The Wordly Wise Gang - One man’s long history with not getting shit done.
In my down times, sometimes in the good ones too, I avoid quite a few sites.
They’re the ones where I see a hundred new articles, tweets and posts about getting things done. They’re written by successful people who just last week made millions while climbing mountains, saving baby seals and writing those posts.
I hate those articles. Not the articles themselves. Not the people who’ve written them. I just hate the fact that they bring up the same damn question I’ve asked myself almost my entire life.
Do I honestly struggle to get things done?
Or am I just lazy and full of shit?
We’re meeting in a nice, small cafe and gelato place on Cass. Dave’s just arrived on his bike. I find it pretty damn admirable seeing how he did that in a quarter mile of pure slush in this way-below-freezing cold.
I got here first, knowing I’d be early. Truth is I would have been here earlier. I had my boots and coat on when I get a conference call from my friend Matt and his second in command John. I’m helping Matt’s company grow its sales. It’s a great gig, more about teaching them sales methodology and how to do things like set up a pipeline, create next steps, do proposals and follow through with customers. They do all the actual sales work.
They’re close to a great deal with a very big player. We go over ideas and next steps for almost an hour.
Right before the call I had completed a busy four-hour session of not doing fuck-all.
During the call my brain’s flying with what needs to be done and with potential ideas. I give them a strong list of at least 5 good next steps for the next few days along with teaching them proposal framing and language. We hang up and I send them an e-mail with links to great sources on how to create winning proposals.
Damn. I forgot to tell them how to put a price to a service whether you charge it or not (always put a price to a service to show it has value) and how to then line-item it. Another e-mail.
I go for my coat.
An idea occurs to me about something they should consider for their proposal. I’ve packed the computer already so I just pull my phone out of my pocket and send yet another e-mail. I finally make it to my car.
I leave the radio off as I drive. My head’s whirring now. I have another two dozen thoughts about their sales and proposal work that I won’t ever send them.
I know that if I bury them with all these thoughts there’s no way they’ll get anything done.
I know this all to well.
Sarah came in 20 minutes before Dave. We clacked away for the first few minutes we sat together waiting. That’s not true. She clacked. I stared at a blank screen trying to start a cover letter for a writing job I want to apply for. A freelance project dealing with comic books and comic book movies. Something I would love to do. An application I’m dying to write.
Nothing.
Dave says he’s going for coffee and a pastry. Sarah’s already got her tea and a pastry.
I’m already way too wired. Normally I wouldn’t have taken my adderall as late as I did but I wanted my brain to be connecting things for this meeting. I should have taken it before my hours of not doing fuck-all.
Add to that the double espresso I got when I arrived at the cafe.
Unfortunately I’m that pathetic asshole that can never just watch you do something I’d like to be doing too. I go up with Dave and order a normal cup of American Joe.
I’m fairly sure I don’t project it, but on the inside I’m as jumpy as a ragged cat on his last life and jonesing for his next fix.
Dave pulls out this incredible organized work stuff he’s put together in a week between 10 hour work days and flying around the country. He once told me that he’s a linear guy who has to put it all down and work it all out to conceptualize and move forward.
Thank God for that because I know that ain’t me.
Monday, November 16th 1981. Southfield, Michigan.
I’m in fourth grade English.
The day before I went to the Lion’s game with my dad (Seasons tickets holders. Jacob means masochist in Detroitian). What a game! The Lions had been down 17-0 when ERIC FREAKING HIPPLE leads the team back including running a last minute drive. They get into field goal range with less than 20 ticks on the clock. This is still before the invention and use of the spike to stop the clock. Players start running and scrambling as the kicker Eddie Murray sprints into position (That’s right Cowboy fans. That Eddie Murray. Suck it). One player realizes he’s not going to get off the field in time and decides to just line up and act natural. It works. Murray kicks the last second score for the win and the celebration starts. Ain’t no party like a Pontiac party! The next day Pete Rozelle would crack a joke about the moment and I even remember Johnny Carson doing a quip about it in his monologue.
