A Wrench in My Plans or a Bump in the Road - Day 102

I've now returned from Tahoe (7/28) and have come home to find that my apartment manager has not finished the project he was supposed to finish two days ago, and also my entire apartment, except my bedroom because the door was closed, is covered in dust from the grout mixture from tiling my shower walls (which had to be replaced because the previous walls were caving in / rotting). I became very very very frustrated with this and felt like it put a huge wrench in my whole plan that I delineated on Day 99. I tried to keep pretty calm and just express my interpretation of the problem to my apartment manager to see what solutions we could find, and had relative success in this, so that is in the works.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become reactive as angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, and feeling like my plans for how to use my time in organizing my apartment are ruined.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become reactive with emotions that do not do anything to actually practically solve the problem in front of me.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become overwhelmed with emotions and then to use these emotions as a bridge to other emotions that have been coming up inside me so that I almost allowed myself to decide that it was "all too much" and almost allowed myself to just break down dramatically because of "everything that has been wrong" where here I wanted to cry and whine and complain and feel sorry for myself rather than supporting myself and taking responsibility for myself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that this means I cannot continue with the plans I laid out in Day 99.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that this ruins my last week of vacation / break time before starting my new job.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to go from my reaction to this specific situation into creating emotional energy about my experiences living in this apartment, in this complex, with this manager as a whole.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to consider briefly simply moving, as my mom suggested I do since there are "all these problems here," and to within this thought become very overwhelmed and frustrated and angry because I have not really been settled in a home anywhere for almost 2 years now, and I do not like being in limbo / transition, I really want to just be settled and have stability in my living arrangement.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to create and maintain instability in my living environments for reasons of my own creation, including like as discussed in Day 100, so that when things like this happen which are outside of my control, I become not only reactive about the situation in front of me but also activate a build up of anger at myself for having neglected to get myself settled here after all this time.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have a negative relationship with my home as my physical environment and then to become attached to the idea of getting settled here such that now the thought/idea of moving is frustrating / overwhelming and I am vacillating between polarities of disliking my environment vs not wanting to leave.



I'm not going to move, I don't think, and after deciding to simply clean off my work space and kitchen and to set myself to the tasks I had decided to accomplish today, I am seeing that this "problem" is not really that big a deal and that my reaction was not really necessary / did not assist me or my apartment manager in resolving the problem. Nonetheless there are some practical expectations with renting and repairs, so I still have to figure out what exactly to do here. My mom wants to complain to the landlord so that the landlord will hopefully see that he is expecting too much of the apartment manager, but I do not want to do this if it will get the apartment manger "in trouble," but then this isn't really my responsibility either way. I am a tenant who pays rent on time and it is appropriate to expect certain quality of work and to expect that my living space be habitable / my belongings not be damaged in any way, no? Undecided on how to proceed.


When and as I see myself becoming frustrated with an unexpected "problem" / "wrench" in my plans and feeling like this ruins my plans, I stop and I breathe. I realize that things come up and that I must assist and support myself through these points as they arise. I realize that it is very unlikely that my plans are actually ruined, they simply must be adjusted. So I commit myself to assisting myself with my breath and writing if necessary, and to address the first problem that it makes sense to address. I commit myself to seeing how I must rearrange / adjust my plans and doing so. I commit myself to not going into a reaction of overwhelmingness where I want to give up and scratch the whole thing just because of this one bump in the road. I commit myself to flexibility with movement and existence within the present moment, where sometimes (often) things happen that are not planned / foreseen / in my control.

I commit myself also to realizing how often I am my own wrench in my plans, how often I create my own problems, how often I deter myself from my own path, and so I commit myself to continuing to learn how to direct myself in self honesty as my own self directive principle and not to be influenced / swayed by my emotional states / reactions such that I neglect my responsibilities / the things that I have established for myself as wanting to accomplish.


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become shaky within the perceived "conflict" in having to have this conversation with my apartment manager.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to expect that this conversation would not go well and so to fear engaging in it.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to become frustrated at the evasive conversational style of my apartment manager where he did not really want to take responsibility for the ineffectualness of his work in this project or for the fact that the methods he used left a thick layer of dust throughout my apartment on all of my belongings.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel sympathetic toward my apartment manager because I know how much work he has to do and how he works far beyond that which he is paid, and he is depressed and stressed and is not doing well with his physical health.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to, within this sympathy, want to just tell him it's okay and basically just suppress my reaction and pretend like it isn't a big deal just to not make him upset or give him more stress / grief, deal with the mess myself and just move on.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to also however be quite mad and irate with the quality of his work and the consequences as the inconvenience/hassle to me / mess on my belongings as well as his lack of communication, so that I had a difficult time balancing my reactions which made it difficult to engage in conversation from a starting point of self honesty and stability in consideration of what is best for all.


