Last night, I’d gotten up a good head of steam over an assignment for which I hadn’t been paid. It was my only holdover from 2012 and I’d been chasing payment for months. There was some understandable confusion because the project was morphing all the time and there were middlemen involved, but in December, I was told to send the invoice one more time and a check would be forthcoming. Really.
A month later I hadn’t heard anything back, so last night I was dictating an email in my head that would let this person know that I really didn’t appreciate being jerked around and I didn’t understand why writers always were expected to adhere to a deadline and if we ignored deadlines as easily as those who paying our invoices did, pages would be blank...blah, blah, blah.
In reality I, of course, would never, ever send an email like that. Despite the fireworks usually going off in my head, my actual manner is fairly tempered and very professional (but, as you know, it really feels good to think about what you’d say if you shed all filters).
I go to find my email that I sent in December to write my follow-up on top of that and I realize I had misspelled the person’s name in the address, so he never got it. Oops.
I took a minute and just shook my head and laughed at all the times things like this have happened. And was really appreciative that I’d seen my typo instead of sending an email asking why he’d never responded when this had been going on for months.
It’s all a reminder to breathe, isn’t it? If I’d done that in the first place and not sent off the December email so quickly (I remember I was rushing out the door when I sent it), I probably wouldn’t have made the typo and I probably would have that check in my bank account by now. But the bigger point is to remember to stay calm, double check, laugh at myself, and always look left and right before crossing the road and hitting send on an email.
I can’t find a charity that helps folks like me who need an equivalent of an AA sponsor to look over my emails, but I did find one that provides instruction on meditation to inner-city kids and veterans suffering from PTSD and it’s even one that Katy Perry endorses. Bonus!
The David Lynch Foundation —yes, it’s that David Lynch of “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks” fame— runs a foundation for “conscious-based education and world piece.” Who knew. It is doing some pretty impressive work. And I hear he serves a damn fine piece of pie (Sorry...inside joke for “Twin Peaks” fans).
JAN. 25: David Lynch Foundation http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/
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