WAG - Open Letter
Note: It's been a long weekend. I had the intent to write a up-beat, positive recount of yesterday, but more recent developments spurred this slightly darker post.
Because I don't feel like writing much else tonight, and the fact that talking about it is helping, I present to you a re-posting of an email I sent to my boss outlining the late evening's events:
Subject: Adventures in Idiocy
Dear Marybeth,
It's Caleb.
I'm both bummed out an incredibly pissed at myself.
Due to a series of mistakes, recounted below, I totally missed the Ground Floor Meeting tonight and feel like I've thrown myself completely out of whack.
It is also with some irony that I note my use of melodramatic adjectives is getting entirely out of hand - but I blame that insight more on my Creative Writing teacher.
As the previous paragraph demonstrates, I'm going through my typical waves of mini-depression followed by bouts of gallows humor.
Without taking the luxury of going up and down the hallways and actually talking to people, I feel like I've lost respect from myself and other people on the floor.
I haven't been able to talk to Katie about it. I knocked on her door but there was no answer.
All my action thus far, besides moping is emailing Katie this and printing a copy out on my door:
//
Answer to the Question of the Day:
Where the heck were you this evening, most specifically, during the time of the ground floor meeting?
I was at church.
Answer to the second-most asked Question of the Day:
Why were you at church during that time?
I have a three-prong answer for that, ranked in order of importance:
One, I mis-memorized the time and thought the meeting was at 8:00 p.m. There’s no beating around the bush here. I made a mistake.
Two, this evening’s church service honored several people in the church including my girlfriend. This was not a service I could gracefully opt out of without facing dire consequences down the road.
Three, I have neither my own car or cell phone – bear with me, this will make sense in a moment. Since I lack a decent form of cross-town transportation, I am at the mercy of the schedule of those who do have wheels. Also, since I have no mobile way of contacting people, even if I realized I was about to be late, I had no way of reaching help outside the range of my voice – which obviously wouldn’t get to far.
Not a pretty excuse, but the truth. Between these three strikes, I had little chance of making it home on time even before I stepped up to the plate.
//
Once again notice the heavy reliance on gallows "I'm-screwed-so-let's-make-some-final-jokes-at-the-expense-of-the-executioner-before-the-axe-drops" humor in this preceding composition as well as the sentence we're currently in.
I am able to both crack a weak smile across my face AND crack a soft blow across my forehead.
I suppose this is my first serious questioning of faith concerning my position here. I had gotten to the point where I felt I'd made up for my general absence during opening week and... well this hit.
Crud*. *-used on behalf of stronger profanity my girlfriend is trying to work out of me, though admittedly, I very rarely use any of the classic "7 word" and even then the use of those has mainly been limited to times immediately following girlfriend break-ups and/or dumpings.
Anyway, I don't know if I'll drop by tonight or tomorrow before the meeting to talk about this. I know typing it out here some help - which was part of my intent. I guess I'm doing some good at self-psychiatry.
I also know this is going to be mostly resolved by getting back out into the community and working with people and avoiding the urge to crawl into a shell because I don't want to talk about what happened.
Well, it's the old, "I know the cure but it may take me a while to swallow it" situation.
Time will tell what will happen next.
Also, and this is at the bottom of my concerns in all this matter, if there is some form of punishment, written warning, write-up, etc that needs to be written up to put on file or something, tell me what time I need to drop by to ruffle through the required paperwork.
I've long been taught to end correspondence on a up-note, so please excuse this seemingly out of place wrap-up. I include this explanation so it would sound sincere and not ironically sarcastic when placed next to this meandering account.
I hope the rest of your weekend goes well, I hope you had a good time at the wedding, and may Monday greet you without too much stuff to do in your inbox,
- Caleb
P.S. Let’s all hear it for stream-of-consciousness writing. Huzah!
P.P.S. The addition of the previous sentence, including use word “Huzah” brought down the epistle’s Reading Level grade down .2 points from an 8.1 to a 7.9. And don’t ask what this P.P.S. brought it to.
Anyway, that's what went down, and that's my emotions will stay on a roller coaster ride for the foreseeable future.
I'll let you know how it all pans out.
I wish you all a good rest of your weekend to.
'A_sincere_wish_Not_a_sarcastic_one'
