01 May 4705 - Dedicated Design Team

The last time I remember being this frustrated with a friend was two years ago in the summer. The man in question had repeatedly crossed the line with me for sport, and I had, over the previous eight years, grown sick of it. History will perhaps show that my patience was not great enough. The pattern would go: he would try to humiliate me at every available opportunity, mostly by bringing up old shit that I thought we had hashed out before and buried in High School memories where old stupid High School shit belongs. He would continue provoking me until I reacted, either by calling him out or (more often, I admit) pranking his sorry ass, as whatever I become in life, I know I shall be a prankster through and through. Then he would react to this saying it was uncalledfor, unprovoked, or unwarranted, usually all of the above, and try to convince the rest of the crowd that I had done this most recent thing out of a pathological malice.
Problem is, about two years ago, everyone else had finally grown up enough to no longer believe that line, and realized for the most part that he was fighting just to fight, and didn't care about putting his daughter in harm's way, either.
Did I mention that one of our points of contention (and this spread throughout the group, mind) was his foolish decision to take to bed someone we all warned him off of? And then he had a kid?
It was, we did, and he did.
So one last time I was sick of all of it. One last time I had extended the olive branch only to be systematically insulted. One last time I decided to give him a mother's day gift, as my personal joke for his life was that he was stuck as the mother of this poor little girl. (For the record, the birth mother was ruled unfit to raise her by a court, and in VA, getting that to happen is hard.) So I laid the trap.
The joke was calling him a woman. He took the joke as not on him but on his child, making fun of her for having no mother.
I'm not quite so far gone that I'm willing to take my vengeance to the next generation, much less verbally assault a girl who is too young to really understand it, much less use adult weapons on children in general, and so on. But no, my comrade was so willing to hide behind his daughter that he immediately assumed my joke was on her, just so he could take the holier-than-thou approach that he loved so well for so many years to come at me with. But even this I was willing to ignore. I was going to let it all go at that, mistaken though he was, misunderstood though my joke was (did I ever mention that I sometimes pay a heavy price for bad humor? I do) and go back to college while he stayed in the workforce trying to support his kid, while in fact great-grandma was doing the raising. (The girl has a lovely and sensible great grandmother, and I hope they spend as much time together as they can.) This simply didn't happen.
Someone else decided that this one and I needed to hash it out again, and bury the hatchet once and for all. So outside we went, there in the night, at the beginning of Sin City going on inside. I prepared to aim the knockout punch at his face in case he took a misstep, which would have been satisfying but never happened. Instead we talked. First about the joke, I explained what it was and how he could have mistaken that, but that I had no intention of going after his kid, it was him I thought was the fuckup and who should take responsibility for his actions for once. He didn't buy it, which is a shame because in cases where I'm not involved, he valued honesty and even liked to hear the truth.
He brought up some other things I thought we were done with. I dealt with each in turn, explaining that I had never been the progenator of the events, that someone had always outright crossed me beforehand, usually again and again before I did a damn thing. He got his sequences wrong and insisted I was at fault on all counts, that I had somehow started all this with something I had done perhaps even before he and I met. I know what he meant but it would take too long to explain right now, and it's total bollocks anyway. I figured if I simply let him rant on and on that eventually we would be done, I could lower my ready stance and go back inside and watch Sin City.
He kept going.
At some point, I gave up trying to reason with him and simply agreed with him. Yup, you're totally right. I did the wrong thing there. Yup, I am totally responsible for you screwing up and having a kid. Yup, I was behind the JFK assassination that led to all this. Anything you say. I am that asshole.
If he could have known that his stories were having as little effect on me as my explainations were on him, we could have saved some time. He didn't realize a damn thing, and falsified much, but I no longer, at that point, cared to speak the truth any more.
He was finally done and we went back inside, and I saw the ending sequence from Sin City. The ass had wasted all that time accomplishing nothing with me, whereas, sauced as he was, he probably went home the next day and said to himself: man, I really told off Kaz, I'll bet he feels horrible right now.

