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”Out of Bounds” Section intro: Go to “Read me first” in publication.
“Out of Bounds” has some ski stories, but it’s really about life off the mountain. If that’s not what you came for, you can unsubscribe from this section alone and keep Ski Patrol Notes. Ski Patrol stories will continue in winter.
Have you ever had that feeling that it won’t matter what you say or show someone, it won’t make a difference? Good or bad?
Most likely, it’s because you are already sitting at the negotiation table, wants - needs - considerations - solutions - ideas all laid out, raring to go, maybe even excited to learn something new about or from the other party(ies), but you forgot to check whether they’d even show up. You may be so overwhelmed by the chaos of your wants, that you just assumed everyone necessary for the negotiations would be there. And when you look up from your battle plan, you notice, they’re not only not at the table with you, they’re not even in the room with you.
So you panic a little, get up, start looking around for them, maybe they’re behind that big plant in the corner? Maybe they’re just getting a coffee and prepping their end of the negotiation and they forgot the meeting time? Maybe they’re held up in a different meeting?
You can’t find them, so you try and re-schedule, giving them the benefit of the doubt, but after the third reschedule you suspect they are actively avoiding you, so you check by the water cooler, and there they are...happily chatting away with someone else, leaving you and your strategy papers looking like fools.
If you’re prone to self-doubt, you may start blaming yourself, if you’re more disagreeable you may get angry, there are as many reactions both natural and learned as humans under the sun, but the stark truth is this:
Your negotiation partner didn’t show up, because there is no version of their future in which they find it necessary to negotiate with you.
Your strategy papers and efforts left undealt with, are now the manifestation of their core indifference or very low priority to the matter at hand. One time, I showed up to a job interview with a hand drawn design board and several original pitch papers for TV shows. I was overprepared because I thought I was interviewing for my dream job. The interviewer showed up 20 minutes late, only to comment that I was blonder than he expected, and laughed at my board. I was devastated. A month later, his golf partner was hired for the position. The cliché of it all was so loud it had circled back in on itself and I became the caricature of a mid twenties go-getter whose naivety became the exact reason she couldn’t be promoted elsewhere in the company.
I know that’s shitty news and can be heartbreaking, but despair not, because there is respite in being the “not cared about” one. The logic of someone not caring is so ironic, it will make your however flawed attempt at showing up, triumphant:
The mere statement of not showing up at the negotiation table makes the stater irrelevant to you. If the thing you care about doesn’t matter to them, then the person saying or acting like it doesn’t matter also doesn’t have to matter to you anymore.
Even if they still do, they don’t have to. Consider the breathing space for your soul here. Imagine what it feels like if someone doesn’t have to matter to you.
They can, and maybe you let them matter to you forever, but you can go on caring as intensely and deeply about whatever you want, as they fall into the very oblivion they chose in the first place. Most casual nihilists aren’t conceived by careful philosophical contemplation anyway. Most are just contemptuous cowards.
Imagine the guts it would take to actually listen to a younger employee, break with the cronyism tradition and change the system. It’s been twenty years since that failed interview, and those bosses have long been replaced by overzealous tech bros. I still care deeply about movies — I went on to make plenty of them professionally — but I don’t care anymore if anyone hires me to do it. Turns out, one can just tell stories without anyone asking.
↠ ↠ ↠ I’m no coward. What now?
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The pain of being unheard with all your preps and ideas and all the motivation and idealism behind is as big as the joy, the freedom of the moment you decide to stop caring about this specific person - privately and professionally! Well said Hanni 🌷