Let me preface this entry with an anecdote.
I was in Nova Scotia. I rode my bike to get groceries. i collected all my items and went to the till line up. Then i got up to the cashier, reached into my pocket and realized i'd forgotten my wallet. Oops. The cashier generously set my stuff aside for me.
So then i had to ride my bike all the way home. Then i watered the plants. Played guitar. And then went back to the store. Went into the line up, reached into my pocket and realized...
i like recounting this story because it's kinda funny and cute. it also describes my absent-mindedness at its best.
But.
i really don't want to be absent-minded anymore. Screw funny and cute. i think i should be a touch more... responsible by now.
i've been thinking about this because the other day i was meeting a friend to go to the Modern Sky Music Festival. She is new to Beijing. She didn't have a cell phone.
So we arranged to meet at a subway stop at a designated time.
i was stressed that i just missed my bus. But then i was happy when the following bus still got me to the station on time. She wasn't there. So i waited for 25 minutes. Then i recalled that she'd mentioned the subway station Fuchingmen, and i went to Fuxingmen. So maybe she meant Fuchengmen, which was 1 stop away. So then i ran around, taking the subway between the 2 stops a couple times.
By then it was 55 minutes later, and she was nowhere to be seen. i figured that was enough so i headed off for the festival.
15 min later i got a phone call. My friend had borrowed someone's phone to ask where i was. "Um, it's after 12:30," she said.
Oops, i had mistakenly been waiting since ELEVEN thirty. Hm. What a lot of totally unnecessary energy and stress spent. Luckily, she was super mellow and understanding about it. A stroke of luck i certainly couldn't expect from others.
This sort of thing happens more frequently than i care to admit. Once i went to a concert and showed up a week early.
Details craftily evade me. i don't know how, but the sneaky buggers do it.
My meditation hasn't seemed to help me much in this respect.
I really am at a bit of a loss as to how i can deal w/ this aspect of my personality.It's like the importance of things doesn't always hit home. Do i need to take more notes? Review any and all information?
If anyone has ideas, i'm open.
1 comment:
Fen used to forget a lot of stuff. He was also late for a lot of stuff. Sometimes he was late and I thought he was dead and he didn't have a cell so I could find him. He finally got a palm treo (phone and pilot). He got good at entering everything he need to remember RIGHT when he made the plan. He syncs his palm pilot calendar with his g-mail calendar. Gmail calendar sends the appointments to his palm but not vice versa, so he depends on his palm. He also syncs facebook events to his palm calendar too. So anything he is invited to on facebook shows up on his palm. It's been good too b/c he's always reminded of the fun things he wants to go to, even if he chooses not to go. So he doesn't end up getting peeved that he forgot something else. Also, he's usually on time for things now, at the right place, but if not, I can call and make sure he's not dead in a ditch! Good luck William. You can for sure figure this one out.
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