Blessing and a curse

My entire adult life I have reaped the rewards and paid the price for part of my personality, the part that puts high value on doing what you say you are going to do.  On the positive side, I am very much built on not just giving lip service.  If I verbalize intent that normally means that intent will be followed through by action.  For people that have employed me over the decades that has been a positive trait which has resulted in favorable results no matter if I was cutting meat at Weis Markets, driving truck for Goodwill, or my 29 years in the IT field.  The short and sweet summation is I get stuff done.

On the flip side, my hard wired, I do what I say I am going to do, philosophy causes conflict when I interact with others that do not have a similar mindset.  As anyone that exists in the same world that I do knows, people don’t do what they say they are going to do all the time.  The end result is I have found myself getting frustrated and angry often when this behavior impacts me.  Admittedly it is far easier to just say things with little intent of doing them, perhaps why it happens so often in the path of least resistance society we live in.

Another side effect of this scenario is my feeling the need that I need to take on more and more myself as that is the only way I can be assured of the outcome.  Some people would call this classic “control freak” behavior, I prefer to call it minimizing the margin for error, lol.  Whatever you call it, it has always caused some degree of conflict in both my professional and personal lives. I am self aware of how it can seem to others but the bottom line is it has allowed me to get to this point in life with most of my ducks in a row.

Much like I talked about yesterday with how my anger and aggressiveness while driving has dulled with age, the same is true with my reactions to this scenario.  I know people will not follow through on things like I do more often than not.  I know that placing expectations you have for yourself onto others causes conflict so I make conscious efforts to not do that as much as I can.  I even find myself releasing more control to others, allowing the outcome to be what it is, even if it isn’t my ideal.  Getting through life is always a work in progress, there is no endgame, there is no point where you declare you have it all figured out.  You just keep trying to adapt, resolve and grow each step of the way.

I pulled the dash cam footage of the Irate Karen Volvo SUV driver yesterday for your enjoyment.