Fitness update — But of Another Type

Today’s blog is one of those blogs you aren’t supposed to write. Web presentations are supposed to be positive, to show the good side of events, the flat, crystallized version of our personality.

No, I’m not going ALL negative. But I’m going to write about something in a tone that might ultimately seem almost whiny.

My original intent today was to give another fitness update, what I learned from my personal trainer, whether we got along better and whether I learned more during my second session — except I didn’t have a session this morning after all.

I arrived early, stretched out, and then did the routine that he showed me the last Tuesday — three times — all in the 30 minutes before my scheduled time. Then I waited.  When he was five minutes late I checked in with the monitor on the floor.  I wasn’t on the trainer’s schedule for the morning. He had apparently called in earlier to check the schedule, no one was on it, so he wasn’t coming in.

Last Tuesday he had given me this slot , but then had gone right on to his next client and never written me down.

Can happen to anyone, right?

Except it is a common occurrence to Betsy and myself. Having an appointment for something and being lost or forgotten  has happened enough that the occurrences have begun to blur. 

Communications and notices where we were supposed to receive an e-mail or call, but didn’t, same thing.

Times where the flawless program, system, whatever, failed with us, as the exception that proved the rule — a motif for our lives.

Perhaps the most vivid experience was attending small group Bible studies in the mega church.  We’d be the first to the room after service and sit at a table — didn’t matter which one, we’d rotate — and as everyone else came in, they’d sit at different tables, until we were still at a table by ourselves.

When we finally brought it up to the leadership, we were told that it wasn’t intentional, it wasn’t that people didn’t want to sit, with us, they just didn’t sit with us. Of course, after it was brought up, we felt like the charity cases, questioning why people might sit with us, which wasn’t any cure at all.  (There are some things that you cannot successfully explain to people — they just have to “get it”.)

It was the same class, and the same staff person, who when we knew he and his family would be moving into a new house sometime in the next several months, we offered to help move, and were promised on four separate occasions that they would make sure to let us know so we could help them move. And then months later, when we wondered why it was taking them so long to move, they finally dumped that they had moved without letting us know, and no one else around us had even managed to let anything slip.

I’ve felt the same thing at work. The reward for a good job is even more hard work, they say. Which is fine, as long as you aren’t invisible as they pile more work upon you.

My field, my strengths, are writing and communication. But despite that, I have learned, temperamentally and personality-wise, how easy it is for me to be invisible, to be ignored, for people not to listen to what I say, to not take me seriously. People didn’t believe me years ago the first time I decided to shave my head. But I said it and did it.  

I remember at work one year letting my manager know that I had set a certain goal that year, and wanted his assistance though our regular meetings to work on it. If I didn’t get it I would be looking to change jobs within the company. I spent the whole year working on that goal, and my manager never said there were any problems, then at year-end said I didn’t make it. When I asked why he came up with all sorts of things he hadn’t mentioned all year. Then he was genuinely surprised when I did exactly what I told him I would do and started posting for other positions.

Invisible. Non-entities. We’ve developed a syndrome about it, and it probably colors our reactions sometimes, even when nothing actually happens. It becomes a habit.

I have learned that I can act what seems to me to be very strident, in trying to finally get other people’s attention, yet hardly see even an eyebrow raise in response. So the tendency is to not bother.

Which is why it is nice to be a place, a church where we seem to be listened to — often not understood, but listened too. It is especially nice going to a church now where people pay attention to Betsy. They may still misunderstand quite a bit, but they pay attention. We’ve had enough episodes, even here, of having our names dropped from e-mail lists, etc. (It still seems to be our lot in life to get accidentally left off), but we get recognized, personalized, when it is discovered.

So that is my rant, my whine, my reflection. It is full of allegedly dangerous self exposure. Yet there is another paradox — how can the invisible man demonstrate self exposure? Worse than revealing yourself through self-exposure, is to find yourself truly invisible, and no one still hears what you have to say.