"Lord, What's Happened to the Time!"

Horrible day. I don’t even want to chronicle all the ugliness. I just want to ask a few hard questions of myself. Briefly, I’m at the Andrews “Research Writing Bootcamp” where I’m supposed to be making great progress on my dissertation while surrounded by my dissertation committee and other writing coaches. Even my methodologist is here from Florida. However, instead of a broad highway towards chapter completion, I’ve experienced a bumpy, rutty road with many detours. Why? The lender and escrow agents keep pelting me with requests for more documents, and many of the requests seem peevish and irrational.

After a wasted first half-day on Wednesday, I wrote all night trying to catch up. I’m sure the loss of sleep helped set me up for the fury I felt on Thursday. Despite the frantic work to catch up, Thursday was only another day of doing banking while the cohort around me focused on their writing and had great conferences with the live resources in the room. I was “frustrated” I told Janie, the lender agent. The truth was that I was enraged. I think I was civil to her, though I could hear her cringe once when I called her.

I have no regrets about my dealings with her, or Erin, or Cara. I believe I kept a civil, if somewhat pointed, tongue. What perplexes me is how angry I was inside. I know I was not far from danger. I could hear it in Ginger’s pacifying comments. I am also perplexed by how long I stayed angry. Truth be told, I still am! But why? I don’t like being so close to rash decisions.

Again, I’m trying not to descend into the gory details, so let me record the dynamics. I was angry initially because I sensed being robbed of an opportunity—the writing bootcamp. Then the incessant requests became more annoying with each new email or phone call. It was like mosquitoes that continue to buzz in your ear or skewer you as you are trying to enjoy camping out. With each new buzz you slap yourself harder and get madder. Third, I became fearful that I would appear incompetent to the agents and even to my wife as the requests moved into things that Ginger’s folks would need to do. That is, I had less ability to actually fulfill the requests as they drew dangerously close to our closing date, and they began to involve the folks. I felt righteously indignant about Ginger’s parents having to shoulder work for our loan arrangements, but that indignation was really fueled by my anger over the whole thing. “Unfair to the folks” was just a more attractive banner to march under.

As things progressed the tension built up like I was sitting in a giant pressure cooker. Then my resource people began to leave early! My methodologist flew home early Thursday afternoon, and others began to drift off. But not everyone left me, the plaguey lenders continued to attend me like a depressing drizzle. “No clearing in sight.”

Given this context, one can see why even Ginger’s help didn’t help my mood. The lender wanted her folks to provide some documents and a phone interview. I fumed that both were not needed, unfair, and nearly impossible. Ginger, who didn’t need a hearing aid to detect my rising anger, had made a phone call to a College Place friend for help, and in two or three hours she was able to provide the needed documents to the lender.

While the help was great, and a relief of sorts, it also made me feel even more incompetent and foolish. Here I was frothing at the mouth, parading around, claiming it couldn’t be done while Ginger coolly and quickly provided. I felt like a petty, grandstanding jerk. I was, and am, grateful that she got us unstuck—that she saw the crystallizing impasse and quickly got us around it—but it did highlight my ineffectiveness.

Yet, as incompetent and horrible as I appeared to myself, I did have to chuckle a bit. I had been amused at Steve Martin’s meltdown in “Father of the Bride” as he was reduced to doing one of the simple tasks the family felt would be safe, given his highly agitated frame of mind. The task was to pick up some picnic supplies for a little family supper. In the grocery store scene Martin, who is enraged at the out-of-control costs of the wedding, gets red-hot furious when he discovers that there are 10 hotdogs in a package, but only eight hotdog buns per package. He is convinced that it is a dirty little scheme cooked up by the butchers and bakers to rip off “Joe average American” by causing him to have to buy more than he needs of either hotdogs or buns.

It’s a wildly funny tempest that he creates, and for which he is jailed. For a moment I could see myself in the same humorous way, but long term it is not very flattering to think that my anger was just as pointless. I really did lose a major writing opportunity, but I want to avoid getting so close to the boiling point. I sense that there is a lesson here, and I want to keep my eyes and ears open to it.

So in reflection: I was angry because I had a strong vision of what I wanted (writing progress) and that was being thwarted by things out of my control (the lender’s requests.) In this standoff, the passing of time escalated the pressure as the bank and title company offered no relief. I felt more and more hogtied.

I began to see the deeper problem more clearly when I was hurrying home that evening. I was on foot and the rain began; small infrequent drops at first, but I could sense it was building up to a good squall. I began to walk faster, hoping to get to the house without getting drenched. As the rain became a downpour I was only 80 yards or so from my cousin’s house. I was running to close the gap quickly. My backpack containing my laptop was bouncing with every step. It also was shifting in a way that felt like the shoulder straps were failing. I felt them as I ran and they were okay. Yet the pack felt like it was falling away. “Oh well, I’ll just make the mad dash across the cul de sac and into the open garage.” There I swung the pack off my shoulders and my keyboard rattled down onto the concrete floor! My zippered section containing the computer had opened up and the laptop and keyboard had been getting soaked!

This was like a voice from God about my deeper problem. I can get so focused on my objectives that I didn’t stop to consider my resources. In the rain I had an umbrella. It was neatly folded in the pack, and I could have put it up before the raindrops got big and thick. An investment of 30 seconds could have kept my pack and computer dry.

Two other incidents from my sorry past came to mind. Once when I spent a full Sunday slaving over a computer program I was writing (and never did get to work properly) I got so angry that I wouldn’t pray for two weeks. I had requested God’s help with my “noble” effort, so I was frosted when I failed. Another time when I was carrying a hotdish from the oven to the table where my kids were waiting. The heat from the dish began to burn my fingers, so I ran faster and faster, finally slamming the dish on the table and dancing around waving my fingers in the cooler air. To get to the table I had had to run around three sides of a breakfast bar on which I could have set the dish while I searched for better hot mitts. But no, my eyes were locked on my objective.

In all three stories—programming, hotdish, and now the rain—the constant was my fixation on completing a task regardless of the situation. Isn’t that noble? “Leaders” don’t surrender objectives. They push through like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. We all love stories of the one who never quit believing. Who never quit striving until the dream became a reality. That works great on a Hollywood set. It tells a story near and dear to our hearts. It’s the American way; pursue a dream, knock out all resistance until you stand holding the winner’s cup aloft. There shouldn’t be any obstacle too big for me to surmount. Right?

It’s not in my nature to give up an objective. It’s not even “the right thing” to do. But last Thursday I couldn’t ask the lender to give up hers… (Well, truth be told, I did, but you can guess that wasn’t very effective.) So I really was trapped in a slummy blind alley, and rather than trying to climb the walls, I should have turned to face the headlights.

Surrendering an objective causes psychic pain. It’s an admission that life has moved out of my control or that I was mistaken in my choice of goals. But my rigid refusal to surrender only succeeds in clamping the lid more tightly on the pressure cooker. Rather than moving towards achievement, I move towards an explosion.

Frankly, knowing when to push on and when to give in is a skill I normally possess. I’m not Steve Martin. Most people like working with me because I can be flexible. I can change when it is needed; when clashing interests demand it. But what always seems to get me is the pressure of time. When time is in short supply, so is my creative resourcefulness. When pressure builds up, so does my rigidity.

Here’s the sobering thought: When I am holding the reins of power my anger doesn’t build up. I simply make the decision I have the power to make, and I become the pressure for some hapless soul who has just presented a request. At that time I am in the lender’s role and the other person just has to “eat it” like I did. I want to see these storms as they brew and whip out the umbrella for my own protection and for the protection of those who have to wait for my word.