But Johnny’s several hours away and I’m in English class. It’s time to take out our Wordly Wise workbooks. And that’s when it hit me. Caught up in the emotion of the day I actually forgot to do my vocab work yesterday.
Tears of anger and frustration pool in my eyes. I’m not crying, though I did that quite a bit at that age. They’re just tears from the gut-wrenching realization of the moment.
“But I brought it home this time,” I say. “I really brought it home.”
My teacher consoles me and tells me it’s all right. I can’t hear her.
“I brought it home. I actually brought it home.”
I had stopped bringing that workbook home. Not because I didn’t want to do it. Because I did. Every day that damned thing, sometimes accompanied by other books, would sit on my desk and taunt me. I wanted to do it. Do my homework. I just couldn’t. I didn’t know why. I just couldn’t. I’d play with the guinea pig or with toys or flip through books. But I could feel the holes Wordly Wise’s eyes were boring into my back. I could hear it taunting me that I needed to get it done.
At some point I couldn’t stand the taunts and torture and just left the damned thing in my locker at school.
Truth is the bastard could still reach me from that distance.
We start our meeting. Rocked on caffeine, amphetamine and my natural ines ideas pour from my mouth. Good ones too. Dave’s writing them down.
Sarah’s listening and commenting. In the few meetings I’ve had with her I see her as someone with a clear vision yet very open to ideas and able to incorporate them. While that’s good in any role I’m sure it especially helps when your job’s community outreach.
Dave and Sarah put in their own thoughts and ideas, really good ones. They give my brain new turns and new thoughts. Now I’ve got this huge vision in my head. I’ve mapped out everything at once and see 20,000 branches on the tree. I see the bigger picture, the larger vision and all the cool stuff to get there. I’ve got the project mapped out and more ideas keep flowing.
It’s a damned good thing that Dave and Sarah drive this. While contributing great ideas and visions themselves they’re able to reign in thought tracks that go off-track. They get realistic. They keep it simple. They define tangible goals. They can be linear and set up processes to finish projects.
Everything I can almost never do.
Monday, September 2012. Babson Park, Wellesley, Massachusettes.
I’m in the fancy meeting room in the Babson Executive and Enterprise Education office.
The meeting’s impromptu. Only I’d seen it coming. My boss had been away for over a week. I hadn’t been able to get anything done for two.
I’m no longer my own boss. Those days disappeared five years ago. I have bosses and colleagues and HR people now. I can’t create a vacuum to live in.
I had work to complete the week she’d been away, a project I had been working on with a supposed colleague but de facto boss. My role was to do it. Her role to revise and comment. Only I couldn’t get the proposal done. I had it all in my head. The ideas. The direction. The damned cover letter.
All of it.
Stuck in my head.
That fucking Wordly Wise workbook must have morphed into a Lenovo Think-Pad notebook. Now equipped with Microsoft Word it got to stare blankly at me from my new desk, just a foot and half from my damned face.
I answered e-mails. Most at least. I read up on something or other. Tried to do searches for new potential customers in Eastern Europe. Took lots of quick coffee and bathroom breaks.
The proposal was always there. It patiently waited for me. It loomed.
De Facto Boss started sending me e-mails asking about things. Then angry e-mails demanding. Then angrier e-mails now with my boss and a few others on copy.
I cobbled something together and sent it trying to play it off as a rough draft. It fucking sucked. I knew that going in.
Another e-mail with all those CC’s.
I’m told the impromptu meeting was meant to come out of nowhere left field.
Sure, but only if you mean the nowhere left field from Obvious Town.
I’m told it’s done spontaneously so that I wouldn’t have time to think about what I’d say.
Only I had the whole weekend plus the few days prior while shit drove in slow motion to the fan.
Five days.
In ruminative thinking time that translates to around two hundred fifty-four years of mental torture.
