I set off thinking about writing about the eternal hamster wheel that I inhabit in my mind, repetitive thoughts and arguments cycling round and round and round. Never ending, never concluding, never progressing, only an infinite loop of the same conversations where I supply both halves and somehow still lose the argument.
And then I looked back through old posts and discovered I have use the phrase "hamster wheel" to describe my endless, sleep-destroying, anxiety-inducing thoughts on at least four other occasions. So not only are my thoughts trapped in perpetual loops, returning to the same point with monotonous regularity, but so are my similes. I can't even manage to be original in my repetitiveness.
So what is it that my poor brain is doing to me?
It's still banging on about the windows.
Not the fact that the windows crashed (doesn't Windows always crash?)
Not even the fact that the window company someone managed to cancel the order to make the replacement windows without telling anyone.
No.
I'm still pointlessly fretting about the change in size of the windows.
I read and re-read emails where there is no hint that the specification is subject to change; emails where there is no suggestion of an apology or acknowledgement that anyone other than me is at fault.
I stare at the "finished" wall into which the bifold doors will be installed. I see all the spare wall that could be busy being window if it hadn't been turned into wall.
I study the diagrams I drew for the builders, and the 50 point text showing a 4000mm opening for bifold doors.
And I still cannot fathom why they changed the size of the doors when there is demonstrably space for the doors to be the size I specified.
I still cannot fathom why they would think it was OK to change the size of the doors without confirming it in writing with me first.
I still cannot fathom why they would ignore seven emails asking about the change in size, and then tell me it was what I wanted.
And so I have endless conversations in my head in which I point out that the builders are either unprofessional, incompetent or untruthful*. I explain why in nauseating detail, determined to demonstrate the rightness of my way of seeing things**.
I don't even know what response I would like in my head when I'm the one providing both sides of the conversation, let alone if I had the guts to actually try and express any of these thoughts and feelings out loud. Which I'm too much of a confrontation-averse munchkin to ever think about. Would an apology suffice? I don't know. Would I feel better if they simply said, "you're right, we screwed up, the bifolds should have been bigger?" What is it that I want?***
The true absurdity is that we're going to have massive bifold doors, through which sunlight will stream in all its unfettered glory. An extra thirty centimetres is unlikely to make one iota of difference.
So why can't my mind let go?
Why can't it shut up?
Why can't I be more like BigBear, with his phlegmatic shrug?
Is it because it feels like unfinished business? Is it because it is, literally, unfinished? Is it because after nearly four months living in a building site, I'm simply so stressed that there has to be a release valve for the stress, and my mind has latched onto the only thing that's demonstrably wrong on site and is venting through that?
One day I will go to bed without lying awake thinking about window sizes and the permutations of events that could lead to them being anything other than 4m. One day I will drive to work without explaining out loud, to nobody, what the problem with 3.7m windows is. One day I will sit in my new room, gazing through my new bifold doors and I won't care any more. One day.
* All, undoubtedly, massive over-reactions.
** This effect is not dissimilar to a situation identified by the cartoon xkcd, in which someone on the internet is wrong.
*** What I actually want is for someone to wave a magic wand and make both the hole and the windows that are on order 4m wide, as requested. This is clearly not going to happen, but I find magical thinking so helpful when trying to find practical solutions to my mental contortions.
It turns out windows like having curtains, so you have to have 500 mm either side (so the curtains can be there), but bricks also need to be integer / half-integer so it is never exactly that width. It maybe that someone helpfully decided you'd not specified the window size properly because of curtains and was trying to be helpful? I am contemplating windows myself at the moment, and it was explained to me.
ReplyDeleteBoth fair points, except the windows are having blinds, and the walls are timber studwork, and don't involved bricks at all. It's actually all about the built-in cupboard/bookshelf that's perpendicular to the windows. I hand-wavingly said I would want it to be "about" 450mm deep, and also that I wanted the bifold doors to be centred in the wall. On discovering that they didn't think there was room to have >450mm on each side AND 4000mm of bifolds, the builders prioritised the "about 450mm deep", and adjusted the dimension of the bifolds to leave 650mm of wall at each side and thus allow the cupboard, plus a bit. Which is kind of reasonable, but not a decision I expected them to make on their own. You don't change the customer's spec without sign off (in my view, and as someone who deals with this kind of changing of spec with both my own customers and my own suppliers).
ReplyDeleteFortunately a week or so of no building work, and just ignoring the damn thing and I've calmed down a lot. It'll all be fine.