ask for what I want

That counts.

Secret goal! Too scary to share.

I’m terrified, perhaps unjustly, of becoming a stereotype of the nagging girlfriend. I almost never ask my boyfriend to do chore or things around the house, especially more than once, because I don’t want to nag. I don’t know what to do in the tricky gray area, where maybe he genuinely forgot and needs a reminder, rather than he decided to do something later or not at all.

Weeks ago he said he’d take my broken sunglasses to the eyeglasses repair shop near our house (They are only open while I’m at work). He hasn’t. It’s midsummer and I haven’t had my own sunglasses in 4 weeks and I’m going on a business trip to the desert next week. Today I finally got the nerve to remind him about it and he just said “ok” but now I’m all nervous that he’s going to be grumpy about it later. I’m overly worried about the sunglasses thing becuase if he is grumpy about it I’m not sure I can restrain my own grumpiness. I’ve been borrowing his old sunglasses all this time. I can just imagine him saying that mine are not urgent because I can wear his. They’re darker than I prefer and too big for me. Meanwhile, the reason he has these spare sunglasses is because he spent 3 Sundays dragging me to every Sunglasses hut, Oakley store and sporting goods shop in town trying to get his new sunglasses, a particular model, with particular lens coatings, in a particular color and particular lens color. His own preferred sunglass choices are so important that we both have to spend countless hours shopping and discussing them, but I am supposed to be satisfied with his cast-offs rather than my own choice because he can’t be bothered to walk 1/2 a mile and wait an hour.

Side note: See what I did there. This is directly related to a few of my other goals. Stop taking things personally (he didn’t forget just to make me wear uncomfortable glasses). Don’t make assumptions (I’m assuming he’s going to be grumpy and think I’m a nag when I really don’t know if that’s the case).

At my annual goals setting meeting I announced that my biggest goal is to be more pro-active about demanding better direction and information in writing from my project managers. I’m pretty sure my mentor wasn’t expecting that. But it is necessary.

It’s kind of ridiculous to expect people to mind their own business regarding things you announce publicly. But really, some people just don’t understand facebook etiquette.

I think I’m going to block or change permissions for some family members.

In the mean time, my aunt very publicly said something that terribly offended me. I want to publicly respond, so that her comments aren’t seen as holding any truth. I can’t decide how furiously to do that. And of course I can’t block her until she sees my response, right?

Sometimes, people say no. And it’s not a big deal.

I just figured out what is so hard about this: I don’t know how to describe what is upsetting me without being really rude or at minimum usually hurting someone’s feelings. I know this, so I stay quiet.

How do you say: “your house is a filthy pigsty and I’m sick of being in the same room with your slimy greasy unwashed dishes and the ants are giving me the creepy crawlies and I’m worried you’re going to end up like one of those people on the news who is killed by an avalanche of newspapers” without being a bitch?

I asked boyfriend to finish a big messy project he started in my garage, repeatedly. Five weeks later he looked up how to do it and then emailed me about how to do it (I could have told him how, was really obvious). I replied by telling him I would like him to do it. He replied by telling me he’d do part of it and I’d only need to do the other part, you know the time consuming part, because it’s at my house and he’d have to drive across town to do it. I took this very personally on a number of levels and got very upset and here is the good part: I called him and told him that I was taking this personally and why I was taking in personally and I wanted him to do the whole thing himself. And he agreed, although I think he was still confused about why I was upset.

And then I felt better and the conversation shifted and I got a whole host of mixed messages on other topics.

I really have not been doing what I mean to do. http://constantlyconflicted.blogspot.com/2010/03/im-not-as-conflicted-as-i-thought.html

Recently, I’ve made some assumptions. These were instances where I was fairly certain I was coming to the right conclusion (and other people made the same assumption), but was also aware of the possibility of being wrong. It feels like I’m always wrong lately, sometimes with real consequence. In these instances, its so tempting to point a finger and blame someone else for not being clear, but really, I need to take responsibility to ASK. I need to recognize that things right now are ripe for miscommunication and misunderstanding and while I’m so tempted to just rant and rave about someone else’s non-clarity, I could be actively progressing in the dialog.

Part of this is hard because I feel like I’m repeatedly the one standing up and asking the questions as it is. I’m torn between wanting to not let myself (and coworkers) be taken advantage of, and not wanting to play into any stereotypes of the nagging lady.