The last post I mentioned how the scent of lavender has calming effects on me especially when I'm stressed out...and now I'm thinking about how I really need a whole truckload of lavender now. Or maybe I just need to get on that truck and drive far away from all the bullshit that has happened, lavender sprigs flying everywhere.
Now I personally don't like to rant online in a way that appears as if I'm launching an underhanded, indirect and cowardly attack on someone that I didn't confront personally first. Having been slammed by people I knew in secondary school without them getting their facts right (beyond trashy gossip) was scarring enough, so I don't think it's wise or mature to do anything that comes close to that. But after (finally) calming down and pondering about whatever just happened yesterday made me realise a few things about human interaction that happen all the time but seldom get pointed out. And that is what I will focus on writing about today, without losing control and eventually launching into an angry tirade (I'll try).
So what happened was this. I'm involved in a school event held by the Japanese club in my university as a scriptwriter for the concert component at night. After listening to what the PDs wanted roughly and getting ideas from my two lovely assistant scriptwriters, I finally drafted a script that was more story-based than your usual/ordinary emcee script. The draft was sent out a week ago to everyone on the storyboard group, including the two emcees, to have a look and voice any concerns they might have so that I could refine it better. Initially, there didn't seem to be any particular problem save for remarks about the tone and expression of the lines. These were pretty minor, so I continually revisited the script and tried different ways of speech that'll be more natural for our emcees to perform.
UNTIL.
The morning of Friday the 13th yesterday during my seminar class, I opened my Telegram chat to find a barrage of comments by one of the emcees (whom I will refer to as Person X) that basically voiced strong disapproval about the script and sought for it to be done all over again. And we had scheduled a reading of the original script in the afternoon on the very same day. Now here's where the situation gets sticky.
Person X wasn't all disapproving without justification - meaning he did give reasons as to why he felt the original script wouldn't do - reasons that made sense. Even in the midst of my indignance at the time I was going through his comments, I recognised the validity of his points.
I had many gripes about this. My main gripe was the (rude) way in which he put forth his opinion, which I will elaborate on later. The next was the whole timing of it. We were only a week away from rehearsals, and now we had to make a major revision to the script as quickly as we could and give time for the emcees to practice. One of the PDs informed me that X had personal matters to attend to that week thereby accounting for his late comments, which I accepted (albeit grudgingly). Third - if X saw these valid flaws in the script, why in the world did nobody else notice it and point it out earlier!?
That afternoon I turned up at the clubroom in low spirits and tried to make sense of the situation with the PDs and other scriptwriters in the clubroom. I asked them if they honestly had identified with what X pointed out earlier. When a couple of them admitted that they did think it was a minor cause for concern at the beginning, I almost lost it and asked why they didn't say so earlier. Anyway to sum up, we came up with another premise for the script, and I spent HOURS (that I should've spent doing my bloody readings) rewriting the whole script today. Don't get me wrong, I definitely know revisions are inevitable in scriptwriting. But I would have GREATLY appreciated these call for revisions much earlier and not less than a week to the rehearsals. ><
Right here's the part that I wanted to focus on, really, apart from that seething summary of events above. A friend of mine told me that most interactions between people are basically negotiations - where interlocutors observe and make judgements of the current interaction before deciding on the kind of stance or contribution they would put forth. Different parties may have different motives and expectations from the communication, but through this process they eventually meet in the middle even if it means compromising a little of your opinions or true feelings.
I've met many people with strong personalities in my life before, people who are assertive and have firm principles - which is admirable. Good for you, that's what I think.
But when you bring that with you into an interaction with someone else (especially if you haven't met or spoken with this person before), you can't really expect to always have everything go your way, or keep up with that assertive personality of yours. This isn't to say you should go out of your way to pretend to be nice and all. But following that negotiation process, someone would have to accommodate you when you insist on just dumping whatever you like unreservedly into the conversation because "this is who I am, whether you like it or not." That's not admirable anymore - that's just being self-centred and ANNOYING.
I've never interacted with Person X even once before all these happened, so I was in for a rude shock. Maybe he believes being brutally honest without beating about the bush is effective and is in his personality. But since it's my first time talking to this guy, I don't really care what kind of "amazing" person he is apart from what he has to offer in our interaction. I ended up feeling shitty as I had to hold back from retaliating, which in that way was me unwillingly accommodating with his bigotry.
The finishing blow was when he "offered" to, as I quote "bang out something" (a completely new script). Whether or not he intended it, I took it personally as an insensitive challenge to not only all the time and effort I poured into my work, but my pride and responsibility as the scriptwriter. I firmly (and indirectly) replied back on the same group chat that "we haven't confirmed that X would be going to write another draft for us yet." In the end, X didn't have to "bang out something" because I made a completely new draft today.
Sigh. I really don't like being angry, and losing control of my composure because of that. I rarely do - in fact I do like to think that my threshold of tolerance was quite deep. As I stormed into the clubroom yesterday, some of the club members were trying to console me. It was really uncool because I was still raging and a couple of the Year 1 guys in the room inched their way behind one of the PDs like "halp can we hide behind you". I was struggling to be professional about it and focus on getting out new ideas for the script so I could complete it well before next week's rehearsal.
URGH.
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