I really feel bad for the guy; he has way too much work on his plate and I know his personal life is in shambles as well. There are things he could and should have done differently but he is also not receiving any support from the landlord and the expectations of his duties are unreasonably high. So it is hard for me to tell what is best, even though as a tenant it seems obvious that I should not have to deal with this: damage of my personal belongings, ineffective communication of schedule of project, ineffective/combative communication about what is happening, and possible/probable unsafe air to breathe for myself and my dog. I do feel satisfied at the results of our conversation however and he knows that I am not upset with him personally and that I understand the circumstances of why/how this panned out the way it did. So it would seem that everything is going to be okay. Obviously it is not the end of the world. I have a place to live and things to get dusty.


When and as I see myself with conflicting emotions/feelings in regards to a point of communication, I stop and I breathe. I breathe and I consider in self honesty what is my responsibility here, how am I reacting and what is actually supportive of the situation. I commit myself to writing if I have the opportunity and otherwise to tread lightly and carefully, communicating myself clearly, taking ownership for the emotions I am displaying and acknowledging that they are just reactions. I commit myself to finding what it is that really needs to be addressed in communication and finding a mutual understanding within that point.


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And now later I have had further interaction via text with my apartment manager in which it has become clear that he has been talking about me behind my back to another tenant and wants to laugh with this person about me within this situation. (He accidentally sent a text to me that was meant for another tenant about coming over and reading "what the red head tenant I did the tile for said....lol.")


I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel bad for my apartment manager and within this excuse him from the duties of his job for which he is paid (the scale of which is none of my business / not my responsibility) and for which I pay my rent.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in a blurring of the boundaries between what is professional and personal such that I have been friendly toward my apartment manager and sympathetic and allowed him to do a bad job because I feel bad for him, and also have offered him some of my own food because I know that he is not taking care of himself through feeding himself.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself therefore to participate in this blurring of boundaries which it is clear that he is participating in heavily within his work/living arrangement here so that I am also participating in this so that I cannot say that I am not responsible for this dynamic where he believes he can get away with doing a shitty job because we are on friendly terms.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to accept and allow shitty workmanship when higher quality is expected within my lease agreement and my consistency in following through on my end of the contract so that I have set a precedent that it is okay for my apartment manager to not follow through on his end of the contract because I have accepted and allowed this blurring of boundaries of professional/personal relationships.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to suppress my reaction to him calling me "sweetie" or other things he has said/done that have "creeped me out" such that I have probably actually behaved in ways that have indicated to him that I am uncomfortable which he has then been left to interpret however, so that here I have participated in the creation of a dishonest communication between myself and my apartment manager by not setting boundaries and keeping those boundaries in terms of comfort, respect, and professionalism.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to let these things that "creep me out" and also the shitty workmanship to "slide" so that now I see there are consequences where there are secrets on both ends where clearly my apartment manager does not actually think/feel about me the way that he displays openly by being nice and calling me "sweetie" and acting grateful for my sympathy, and also as I have described above I have opposing energies in regards to my apartment manager and who he is and the job he does where I feel both angry and fed up but also sympathetic and protective (enabling).

I forgive myself for not accepting or allowing myself to really take responsibility for myself in my living arrangement through communication, relationships, and establishing appropriate expectations/boundaries.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be swayed by the manipulation of this person who has not wanted to face himself / me and take responsibility for his work ethic or the results of his work but has tried to avoid direct conversation and has sought to appease me through being nice / also showing that he is in physical and emotional pain.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to feel both angry and sympathetic, to want to make things easier on someone else at my own expense while suppressing my anger so that my anger does come out in some form eventually.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to participate in the creation of these consequences which have come to pass in this recent development.


See more photos and explanation here. 



This is also very frustrating because I have JUST established for myself to really finally actually get settled here and enjoy living here and make this space my own. Like I have cleared all these points on living here and how to make this place work (although these same points apply to any place I could live) and now this comes up where I am not sure I feel comfortable living here with an apartment manager like this.


One definite drawback to living here, aside from the other obvious ones, is that I do not get cell phone reception in my apartment. This has been quite frustrating in terms of keeping in touch with people, making plans, and also making necessary phone calls for various things. So I suppose one thing I can do is write out all the pros/cons / different sides of this situation to see if I can determine what is best / makes the most sense.