Showing up
Last weekend we went camping with my wife's best friend and her husband. They had been pitching (🥁) this to another group of their friends for months to varying levels of interest and prevarication. Then when it actually happened, those who never got themselves together had lots of regret. Two other people came over in the evening for a barbecue and it was really nice. A great weekend.
My wife and her best friend are best friends largely by virtue of being the least flakey people they both know. They like similar stuff and are very similar people but - crucially - they organise that stuff and stick to their plans.
If I've committed to something I will crawl over glass to get there. This could be diagnosed as people pleasing. But I think it's kind of underrated. It's serious business to me. I show up, I don't mess around. At the same time, I understand it's not to other people. This is my very specific tendency. I'm not going to hold it against anyone else. Everyone has to do what they have to do.
If I cancel it's because I am unwell or injured to the point I can't leave the house or don't want to make anyone else ill. Or I've been called on to do something for the niblings or family. Which is my top priority.
Would I sometimes rather stay at home? Of course! A lot of the time! But being annoyed is the price you pay for community. My take is that yes, sometimes I have to do things I don't necessarily want to do. And as I am an introverted goblin that's quite a lot of things most weeks.
I know this violates the popular "hell yeah or no" principle. I understand why some people want to live by that rule, I really do. It would make life an awful lot easier. I'd cut my [insert most torturous artistic event] attendance to zero. Bliss. Except, it's more important to me to support my friends and other people. Which is why I am not going to reveal the artistic event I find most torturous. But I'll go to anyone's thing.
Being judicious about what I say yes to is the first step to not flaking, that part is very true. I'm fine saying "No, I'm not going to watch Spiderman at the cinema on Thursday." I'm lucky that my wife fully understands this and is also a pretty good judge of what I will and won't want to do. She also knows that if she really needed or wanted me to do something then I absolutely would.
My wife's family live a little distance away. Not a lot by most standards but far enough to be an inconvenience and certainly a lot farther than the rest of them all live from each other. But we go to anything we get invited to. Any event, we'll be there. Even though it would be the easiest for us not to. That makes it feel even more important.
Something I need to get better at when I'm being vaguely asked to set up / run / provide a thing is saying "Of course I will do that but I'm going to need to know in the next day" or "with a day's notice." I sort of assume people will give lots of notice. They do not! At least, I do not consider two hours enough notice for larger endeavours and I'm not doing prep / keeping the time free just in case. So it all ends up a rush and I don't like it - I just need to be clearer.
So yeah, I'm going to be there. Come hell or high water. Infectious diseases and niblings aside.
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