At some point I came to a decision.
Now cornered in a beautiful meeting room I utter five words I have never once said in a professional setting ever.
“I suffer from chronic depression.”
The project we’re working on is a new workshop for Detroit Soup. After having gone to two Soups I’d come to a realization that how people wrote their proposals and presented their projects influenced greatly how others thought of the project itself. After the presentations and during the voting/eating/smoking session everyone talks about whom they voted for. Mostly the merits of the projects get discussed. But I could see the great influence the presentations and the following Q and A had on what those merits are.
Interestingly, the very first conversation I ever had when I first sat down at my very first Soup dealt with how much small businesses and nonprofits could learn. I had sat down next to this really intelligent young guy named Dave, doing exactly this kind of work for a very top Fortune-something big guy.
After my second Soup I had no doubt that people could improve their presenting and writing skills to help their cause.
I started trying to help nonprofits just a few years ago. I found that when I’m stuck in “those” moments helping others helps me. (Shout-out to a cousin and special person.)
I wanted to help but I didn’t have any tangible skills outside of sales and marketing. Turned out they needed that too. They just called it fundraising and outreach.
Driving back I have the impulse to write Detroit Soup and see if I can help with this. I send an e-mail immediately to the director knowing that if I don’t right now I may never send it at all.
After a few days I get a reply from Sarah. She seems to run, well, everything outside of executive direction. She tells me that coincidentally some guy had just offered the same thing after the previous session. That guy, Dave, had coached a couple of presentations already.
Really? I thought. Dave, huh?
We set up a meeting for the three of us.
The day of the meeting Dave couldn’t make it, not being able to get out of his garage thanks to one of the hundred times the skies have dumped mountains of snow on us this winter. Sarah and I use the session to give her a chance to get to know me and for me to learn more what they’re doing.
At some point I ask about Dave and confirm that, yep, it’s that Dave.
At some point I tell her about how I like to take notes during presentations. When I’m talking about the notes I wrote about a specific presentation I mime typing on a keyboard.
“Wait a second,” she says. “Are you laptop guy?”
From the first moment I went to Detroit Soup I had wanted to take notes. I had brought my tablet and my computer. At Soup most people sit on the floor around makeshift tables. I found that I couldn’t take good notes with the tablet. It had been easier with the Chromebook on my lap. I tried to hide it and keep the screen really low in a silly and wasted attempt to be inconspicuous.
“Laptop guy?”
Only instead of feeling stupid I smile.
December 2002. Corner of Balmes and Resellón, Barcelona, Spain.
I’m in my office.
UPS just left with a whole boatload of boxes of software heading to Guadalajara. Just three months ago I finally closed with Infinity System, the top PC and laptop builder in Spain. They were the last one to fall. I now had sold to all five top builders in the country. Three of them were regular customers.
In just three months Infinity became my biggest customer and almost doubled my business. In just those three months they brought in almost 75,000 Euros in revenue. Being independent with a small office and only a few set expenses (licenses, production and shipping) it left me with a decent salary after taxes in any country.
In Spain, very few earned that much.
I get my coat on and leave. Barcelona’s always alive but never more so right after work in the winter. I walk by the suited execs and forty year old bourgeois Catalan women wearing leather and top brands as I cross Diagonal. Barceloneses dress elegantly though never colorfully. Men stick mostly to blues, black and grays. Women, with leather or earth-toned clothing, will sometimes have tan or beige or maybe a shade of some red.
Diagonal at Passeig de Gracia flows like a rapids with light and life. Cars stream and stop along the busy avenue. Every building is lit. The streetlamps have holiday lights on them. Pools of people well up on the corners waiting for green.
I make it to the bar in ten minutes. Andy’s already there. We order beers and he asks me about work. He still teaches English. He’s dying to get out (and will do so in just a year). He always smiles whenever we even come anywhere near talking about my work.
“You made it man,” he always says beaming.
