![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Letting people down
Sep. 6th, 2002 11:28 amI do this all the time. Someone offers me an interesting project, or job (and sometimes they offer to pay me for it), or asks me to help with something they're working on. I get an initial rush of interest and excitement, do the whole thing in my head, maybe start doing some of the actual work, and then it drifts away.
Sometimes I have a reason to withdraw (I was starting work on some document designs for a friend-of-a-friend last summer when my lungs were engaged in a campaign to kill me, and I was spending so much time and effort being scared and trying to survive that I quite reasonably pulled out of the work), sometimes they change their mind, and decide they can do it on their own (some web site design for a different-friend-of-the-same-friend, earlier this year, while I was unemployed, and she decided she did have the time and skills to do it after all), and sometimes I just suck.
I'm supposed to be writing a review for a magazine. It was supposed to go in the summer edition (deadline, May). I was caught up in leaving the freelance work I hated and starting a new job, and I didn't do it. And I didn't explain and apologise and formally take the option of writing it for the Autumn edition (deadline, August). And the longer I went, not saying anything, the worse it got. I realised I'd lost the review guidelines, and didn't know the deadline, so I asked someone else to find out for me, because I felt so guilty. This was, of course, entirely transparent, and I feel worse.
I now have the guidelines, and I know that the deadline was about a fortnight ago. I'm re-re-reading the book, and conscientiously taking notes. I'm going to write the review. But I feel awful. The editor of the magazine is someone whose good opinion matters to me, and I know I've let her down. I don't know how to apologise.
Sometimes I have a reason to withdraw (I was starting work on some document designs for a friend-of-a-friend last summer when my lungs were engaged in a campaign to kill me, and I was spending so much time and effort being scared and trying to survive that I quite reasonably pulled out of the work), sometimes they change their mind, and decide they can do it on their own (some web site design for a different-friend-of-the-same-friend, earlier this year, while I was unemployed, and she decided she did have the time and skills to do it after all), and sometimes I just suck.
I'm supposed to be writing a review for a magazine. It was supposed to go in the summer edition (deadline, May). I was caught up in leaving the freelance work I hated and starting a new job, and I didn't do it. And I didn't explain and apologise and formally take the option of writing it for the Autumn edition (deadline, August). And the longer I went, not saying anything, the worse it got. I realised I'd lost the review guidelines, and didn't know the deadline, so I asked someone else to find out for me, because I felt so guilty. This was, of course, entirely transparent, and I feel worse.
I now have the guidelines, and I know that the deadline was about a fortnight ago. I'm re-re-reading the book, and conscientiously taking notes. I'm going to write the review. But I feel awful. The editor of the magazine is someone whose good opinion matters to me, and I know I've let her down. I don't know how to apologise.
