How to live down to your best expectations

It's common to want to be more helpful than one can be. Most people mean well, but will promise more than they'll ever do. At my most scattered and clueless, I must remember to keep my expectations very low. It's the only way to avoid bitterness.

Take person A, who offered to pay one of my bills when I had no other way to cover it. I got a call six months later from the payee, wondering where the hell the money was. I asked person A about it, who did not only forgotten, but had also lost each of the bills I had handed her every month. Since I had money on hand at the time, we split the six months. We are still friends.

Take business B, contractors who agreed to do a lot of the work for me. They gave me a terrific hourly rate, which is just as well, because they used a lot of hand tools where power tools would have been much quicker. They installed a motor mount, which was terrific, but never installed a slider that would let me use the motor on its beautiful mount. They installed a white-fuel stove, but the tank leaked slightly, so I needed the tubing rerouted to where I could turn the tank off when it wasn't in use. I bought a fridge, and they cut holes and built struts to put it on, bought a countertop to install over it, but never built the cabinet to put it on. And then came the holidays... several e-mails, text messages, and phone calls, which went unanswered... and recently, a mutual friend of ours has taken to giving me the sort of look that says, "I'm too nice a person to say so, but I have suddenly decided you suck."

So, looks like business B blew me off, without taking the money I offered for the work they had done, without finishing these glaring projects, and without so much as a word to me that there was anything amiss.

The many kind offers of, "just let me know when you need anything", "I'll give you a ride when I'm going to the store," I have learned to forget as soon as I hear them. Taking them seriously has never yet worked out.

There's no point in hoping for help, and asking for it must be weighed carefully because most people need a real trade-off.

I discussed this with boater R awhile ago, and he said, "That's horrible! That really sucks!"

I said, "Well, that's the way it is. I'm not going to get better, so I have to figure out how not to alienate people, and that means keeping my expectations very low."

The conversation went off to boats we had worked on together. I told him I would need help painting my little boat, and would be happy to pay 10 bucks an hour and provide a couple meals each day. He made a face briefly, then said that he knew a couple of guys who could do it; I didn't know them, which might be weird, and their English wasn't too good, but he was sure I could make them understand.

... Yes, R, it's horrible and it really does suck. But that's the way it is.

For good dramatic acting, hire a comic

Just watched "Reign Over Me". Adam Sandler's character has lost everything that gave his life shape and meaning. Don Cheadle's character has everything he's supposed to, and deals with (mostly) normal-sized problems, except for having such a whacked-out friend. In the end, Sandler's character begins to find ways to move on - literally.

It was good for me. Whatever I continue to lose & whatever I manage to regain, there's not much I can keep from before and even less that I want to. Hanging onto anything that doesn't do me a lot of good is just not very good for me, but letting go of things that did so much for me before (I'm thinking particularly of my flute, here; a perfect panacea, it was) does not bring back what I lost.

I have to keep re-assessing, and that's hard. Every time I've settled into a "new normal," things change again. I want to score but they keep moving the goalposts ... Not to mention repainting the lines, changing the scoring system and playing on a different field.

Maybe I should just throw away the rulebook. Hmm...