I accidentally sent this only to “paying subscribers” after testing how subscriptions work for newsletters. Had to delete that one and recreate this one to get it to all you freeloaders (that’s 100% of you) so re-sending!
My test yesterday for Covid came back negative. I experienced the benefits of taking urgent action in the face of a “blocking” issue: because I scheduled immediately, I got tested on New Years Eve morning, and I had my result in time to pick up my kids on New Years Day.
This is different than my historical pattern which minimizes all real and possible emergencies. The consequence of this tended to be delays. I can’t think of how many times I have run into this, where I think, I’ll wait till tomorrow. Then I wake up tomorrow and realize it’s New Years day and I can’t get a test, or something like that.
This was the second time in the last week that I have benefited from acting quickly on blocking issues. On Christmas Day when I Dropped my kids off at their moms, I recognized my back right tire was losing air. I had filled it once in response to a low air indicator and the indicator came back on.
It is not an exaggeration to say that for the first time in my life, I resolved to handle this as soon as I possibly could.
Normally I would think that perhaps I can keep filling the tire every day for a while, because I don’t have the money to replace the tire.
But I followed this principal recognizing that a failing tire was a blocking issue.
I went to Discount Tire based on yelp reviews; I have never been there.
For the first time in my life a tire issue was able to be repaired rather than replaced. I think it’s possible that has something to do with taking urgent action.
I was still wondering how much it would cost and whether my bank account would even be able to cover it when the guy told me it was repaired and I was all set. There was a finality to his statement that caused me to ask, “wait, don’t I have to pay for that?”
He laughed and said no.
I still don’t understand how that happened.
There was a third instance where I took much quicker action than typically: notifying my kids’ mom about my covid test. I first messaged her as soon as I left work and had a test scheduled for the next morning, sending her the appointment confirmation and the notes that described a 24-72 hour waiting period for results. I noted that based on timelines I might not have a negative test in time to pick up the kids Friday. She didn’t respond.
Thursday morning after my test I sent confirmation of having been tested and a request that I could FaceTime the kids Friday if I wasn’t able to pick them up yet if results weren't back.
She responded Thursday that she expected me to pick up the kids (“it sounds like you’re implying you’re not going to pick up the kids…”) While I’ve been historically paralyzed or blindsided by her approach to parenting, I in this case recognized that the matter was a medical one and didn’t need any further input from me as she’s the medical decision maker for my kids, court ordered. I called the children’s pediatrician to request that she provide input given the pending test results. The physician wrote a clear letter that removed the issue from the table and negated any need to debate whether or not I should pick up the children while waiting on a negative test result.
The important thing here was that my more comfortable behavior would have been to not call the pediatrician, or not call her promptly. I didn’t know the pediatrician would be willing (eager, it turned out) to write a letter. I couldn’t even remember the pediatrician’s name, and felt stupid about this as I called the practice (it turned out the issue was she had left the practice very recently, so I wasn’t finding her name on their website, thus my confusion, but the kids had been reassigned to a new pediatrician). The pediatrician I thought I was calling is one I consider a flying monkey for my ex, though I also think she’s highly competent and a great doctor (flying monkeys are people who — often without realizing it — do the bidding of a narcissist against a narcissist’s target).
In the end, I established a solid initial touch with a new pediatrician who, reviewing notes from years prior, may find interesting my earlier reports that I believe the kids’ mom wants them sick so she can get attention for it (exhibits signs of munchausen by proxy, I have claimed).
These are the various benefits of acting quickly on blocking issues.