good little while to take care of messages and what not online, tax stuff and whatnot.
Once I finally Left the guest bedroom, Dad and Cindy gave me a little tour of their little garden in the desert, which includes lemon trees, fig trees, peach trees, pomegranate trees, a gray barber, thornless blackberries, and all sorts of other things.
They only have about a half an acre, but boy do they grow a heck of a lot.
Since they’re both up in years now, they don’t have the strength to do all the yard work and what not themselves, so they hire that out nowadays.
It looks great–a sea of mostly pea gravel with big rings of dirt around the trees where the water lines are give the the little trees the precious water that is ever so rare in this barren desert wasteland (they’ve got plenty underground, but Not much at all falls from the sky.).
I chatted with my dad and stepmom about different things they’re following in the alternative news, as they put it. I don’t follow anything from any of the alternative news sites myself, but each time I see them, they tell me the various world events that they’re following according to what their new sources say is going on.
I don’t remember at what point it happened. Maybe it was earlier in the morning, but I received an email with the invoice amounts from my accountant for how much I was being charged for the service provided.
I had previously been given a number that was a lot more than I wanted to pay, but I recognized that I had few good options, so I went ahead with it. That said, I had understood that I was paying for a certain service based on my own understanding of what was needed. And I had found out during the process of going through everything with my accountant that I didn’t need everything that I thought I needed to start with.
But when I got the bill, it was a bill for the same price, in fact a little bit more, than what I’ve been told to start with. And when I looked at the itemized charges, I was shocked to see that I had been charged 375 for what was called a referral fee.
My frustration was immediate. Anger soon followed, and lots of unhappy feelings and judgments piggybacked onto the anger.
It probably doesn’t help that I’m pretty much always on a razor’s edge of emotional breakdown.
I started writing an email in response. At first, I was deliberate and direct, but respectful. Unfortunately, as my feelings intensified while writing the email, I began including language that was much more judgmental. The result ended up being a scathing judgment of not just her actions as I understood them, but her, as I saw her based on what I assumed of her given what I saw in the invoice.
I wanted to make excuses for her because she was such a wonderful person as we spoke over the phone. Honestly, she was amazing. Her sense of integrity seemed to be quite strong, and I trusted her.
But then I got that invoice…
I was angry. Very angry.
😕
I was also concerned that since I had been treated, perhaps my brother Jared and his company had been improperly treated by their accountant because things just felt… wrong.
I vented to a couple of people via text before calling my brother Richard with my concerns about the accountant and whatnot.
Richard is an extremely level-headed person, so he offered up many suggestions as to why there was no reason to be angry, and many reasons why everything that had happened might have been done with good intentions on their end.
I wasn’t in an emotional place to be ready to hear it, so I ended up cutting the conversation short because I was too worked up.
Even though perhaps some of his positive suggestions to give her the benefit of the doubt might have been a little out there, in my mind, of course he was right about the importance of starting off by giving her the benefit of the doubt and seeking understanding instead of assuming that I understood exactly what was going on.
It took her a good chunk of the day for her to respond to that email, but when she did, she was highly professional and very respectful, and deleted the invoices that she had previously sent me, telling me that I owed her nothing. She also made a simple request for my future interactions and a suggestion meant to help me with my taxes in the future.
It was uncanny how close what she wrote was to exactly how I treat my angry customers– write down to the removing all charges and offering suggestions that will help them in the future when all they’ve really done is leave you with no compensation and a challenging, painful experience.
And that was what I had done.
😞
There’s a part of me that still doesn’t understand how she could think that a particular charge That was included on the invoice could be okay, but clearly, she was the person that she seemed to be over the phone while I was working with her before, and clearly I had judged her unfairly.
While all that was going on, I was also texting My brother’s accountant who had referred her to me, trying to gather information about what their agreement was and what benefits he might have received from her for referring me, as well as what he told her needed to be done.
Declarification was too late in coming, but at least I was trying at this point.
I texted my brother back apologizing for ending the conversation abruptly, and he, as he pretty much always does was magnanimous and his response, even complementing me for ending the conversation before allowing it to escalate.
He’s a really good brother.
I received the email about removing the charges as I was texting the accountant who referred her to me.
Given her response, I wanted to back off my expressions of frustration that I had made to him about her, not wanting to damage her reputation by having jumped the gun to judgment.
Ugh.
I want to say that I used to be so much better, but now I just find myself quick to respond and anger instead of giving the benefit of the doubt and seeking understanding first.
