Day 128: Are We in the No Show Era?

My 1 pm rescheduled their appointment at 12:44 pm for 2 weeks from now. I didn’t figure it out until 1:05 when I went into my email to send her an email. This was after I banished the, still sick, husband to the basement.

I thought about how this is the third time someone has flaked on me in the last 6 months. The first was a tow truck driver for the Airbnbs. The second a brewery owner who hosted a fundraising event for the foundation I chair. And now a west coast podcaster.

Technically she didn’t flake on me since she rescheduled. But not providing a reason, that’s annoying. I gave her the benefit of the doubt until I saw on her IG story that she was at a networking event during our appointment time. She easily could have canceled from the reminder last night or the 12 pm reminder.

I canceled the reschedule event.

Is it petty? Lil bit. But realistically can I picture myself ever working with someone who switches things up with 15 minutes notice and no explanation. No.

When the tow truck driver stood me up I messaged and said it was unfortunate we weren’t able to meet up. He replied a few hours later and said he was in the ER with his daughter. Seemed legit so we rescheduled. When we met up he showed me the pic of his daughter with a welt on her head when I asked if she was ok. It was legit and I hadn’t believed him or given him the benefit of the doubt. Because he was a dude and probably some residual angst against tow truck drivers from my apartment days in my late teens/early twenties.

I wont get into the other one because we’re hosting another fundraiser there.

Since I was planted at my desk with my hair combed and ring light on I decided to spend the time wisely. So I did an IG live. Talking about being stood up. It was unnerving. Back in the day I used to do a lot of IG lives. That was before I realized I had ADHD. Live is a beast. Because people can type to you, wave, make emojis appear…. it’s a whole thing. I have a hard enough time keeping a train of thought without distractions. But, I did it and it felt good to get off my chest.

When I ended the live it asked if I wanted to share as a reel which I opted out of. No thanks! I don’t need my spite shaming videos shared with people. Then I recorded some video and started to splice together for a reel. I might share it but also might not. I’m relistening to Bending Reality and the section I was on at 1:30 pm today was about not taking any action when in contraction. Doh! Screwed that up.

That experience was part of what the book talks about though. Being provided opportunities to work through emotions when something negative happens. During the live I also mentioned how earlier this week the 17 yo and I completely flaked on his vaccine appointment. The doctors office called at 4:11 pm and I thought, WTH are they calling me for.

Then I realized.

I owned our mistake with the appointment person. I didn’t make excuses. I apologized and mentioned the error was likely because of the 3 day weekend. I asked if we could still come in and they said yes. I apologized to the nurse in person as well.

To err is human. We all have a bunch of things going on. Distractions, kids, obligations, unexpected illnesses, appointments, weather concerns, extra Airbnb messages, etc.

I hate feeling judgmental and like I’m the moral police but to me it just feels like common sense to reach out and say, “my bad, something came up. Can we reschedule?”. Especially if it’s nothing urgent. If that had happened I probably would have said sure. If it had a further explanation I would say definitely.

With all these similar experiences happening in a short amount of time I do think I’ve been able to move through the emotion. At first it’s a feeling of being insignificant and unworthy which feels like shame. Then comes anger because “who do they think they are? I’m a pleasure to be around AND I’m a generous super connector.”. After that is, “they’ll regret this when we meet again.”…. picture Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. “You work on commission right? Big mistake. HUGE.”.

I will say with each occurrence the strength of the feelings have lessened. Because the first one was such a gut punch. The second one was tough though because the bartender was frantically asking me a bunch of questions and it felt awkward to sit there and wait around for more info.

As my homegirl Florence Scovel Shinn says, “I believe that everything is happening for my greatest good.”. Well…that’s a paraphrase because I’m not great at quotes. But, you get the idea.