Normally I’m always shy about my work and my success. A natural habit I keep for years. I tell people that I work in sales or that I sell software. After just another few questions or if I’m with friends I have to say that the company’s mine. It’s really a stupid habit. Most people talk honestly or better about their jobs and no one ever thinks twice about it.
This time I’m a bit more open. Maybe it’s because I’m with Andy. Maybe it’s the beer. I say a line that I would later repeat in some version or explain for the next twelve years and counting.
“Andy, if you handed me a contract that said I would continue for the next thirty years to earn exactly what I’m making, with the same amount of work and time spent, I would sign that thing right now in blood.
“In fucking blood.”
I worked hard of course. Some weeks would even have a long day or two. But I got up at a comfortable hour. I worked for the most part six hours a day not including lunch. As long as I set things up well enough in advance, and as long as I had my phone and computer with me, I could travel anytime I wanted. The work, the schedule and being my own boss gave me real satisfaction and true happiness.
Fifteen years had passed since something snapped while I was an outpatient at a psychiatric hospital. I became a person who could do and finish and be successful. I had created a system and, for the most part, the system worked. I had bad days still but they were few and far between.
In 2002 I could count them on one hand after putting it in a thresher.
I appreciated with all my heart what I had right then.
I’d still lose it all in a gradual slide over the next five years.
The first meeting with all three of us goes beautifully. We meet the day before a soup. An hour later two people will come in to get some coaching on their presentations. We talk about setting up an actual workshop and inviting anyone, even if she’s only got an idea, to come and learn ways to better present her project both orally and in a written proposal. By the time the two people arrive we’ve set up ideas, dates and next steps (the last two not done by me of course).
Dave and I then split up and each take a project to coach. The woman I listen to is an artist whose project is to cover the enormous windows of an abandoned building with gigantic portraits of important figures from Detroit’s past and present. It’s a really cool project. I ask her questions when she’s done and give her some thoughts and ideas. She asks me questions, jots down some notes and thanks me. I hope I’ve helped when we finish.
The next day she does a great job presenting and rocks the Q and A. But she doesn’t win. Another presentation just blows the roof off the place with passion, energy and a clear plan. The woman who started the project is trying to put on Shakespearean plays to bring enjoyment, culture and hopefully a tourist or two to the city.
After she wins the guy who coached her the day before is one of the first to congratulate her.
I’m just a minute after Dave.
Spring 1986. Birmingham, Michigan.
I’m in my history classroom, after school, turning in a test.
I was sick the day of the test with a strong case of anxiety and bullshititis.
In the past four years and change Wordly Wise has formed a brutal gang with English, history, science and math textbooks. In those days people would say that the Bloods and Crips were never able to establish Detroit, that the city was too tough for even them. Maybe they had just run into the Wordly Wise Gang.
I’m in my second year of private school, my parents having transferred me in the hopes that it would end that never doing homework and studying thing I had.
My therapists had backed the idea.
My brain hadn’t gotten the memo.
You remember that kid that never did his homework and would just scribble some shit with maybe a little help just minutes before class? When called on he’d confidently say whatever seemed right and didn’t care how silly or wrong it might be. Somehow, even if the teachers knew his game, they’d just correct him or take his scribbled work as he handed it in and simply move on.
I was never that kid.
Most of the time I sat at my desk bathing in anxiety. I watched all the other kids pull out their homework or open their textbooks without a second thought. In that brief moment I observed them the same way a hidden scout from Mars would watch earthlings. I marveled at them and wondered how they did it. They just went home and did their homework. Oh sure, they’d play or read comic books or whatever. But they did their homework. It was just natural to them.
They’d be bathed in light while I tried to hide in the shadows as class started. The teacher’d start asking them one by one to hand in their work or tell them something about what they’d read the night before. I’d pray for a meteor to strike or the Green Goblin to attack, knowing deep down it would never happen.
Then I heard my name.
