The great mental build-up to nothing

Last week at work was one of the most stressful I’ve had in a long time. It was partly because I had just gotten back from ten days out of the office and had an enormous pile of emails to sort through (this being by far my busiest time of the year), but it was mostly because of a dispute I had with one of the volunteer conference chairs I work with.

The details of the dispute aren’t important. He wanted to do something unusual in his upcoming conference, I told him he couldn’t (for various legitimate reasons), he persisted, I told him “no” again, he went behind my back to complain to the event manager (because he’s a bit of a prick), many emails and phone calls flew back and forth.

The stressful part about it was that I wasn’t sure if the event manager would back me up. Some of the other event managers I work with I would trust to support me fully and tell the chair to fuck himself. But this one I wasn’t so sure about. I was just waiting for her to come to my desk and tell me to comply with the chair’s request just to make him happy. 

I was dreading that this might happen. I had already firmly told this guy “no” twice, so it would have been humiliating and undermining of my credibility to then go back to him and say “yes” after all. It would mean saying I was wrong, which—oh—I just hate.

This drama played out over a few days, and I began convincing from the beginning that this humiliation definitely would happen. I was certain that the event manager was going to force me to go back to this dude, hat in hand, apologize for saying “no,” and give him exactly what he wanted. The whole scenario continued to build in severity in my imagination until it became a matter of professional life or death.

I imagined in intricate detail how I was going to flat-out refuse the event manager’s instructions to say “yes” to this guy. I imagined how I was going to tell her everything I dislike about her style of micromanagement and about her meddling in my work which she doesn’t totally understand. I imagined I was going to say, “Fuck it—this is the last straw,” and just walk out of the building without ever looking back. 

I have a small piece of company property stored in my luggage at home since I need to bring it to all the conferences I attend. On Thursday, I brought it in to the office just in case I really did decide to cut all ties with the company right then and there.

Well, if you read the title of this essay you’ve probably already guessed that all this imagination—all this dread, all this planning of arguments, all this pre-emptive fuming on my part—came to nothing.The event manager supported me, we politely shot down the chair, and the week ended on a relaxed high note. Jesus.

What’s funny about it is that I had been telling myself the entire time that it was going to come to nothing. I would have brief moments of sanity where I said to myself, “No no, man, you always imagine these conflicts are going to play out worse than they actually do.” I must have told myself that no fewer than ten times. It’s the truth. I do always imagine the worst-case scenario in my personal disputes. But only a few minutes after telling myself this, I’d involuntarily slip right back into crafting rebuttals and insults.

So now the stress I put myself through for a few days seems utterly ridiculous. I wish I could say I’ve drawn from this the lesson that I should finally just relax and not daydream every minor disagreement into an argument of world-defining proportions. But the sad fact is that I’ve drawn that lesson before, and I know I always forget it. I think the real lesson I’ve drawn is that human beings are indeed, as others have said, fundamentally creatures of routine—endlessly repeating ourselves in our relationships with others. And even repeating ourselves in how we, when alone, conceive of those relationships. 

Am I always going to imagine myself as the beleaguered voice of reason needing to battle it out with those who just don’t understand? Well, probably. I’m pretty well used to imagining that by now.