I tried to clean up any damage I might have done, and I sent my accountant a text message, hoping that perhaps we might be able to text back and fourth, allowing me to apologize and for us to actually communicate about what happened.
I didn’t get any response from her last night. I ate dinner with my dad and step mom, and I watched an episode of Monk with them, a show they enjoy quite a bit.
I spent quite a long time pacing up and down the road outside, sundown, and the heat of the day no longer so oppressive.
I was out there long enough for my dad and step mom to get a little worried about me, So they came outside to see how I was doing.
I went back inside with them, and we chatted a bit, I think, before I called it a night and went to bed.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I had to pull off the driver’s front tire and replace it with my donut because it had gone flat. I had managed to make it all the way to my dad’s house they are in southern Nevada before it went flat. I didn’t know that there was actually a problem until the next morning, when I saw the tire half flat. Several hours later, it was almost all the way flat.
So I pulled all my junk out of the trunk, grabbed the donut, and slapped it on. I didn’t know if the tire was flat from having been punctured by something (I did hit something very large in the middle of the road probably 150 mi before getting to my dad’s house, and I wanted immediately if I might have popped a tire because it was such a large object in the road and I hit it going probably 75 or 80 mph.)
But I had made it all the way to my dad’s house, so I assumed that it was fine. But I suppose that might have caused some kind of a puncture, or it could have just been the wearing of the tire all the way through to the point that a little bits of air were leaking through. When I pulled the tire off, I realized that there were plenty of internal steel wires poking out because it had worn all the way through the rubber and through wires and what not.
If I had to guess, that’s probably why I had a low tire. It was probably just from having one through, and I was probably super lucky that it hadn’t gone out while I was driving down the road.
Anyway, that was the day.
One thing I haven’t mentioned is that one of my old friends who stopped writing her blog a good while back started writing in it again just recently.
Overall, it looks like she’s been doing amazingly well in growing to become the person she wants to be.
That makes me happy. 😊
It also looks little she’s been going through a pretty rough last handful of days.
Life is so hard for so many of us right now. It’s just nutty. But she is strong, much stronger than I think she ever gives herself credit for, and I’m confident that she will find the strength to continue to do the things she feels are best and right to do. She’s pretty amazing that way.
It’s just… really hard sometimes. I know that all too well myself.
I’m reminded of what my friend Cory has said to me when I struggle and feel so discouraged after I relapse in my pornography addiction (which I haven’t been doing so well with lately after having relapsed after a much longer than normal clean streak). He’s said something like, “Just think of how many days you’ve had where you were completely clean.”
I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist, I think. I hope I’m remembering correctly.
Sometimes it’s just so easy to focus on the failing that we (I 🙃) forget that I’ve had so many days of success prior to the slip up, the relapse.
I so desire to never slip up. I desperately want to have this string of clean days in a row without using that just gets longer and longer and never has to start over because I simply just… stay clean.
But I keep slipping. Sometimes I have more time. Sometimes I have less time.
But the number of clean days I have compared to the number of days where I’ve slipped up and relapsed… overall, there are many more clean days than there are relapse days.
And lately, there’s been a new evidence of growth in that regard, one that I’m at least a little happy about. Even though it’s awkward and feels almost dishonest, when my friend who’s acting as a support person for me asks me if I’ve been clean since our last check-in (check ins are morning, midday, and evening), I’ve been sending the usual Mr Clean GIF that I was using before when I was so happy and confident about how well I was doing.
Seeing the expression of the Mr Clean cartoon character, and how proud and strong and whatever he is, it’s hard to feel like I’m being honest when I use that GIF to say that I am currently clean when I’ve relapsed perhaps only a day ago… or less than a day, but that’s the growth: I’m using the GIF anyway.
I’m trying, and I’m clean. Maybe it’s only been 12 hours or 5 days, but I’ve been clean during those 12 hours. And I’m not giving up. I’m still working to overcome. That’s what really matters.
That’s what’s important.
Even when my relapses turn into binges, so what. I’ll start over. Right now, and at my next check in, I will send that Mr Clean GIF, and I will be clean.
Anyway, so maybe y’all can celebrate a little bit with me. I’m still struggling to stay clean, but at least in my relapses, there’s growth in the getting back up. Sometimes it’s hard to be proud of yourself when the failures just keep happening. But I want to be (and feel like I should be) proud of myself for continuing to try and try and try again even when the pain of slipping up is so great.
🥳
And thank you, to Cory, for being such a great support in my efforts.
💪😊👍
We can do this.
Loves… 😊
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 