The spotlight would hit me brighter than the golden light that illuminated my classmates.
Feeling the heat from the light burning away my flesh and exposing my sad core, I’d mumble that I hadn’t done or read whatever diabolic attack the Wordly Wise Gang had launched from my desk.
By 1986 I had been given a huge desk. It had literally been made from a solid wood door. You’d think a larger desk would help hide the books that tortured me. It just highlighted them even more. I’d have left them in my backpack if I didn’t have to lie and fake to my parents that I’d done my homework.
After the mumble came the same scene. The teacher would purse his or her lips, say nothing and write something in the grade book. The scene lasted hours every time. At some point it started to be accompanied by the whispers of my classmates who would comment on how I did this every time.
Once a girl in class just turned and flat out asked me.
“Why don’t you ever do your homework?”
I turn in my test to my history teacher. He’s a cool teacher.
That year Reagan bombed Libya. The next day we came into class the same as everyday, with the notes of the day written on the chalkboard. Our teacher started class that day by saying he first wanted to talk to us and ask our thoughts on what had happened. At some point two students disagreed whether Quadaffi would strike back with more terrorism. A debate started. An entire class of twenty thirteen and fourteen year olds began to have an organized discussion about what could happen. They took turns naturally. No one moderated. Every opinion was expressed conversationally in a correct manner. At some point one kid got up and started writing points on the board.
My teacher just quietly sat down at a desk at the side of the room and watched us go.
I felt lost. I enjoyed the discussion. I even had a good thought or question. Only I was scared to talk. I knew that after the discussion’s end we’d get back to real class and I’d have to go through the spotlight and the whispers. I felt that if I said anything the spotlight would hit me no matter what.
At one point though I tentatively raised my hand. Everyone looked at me. Normally. Just waiting for me to speak. I asked my question. Whatever it was it had been poignant enough to get everyone to think it was a good question. My teacher even nodded, impressed.
A minute before the bell would ring we all stopped talking, realizing what had happened, shocked that it had happened at all. My teacher got up and looked at us.
“You probably just learned more today from this,” he said said pointing to all of us. “Than you could have from this,” he said pointing to the board.
How cool is that? I almost felt guilty for being elated that I had avoided the spotlight for at least one class.
As I hand him the test I’m feeling pretty good. I’ve done well I think. I actually read a bit while I was sick. I get ballsy and want to show him that I actually do care. I ask him if we can go over what else he needs from me.
He opens his grade book. Every row is filled with continuous marks down the line.
Every row but one.
He points to the row with three or four marks and a sea of blank between them. He tells me that he just can’t ever respect a student that doesn’t try and do his work. I’m sure he says more than that but I’ll only remember the line about respect.
I leave feeling like shit.
Six months from that moment I won’t have the strength and will be too consumed by anxiety to even go to school. I will split an entire year between staying at home and going to hospitals.
Five years later I’m with my girlfriend getting ice-cream when that teacher walks in gets in line. I tell her who he is, remind her how I was and tell her what he said to me. I tell her how much I’d like to go over to him and remind him of the story and tell him my high school grade books all have completed rows filled almost entirely with A’s.
She tells me I absolutely should.
I chicken out.
Damn, Dave and Sarah are good. Smart. Organized. Logical.
I have the entire series of workshops mapped out in my head. I’m ready for forty participants. I have the sessions, the break-outs, the group work and materials all planned in my brain.
I see all the avenues needed to market it. All the potential partners to contact to ask for a bit of social media love. I realize that this is an awesome series, something that can be a huge part of Detroit Soup, a series of workshops that can help small nonprofits learn so much about how to get their idea to something bigger. It’s huge.
I keep a lot of the map to myself. I know, thankfully, that Dave and Sarah reside on planet Earth. They have realistic estimates and set reasonable goals that can definitely be achieved. They put together the ideas and dates and next steps.
I admire them. They are people who accomplish things.
