When Slack is Necessary

It’s been a tough week.  A long week.  And it’s only Thursday.  I won’t bore you with the details, but I had to call three different airlines yesterday to rearrange and/or cancel some flights.  I can hear you groaning! Everyone these days groans at the thought of  calling airlines.  It took me more than 4 hours to do everything I had to do.  So that was it – my writing time went right out the window yesterday.

Here’s where my accountability partner came into play.  She had also had a day’s worth of interruptions.  She was productive, but in a different way than she initially intended, much like I was.  So we had the talk about forgiveness and slack.

We don’t want to be in a position of cutting each other too much slack because then it’s easy not to strive to reach set goals.  The fire to reach those goals will become extinguished if we don’t keep pushing each other to reach them.  However, days like yesterday will happen – to both of us.  It’s really funny that it happened to both of us on the same day, actually.  Days where we intend to meet the goals but just can’t – it’s going to happen.

The key is to be kind enough to each other so that we don’t feel resentment when pushed, but to continue to stand firm on deals and deadlines.  It seems to be a delicate balance that we’re still working out three weeks into it.  I have a feeling that like any relationship, this one will take care and nurturing and exploration.

We have discovered that December is a tough month.  Obligations spring up out of nowhere.  Kids come in with demands for four dozen cookies by the following morning.  Decorations, and dinners, and parties abound. Somehow we are going to have to scale our expectations of each other to match the expectations of our families and the rest of the people in our lives – and still be true to our own hearts – still be true to our own writing.

So yesterday we told each other that it was okay to be unproductive for the day.  Today we will make up for it.  That’s how we’re managing the relationship – alterations of slack and demand.  In any relationship this is a difficult task – when to demand performance and when to let the other person slide.  But its’ a journey – and my writing is better for it.