It’s been a while since I’ve had time to blog. I have no doubt that every parent is busy. But my life has crossed over from ridiculous to insane these past few months.
As invisible as I feel on most days, it brings me great joy by contrast to be there for others in their time of need. When I am helping a friend or family member, I feel validated. I am seen.
I’m the go-to-gal when friends and family need help with their computer issues, TLC after surgery, are moving, or in need of some gratis marketing services for a project. And clients love the fact that I am there for them long after a project closes out. But it’s been getting a little out of hand lately.
This week marks a change in me that wasn’t at all planned, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, or a bad thing. Jury’s still out.
It started with a client (or former client, as I have done nothing for him that actually resulted in any compensation whatsoever for over a year now). He was having issues with incoming E-mails from the contact form on his web site. And while I had nothing to do with his email or the settings that contributed to the problem, I spent a great deal of time and research investigating the issue and coming up with the solution to fix his email settings and resolve the issue. For free, of course. The next day, when this client began to implement this solution I so generously provided, he had some issues. He lost his passwords.
Now this is like the 10th time he’s lost one password or another, and the majority of these accounts I have nothing to do with. But because he kept losing them, I provided a pdf guide at one point (for free of course) that included ALL his usernames and passwords so he would stop asking me to send one every time he needed access to an account.
I mentioned I was cramming for a meeting and would be out of pocket soon, then sent him his password yet again. He emailed back, not working. I stopped what I was doing, checked the password on my end and it worked fine. Emailed him back letting him know all was good on my end and sent him his user name in case he lost that. He emailed me back again. Still not working and now he’s been locked out due to too many login attempts. I asked him to call me, as I only had about 5 minutes left until my meeting to get this resolved. I also included the PDF guide to of ALL his passwords and login information again and let him know that all the information that he could possibly need is on that guide, including the access information to his web site.
He emailed me back, a virtual scream typed in all caps.
“I AM NOT TRYING TO LOG INTO MY WEB SITE!!! I AM TRYING TO LOG IN TO MY EMAIL ACCOUNT!! AREN’T YOU PAYING ATTENTION! I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!!!!!”
I politely resigned as his client in a followup email and haven’t regretted it one bit.
Fast forward a few days, and the new needy person is my own mother. I love my mother, but her favorite thing to do is go-balls out postal over things that are nothing. I mean like, totally normal, daily occurrence type shit.
About 5 months ago a website she managed for a little support group she is involved with was shut down, and to ward off the impending break down she was teetering towards, I very misguidedly agreed to build her a new one, host it on my server, and be there for he when she needed some tech support. That decision turned out to be a nightmare. The site gets updated once a month through a simple WordPress interface and I swear the woman manages to need hours of my help almost every day. Realizing it’s never going to stop, I created no-brainer user guides with hyperlinks and screen shots of how and where to make her very simple updates. Spent a whole weekend doing this, but figured it would be worth it to get her to do these things on her own.
So literally the day after I sent them to her, she claims she couldn’t figure out how to upload an image. Something she has done hundreds of times before.
“It’s in the guide mom. Pretty simple. Did you go through it?”
She says, “Margarite, you did a fantastic job with these user guides. They must have taken a long time to prepare and they really make everything so easy to understand. I REALLY appreciate all you did. However, I still can’t figure out how to paste in a photograph. I feel like a TOTAL FAILURE, and I think it’s time I should just shut the whole organization down and give it up! Don’t you?”
Threatening to shut down her support group over stupid shit was getting old. It always requires me to spend several hours to talk her out of it and it’s exhausting. I was pressed on deadlines and just didn’t have it in me to do it anymore.
“OK mom. I’m not going to talk you out of it anymore. If you want to quit, that’s up to you.”
No response.
A day later and I get another email from her saying she decided to go ahead and shut the whole thing down. There wasn’t a question attached to the email, so I didn’t respond. I know she wanted me to be her personal therapist and talk her out of it, agree to take over and do all her web work for her. But I have two kids, fourteen deadlines, and a meeting with the school principal about my son’s dismal academic performance that I was late for.
And no one, NO ONE, is here to help me. So as far as I was concerned, I let another uncompensated time-suck get away from me.
Two and counting.
No guilt. That’s weird. Not me for sure.
Looking ahead and friends are rallying around a person in our circle who’s never been particularly nice to me. She loves posting on Facebook about the woe-is-me, fuck my life type shit that garners so much sympathy from the crowd. She’s having yet another medical procedure related to the fact that she’s obese, but doesn’t seem very interested in working out or getting gainful employment, due to all her medical issues. I’ve been asked to prepare a meal for her and take a shift keeping her company as she recovers.
I’m wondering how much of a bitch I am giving myself permission to be these days.