I know I’m great at brainstorming and ideas. Sure everyone says that about himself because he wants to be. Only it’s true with me. It’s the one of the few times my ruminative thinking becomes something really good and useful. My ruminations never go linear. They don’t even follow the cliched circle. They come at once, join up and start dancing together as others come crashing through the doors. I marry apples with oranges and include the price of tea in China.
But I don’t get much done.
If it’s just me everything all too often just stays in my head.
When I work with others everyone always loves all my ideas. They find them helpful, important and sometimes even inspiring.
However only half of them then put those ideas into something real. Not because they don’t like them or don’t want to. Not because they have what I have. People just get so caught up in their routines and making sure they finish their daily work that they never get to the new stuff.
I never blame them or hold any sort of negative thought about them. Mostly I just feel stupid and guilty that I don’t take charge and get it done for them.
Today’s a great day though. Matt, John, Dave and Sarah come from the other half.
The half that gets shit done.
Friday, November 14th, 2012. Babson Park, Wellesley, Massachusettes.
It’s almost exactly 31 years since I kept babbling with tears in my eyes that I really had brought my Wordly Wise home that weekend.
I’m back in the meeting room. It’s just my boss and I. I’m being fired from a job for the first time in my life.
After I uttered those five words the world changed. The meeting had instantly flipped one hundred eighty degrees. My boss called me brave for saying that. She told me that I shouldn’t feel an ounce of shame. She apologized for their thinking the worst of me.
The next day, in our regularly scheduled meeting, she told me she had informed HR. Mental illness is covered in the Americans with Disabilities Act. They would be contacting me to help me with whatever needed to be done under the ADA. She also told me that with her PhD in psychology she actually first started as a clinical psychologist before moving into corporate human resources.
After a day or two the VP of HR contacted me. She explained that I would be sent official papers in the next week or so. Under the ADA a worker can ask for certain exceptions (within reason) that will allow him to maintain his health and best perform his duties. I just had to figure out what those were and fill out the form.
I can’t really describe those two weeks. For half my life I had suffered in some degree of silence and shame.
“No longer,” the world declared. “You can be open and you will be supported.”
Within days I had started therapy with a psychiatrist and doubled my efforts in terms of eating, exercise and sleep.
The magic ended after those two weeks.
In an act of complete betrayal the magical, wonderful ADA exception sheet ripped off it’s mask and revealed that it too was a member of the Wordly Wise Gang.
A million thoughts approached me about what I could or should ask for. A million doubts and feelings of guilt would show up right after. I couldn’t figure out what to ask. I had no clue what was right.
I had actually asked both the HR VP and my psychiatrist for help. With hindsight I see now that somehow Wordly Wise had gotten to them too. They both told me that the sheet was for me to fill out and that they would then go over it with me.
Needless to say that form didn’t stand alone. It began to form a club with a lot of my other work.
The Shit Howard’s Not Getting Done Club.
I started falling behind again. I started hiding again. I told no one because no one asked. And well, wasn’t I supposed to just fill out that sheet first? The only feedback I ever got was an e-mail conversation from De Facto Boss asking what was up and admonishing me for making the same mistakes that first caused problems.
And then I lost a client. A big customer from Barcelona no less.
There might be a few things I could say in my defense. I guess I could talk about the whole being left alone with my mental illness thing. Maybe I can say that after really only having worked just over six months and never having received any training there I was still a bit green about how to do things. I could add that from previous conference calls I could see that the client had a few money issues as well as not being as gung-ho about us anymore. And I will always feel that in some part my actions or lack of just served them a perfect reason to cut ties. I sure had seen that more often than I could count in all my years working in Spain.
But two facts are indisputable.
They left on my watch.
I didn’t get enough done on my end and what I did get done had been way beyond the normal, established time-frames.
Within an hour of the news I was in my boss’s office getting yelled at and berated.
For the next several days she ran an inquiry the military and any superstar Spanish judge could only dream of holding.