So, its not often that I ever feel that frustrated with a friend. Usually its when I know that he's fucking up, and for all I do I can't get him to stop, or even see that he is approaching disaster. How would you feel if you knew how things were going to play out, but no one would listen to you anyway? You wouldn't reach outright rage, but I'll wager you would be irritated in the extreme.
Monday, I was actually close to that point. It's vulgar and stupid, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I usually enjoy life's rarer emotions. I had to use Illustrator again.
I know, I know. I shouldn't go out of my way to do things that really frustrate me, but here's the score:
Bonnie, Jeff, and I had to make a poster. Design initial schedule set for one week. Really, I didn't have to be part of it, but wanted to share some ideas with them because I thought it would be fun, and even offered to help with some of the work, even though it wasn't given to me as my thing. That was Friday. The design team was prepared.
We started in on it again Monday, after some of the Friday work I was more certain I would have an active role on the team, and again suggested this and that (I've had a good deal of design experience between a professional friend and a technical communications course, enough that I don't think twice about speaking my mind about the design for this poster.) Once I saw how the work was going to be parsed, I wanted it done in photoshop, illustrator, and indesign. I thought this was a pretty easy solution. Bonnie could handle the assembly of components in indesign with ease (in fact, I suspect she could have done the whole thing herself and it would be brilliant if only she were so motivated and ordered). The photoshop was a two-or-three minute job, and she had it done while we were talking about it, so really, I saw there as nothing left for me to do.

Aces. The story continues from here for some reason. I really didn't want to do the Illustrator, but I recognized that vector graphics would be just the thing for the next step of the job (stolen graphic overlay), and decided it would be right up Jeff's alley because he likes Illustrator, bless his backwards head.
But instead of just catching on and doing it, and having it done, Jeff quipped that the only reason I wasn't doing it was that I wasn't proficient with a graphic program that could do vectors, to wit, that I was skill-less.
So we got upset. Right there I tried to defend my demonstrable skill, and entreaty that I admitted to not liking the Illustrator, but recognized the need for the vectors this time. He stuck to the playful insults, not noticing, perhaps, that I was becoming incensed not from his attack on my character, but from his shrugging off the work.
I was done with arguing, because I knew the job had to be done by Wednesday, because I had asked my boss about it, and he agreed with me that the deadline should really be sooner for the sake of the guy who had asked us for it in the first place. And I knew to ask because I had my own suspicions because sometimes in jobs, as in life, not all the parameters of the problem are simply handed to you. Sometimes you have to go hunting on your own.
So I knew it needed to get done, and he was shrugging off the work, so I decided to do it myself anyway instead of trying to pester him about it any more. It looked like he was doing a paper anyway, so he probably didn't want to be bothered. I hated it. I griped about it. I asked people why some of the features acted more like bugs. I finished it. I was pleased to have finished it and to no longer have to mess with that cursed program. I wanted Jeff to have a look to see if he had any suggestions for the graphic that I could have missed, as I am a comparative novice to Illustrator, and hate the program besides.
Instead of offering me his critique, he opens with a condescending " Oh, so we had decided on that?"
Well, in fact I had because he clearly wasn't making decisions any more on it, so could we drop that and have your critique now?
Naturally no, we had to get back to arguing instead. A few things I could have done better:
-1- instead of being upset at his obvious provocation, I should have let him have it and remained calm instead.
-2- I should have explained about the schedule: it was not safe to assume that he had also done the responsible thing and asked on his own.
-3- I should have gone to the boss man instead of bickering with Jeff in front of clients, one of whom said in a motherly tone "Boys, boys. Calm down."
-4- Did I mention that my job is awesome? It is.
-5- basically I made every decision wrong despite my best efforts.

So I'm coming in tomorrow to finish things up (I usually am not on the schedule on Wednesday, which allows me a lot of time to tidy up for Thursday, hrm). It is so rare and bittersweet, this emotion is not fitting of my demeanor, so I'll dismiss it outright. In general I should be less passionate about people. I let myself care too much and every memory I have of doing so is also a memory of my screwing up.

Well, no harm in being only dashing, daring, and courageous, no? Besides, my pokemon need attention too. I became a trainer again after someone told me there was a ghost-dragon, a type I had dreamed of since the red-blue days.

Back to News