Why Is It Always Something?
Why is it that sometimes the complicated jobs go off with out a hitch but the simple jobs always, always! turn out to be a stress-filled circus act with planning worthy of NASA mission control?
It’s Friday, it’s broiling — and the most energy I’d planned to expend today was to order tickets on-line to a new Broadway show, walk my dog, and maybe think about where to have cocktails this evening. But no.
This was supposed to be an effortless exercise in the design and production of a basic sales brochure for my business which I thought would be a breeze–write the copy, get a jr. designer to lay it out, get it to the printer…done.
The printer can’t open the designer’s files. The designer can’t correct his files. When I questioned the rep about what the problem could be–his answer was “it could be anything.”
When I spoke with the designer about how he sent his art to the printer, his response was, “I don’t know what could have happened.”
Meanwhile, I’ve spent most of the day on the phone, trying to get the two of them to coordinate with each other.
I think the biggest question is, why does this have to be so painful? And I think the answer lies in my expectation level. With a big job, I will over plan, over project….looking way down the road for potential problems. With smaller jobs, I tend to relax.
It’s kind of like driving…if, after a long road trip, you lower your defenses as you get closer to home, that is usually when you’ll get into an accident. Same thing here…my alertness mechanism or my fight/flight thing-ys were lowered.
But I say, c’mon guys…get this done…it’s not a shuttle mission for goodness sake.
I’m sure all of this will get done, but I do wish I could just sleep through it!
Image: flickr.com