At one point she told me I had to immediately come to her office for my own personal session of the Inquisition with her acting as Torquemada. Someone would be taking notes and I had just two minutes to find someone who could be a witness for me should I choose to have one.
After some moments of me figuring out what the hell to do, calling my wife and with an outwardly calm and in so many words, telling my boss to back off when she tried to rush me, I walked into the Assistant Dean of our section’s office. I told her the situation and asked her if she’d be my witness. Without hesitation she got up, grabbed her notebook and said, “Let’s go.”
Not much after the session she came into my office just to see how I was doing. We talked for a good long while. I told her a truth working there I had told no one.
As I would walk to meetings or to get water, coffee or go to the bathroom; as I passed by the offices and cubicles, I had to watch and marvel at all my co-workers.
Every day.
Every single time.
They just worked these humans of Earth. They called and wrote and met and got things done. When they finished one task they’d just move to the next. They finished things by deadlines.
And they just took it for granted. That’s what you do, right? That’s what everyone does?
Not a single day went by in the months I worked there, even the days I kicked ass and got tons of shit done, where I didn’t observe them and think those same thoughts.
I’ve packed my stuff, handed in my phone and credit card and am saying goodbye to everyone. I make a point to do so. Part comes from the honest intention to say goodbye. Part comes from how uncomfortable my now former boss is getting as I draw this out. A final part is because I’m enjoying watching the plain clothes security guard do whatever he can to seem inconspicuous as he follows me around.
One co-worker, wiht whom I didn’t even have much of a relationship (though I always thought was a great guy) shows his frustration with “this place” and offers to walk me to my car. He grabs his coat and heads to the entrance, now my final exit, to wait for me.
As I walk out with my box, just like in the movies, my now former boss walks up to me. She pretty much grabs my free hand and starts shaking it.
“I wish you the best,” she says.
I pause.
“You gotta be fucking kidding me,” I say softly as I calmly pull my hand, turn and walk out.
As I turn I can she she’s looking around awkwardly and a bit red in the face not knowing what to do in that moment.
It’s not a bad picture but it never produces any pleasure for me.
Someone’s unexpected kindness to walk me to my car will be the only moment from that day I will ever call good.
We’re wrapping up our meeting now. Dave and Sarah have put it all together. It’s just a question of next steps, tasks and dates.
I offer to do one task, writing two hypothetical presentation/proposals we’ll use as examples in the workshop. I have no clue what date to offer. What’s reasonable? What will give me enough time to do this should I have problems working on them?
I’m scared shitless I won’t get them done.
I say nothing about it as I give my date.
Dave’s to-do list could fall off the table, roll out the door and wind its way through the slush to play some slots at one of the casinos. I feel guilty having one while he has many. He has tasks that I could be able to do.
Inwardly nervous I offer that if he feels he needs help to let me know.
And then without thinking I add that if he does need me to do anything to just send tasks to me one at a time.
He doesn’t understand. He asks if I mean just one task.
I say no, he can send whatever my way. If he has five tasks that’s all right.
He asks me if I mean that if he has five tasks that he can send the five but tell me which one to do first.
“No,” I tell him. I tell him that if he has five tasks for me to do to only send me the first task and not tell me about the other four. Once I’ve finished the first he can send me the next.
“Otherwise,” I say, “I’ll just get lost.”
He nods his understanding in the most sincere and natural way. He’s someone who almost always has a slight smile on his face and the smile doesn’t waver even a microsecond. Sarah nods and finishes whatever she’s writing. I don’t know what to think.
We wrap up and say goodbye and go our ways. Sarah lives just a few blocks away and heads home. Dave gets back on his bike to ride the slush. I walk down Cass to the tapas bar for a glass of wine to chase away some of the ines and maybe have a plate of bravas.
I’m scared as hell.
Can I get my stuff done?
Or has the Wordly Wise Gang found me now that I’m back in Detroit?
At least the Lions don’t play in February.
