myth's OF 5.75G Journal

[myth]

Finally hitting some frustration, which is often the closest that I get to anger. My automatic writing's also less garbled now, if no more concise. If anyone's curious enough to take a peek (by all means, skip it if you're not), here's a lengthy (but hopefully forum-friendly) excerpt from my non-public journal:

Frustration has resulted from someone conflating humility with irresponsibility. From what I can tell, they're equating bragging, complaining, and nagging  others with transparency and active participation, and, to them, if I'm not broadcasting my contributions or ordering others around, I must not be participating at all. The implication appears to be that, unless I make a mountain of every molehill, I'm either failing to pull my own weight, trying to hide something, or letting the moles take over. My own counter-reasoning is that I get far more accomplished (including things that others don't need to do for me) if I leave the transparency to when I'm actually asked a real question.

Would it be more appropriate for me to brag, complain, and nag... or for them to ask instead of assuming? For me, the value is that the accomplishment got done, not whether or not I get credit for doing it. If something's askew enough to cause concern, I'm tempted to adjust it correctively. No need for glory, recognition, gratitude (except maybe self-gratitude), whatever -- just the benefit of a problem ceasing to be problematic. I'll accept ownership over my own work, sure, but life's mundanities need accomplishment more than they need attribution.

I see no great need to 1) sign all of my work after completion and wait for a thank-you note, or, at the other extreme, 2) leave problems uncorrected with an accompanying complaint card. #1 seems like the actions of someone seeking attention, validation, and/or reward for their effort, attaching strings to generosity (I'll scratch your back, but only if you... etc) and giving the "hero" incentive to orchestrate problems that they can later solve in exchange for accolade currency. #2, on the other hand, seems unproductive, accusatory, and blindly aimed, implicitly asserting that the problem is better left unrepaired unless the problem's creator corrects it personally.

While I admit that the problem's creator learns less without taking responsibility for their actions, is it really better for the entire crew to drown in the sinking ship than to wait for the person who created the problem to own up to their mistake and fix it? Especially given that causing the problem is often at inverse proportions to one's competency at solving it? If my car breaks down because I'm a terrible automobile operator, is the rest of the road safer if I do the repair (because I directly or indirectly caused it) or if someone qualified does the repair?

But what's getting my goat is where else others demand accountability -- not for having caused the problem, but for having acted to correct it. Which doesn't even have the argument of a lesson learned to support it. And the complaint isn't over work quality, just the absent reporting. The "pics, or it didn't happen" thinking is (IMHO) painfully strong with so many people, and there's an encroaching belief that publicized progress is implicitly required, unsolicited, like mandatory incremental narration. Which, when applied to something like this, seems to be little more than saying: "Look what I did! Look what I did!" There's a difference between wanting proof that a good thing got done (Hooray!) and wanting proof that I was the one responsible for the good thing (Who cares that I did it, as long as everyone's happier for it being done?).

My difficulty embracing this achievement-advertizing behavior is that I'm not a 3-year-old. I find this irritating enough in a socially agreed-upon format, as in job applications, but job postings at least have the decency to ask what you've done before making uninformed assumptions about the answers. In the case of unspoken "Are you pulling your own weight around here?" questions that keep coming up, they're not even taking the time to ask the question. It's essentially "I don't trust you, and you haven't shown off your work, groaned about doing it, or even passed the buck to someone who didn't want it, so you must not be doing anything/as much as everyone else is. I could ask the questions that I want answered, but, instead, I'll continue to make assumptions until you answer what I've never asked."

The squeaky wheel may get the grease, but, in this case, it's as if the silent wheel is being criticized and distrusted for not squeaking enough. As if the only possible reason that a wheel doesn't squeak is because it's never turning. I like being invisible unless I choose to be visible.

If the person isn't doing the work for credit and would actively prefer to avoid the award ceremony, why force it on them? To misquote an X-Men crossover story that I'd read as 1985 became 1986, a gift isn't really a gift when it's not freely given, but it's also not really a gift when it isn't freely received. I don't want someone else's pride in my work; they weren't involved in doing it. I'll respectfully accept their gratitude, appreciation, and happiness in it being accomplished, if it's something that they wanted done, but their pride in my work is going a bit far. Conversely, if they're only seeking to assign credit as a means of checking up on me, out of distrust, for transparency, then whatever they're awarding me for my effort is, from my point of view, barely a reward at all.

Maybe this stems from school grading systems? Parents and teachers often make grades about whether the child did well on their own, not about what, as far as I can see, grades really signify: whether the teacher was able to impart information effectively to the student, with the nuances of its meaning and value intact, and gain positive confirmation of that information transfer through testing. In my view, however unpopular this view might be, the entire information transfer process is what got the grade, not solely the student. Of course, the quality of the transfer may not reflect the quality of the original information.

From my point of view, if the teacher failed to communicate effectively/the relationship was unideal, the grade indicates that the information failed to pass to the student with confirmation (homework, tests, etc), not that the student alone failed to pass muster. The grade was never about just me, so I never really associated the grade with pride in the student, just as a quality metric of the arbitrary juxtaposition between teacher, student, and curriculum. But that's merely my opinion. I'd anticipate that several parents and educators would strongly disagree, and they'd probably have valid arguments for doing so. But I still wonder if this is part of what conditioned the "each of us must be rewarded/punished (publicly, with pride/shame) for our work" line of thinking. Or if it's just an extension/symptom of the real cause.

Alternatively, maybe the lack of reporting makes them feel deprived of their directorial pride, if they demand something, find it complete, and don't know enough detail about the completion to confirm that they were really part of it? Possibly even considering it a loss of team pride or teamwork, somehow? Even so, if I were absent from the process other than "I want this done" desires, not even involved beyond the wishing-for-things stage,  I'd find it pretty cumbersome to find any team pride in that. I understand that teams often rely on coordination, but, if one teammate's missed their cue, isn't it OK for another (i.e. me) to sub in for them temporarily? Isn't that part of teamwork too?

Either way, I'm not looking for a pat on the head, for myself or as part of a team. Instead, I'm more motivated by an accomplishment's intrinsic value having been achieved (fulfilling its intended purpose) than by inspiring awe/complaint in others or a sense of accomplishment in myself. Even my creative works (music, writing, art, etc) were created out of appreciation/enjoyment of the work, its inspiration, and its result, of bringing the inside of me outside of me. But the blander tasks of life? They're probably worth even less audience opinion. Whether anyone grades my work in these areas is their own decision and, frankly, says at least as much (if not more) about their likes, dislikes, and priorities as it does about the quality of my work. The work  was never about soliciting approval from a fandom that it was never created to serve.

No idea what this has to do with OF, and I'll be the first to admit that posting the excerpt publicly undercuts its own anti-reporting point. But it's a topic that one part of me wanted to discuss with another. It's still below my usual quality of self-communication, but it's an improvement over last week's inner incoherence.

When I feel a strong emotion, this is the kind of conversation that I have with myself. When I asked myself why I was feeling frustrated earlier in the week, this was the answer that my fingers typed out for me. It's a bit like letting my fingers vent the emotion while my eyes act as the sympathetic listener.