Nate the Snake
Ever heard that joke? It’s funny. Ask Charlie to tell it sometime. Better yet, ask him to tell you the clown joke, if you have ample time to kill.
Anyway, on to my post. The title is only somewhat connected to the subject matter. Once you’ve heard the joke and read my post, I suppose you’ll figure it out. You’re fairly bright, after all.
As I’m sure most of my close friends will tell you, I’m consistently late for… well, pretty much everything. I have the absolute best intentions of always arriving at a predetermined time, yet I somehow manage to always miss the mark, often by quite a lot. It’s got to be pretty annoying for my friends. I don’t know how much time they’ve actually collectively spent just waiting for me, but it must be significant. Enough to have enjoyed an average length novel, probably.
I have no idea why I’m always late. Part of it, I suppose, is that I overestimate how efficiently I can complete a task. I tend to be optimistic that I can accomplish things quickly and easily, despite my vast experience to the contrary. Simple seeming tasks often end up taking longer than I anticipate.
This bugs my wife a lot. My work schedule keeps me away from home until 7:30 or 8:00 most nights, but due to some tasks taking longer than I planned, I occasionally end up coming home later than I told her I would. She doesn’t appreciate that, which I can understand. I try to call and let her know when I’m running late (I try to do that for my friends, too, but they’ve pretty much come to expect it anyway), but sometimes I think that instead of taking time to call her, I should just keep plugging away at whatever task is at hand and get home a few minutes sooner than I would if I did call. Well, that line of thinking doesn’t really go over well when I explain why I didn’t call.
I think that another reason I’m consistently late is heredity. My parents are the same way. When I was a kid, our family was always the last to show up for church on Sunday morning (a tradition I’ve carried on to my own family, by the way; it’s like a big “faith baton,” passed from my parents to me…). We’d scurry into the nave a couple minutes after the service started and make our way up to one of the front pews (which made it that much worse—everyone had to watch us come in late!). I always figured it was because of my three sisters and all their primping before we ever went anywhere. Turns out that wasn’t the reason—we’re just late people, apparently. Another example of this genetic tendency for being late is that I was almost always the last kid to be picked up from basketball practice, baseball practice, youth group, confirmation class, or just about any other activity in which I was involved as a youth. My parents knew what time my practices, etc., were finished, yet they were almost never there waiting for me afterwards. I nearly always had to sit and wait for one or the other of them to come pick me up. If not for that, though, I guess I never would have had all those nice chats with the evening janitorial staff…
I honestly feel terrible about being so late all of the time. I hate that I make my friends wait for me. I hate that I leave my wife at home, waiting for me to return from work so we can spend a little time together before bed. I really don’t like the stress that accompanies running late all the time.
When Charlie and I went to the National Association of Campus Activities conference in Rochester, Minnesota, this past April, we were running very late, and ended up missing the booth set-up time and… the fun, meet-people time, I think. Turned out to not be such a big deal, but still, it was stressful. I don’t think I was actually late that day, though. There were a couple other problems that delayed us. The first was related to my tendency to be overly optimistic about the amount of time required to accomplish a task—I didn’t plan an early enough departure time for the trip to Rochester. The second was that I forgot our performance contracts, which at the time seemed vital, but turned out to be completely unnecessary (not to imply that it was an unsuccessful trip…). So… even thought I technically wasn’t late (and I should probably point out that Charlie picked me up at my house right at the specified time, leaving me little opportunity to actually be late), it was still my fault that we were late that day.
So I guess I just want to apologize to all of my friends and to my wife and to anyone else who may have been forced to wait for me at some time. I’m sorry. I’ll try to be on time. I promise that I’ll try! In the meantime, it’s probably safest to add at least 15 minutes to whatever time I say I’ll be somewhere. Hmm… Ironically (but not surprisingly), since I ended up writing a bit more than I’d planned, I’m now running about 10-15 minutes behind schedule… I suppose I should go, then.
Adieu!
Matt
Anyway, on to my post. The title is only somewhat connected to the subject matter. Once you’ve heard the joke and read my post, I suppose you’ll figure it out. You’re fairly bright, after all.
As I’m sure most of my close friends will tell you, I’m consistently late for… well, pretty much everything. I have the absolute best intentions of always arriving at a predetermined time, yet I somehow manage to always miss the mark, often by quite a lot. It’s got to be pretty annoying for my friends. I don’t know how much time they’ve actually collectively spent just waiting for me, but it must be significant. Enough to have enjoyed an average length novel, probably.
I have no idea why I’m always late. Part of it, I suppose, is that I overestimate how efficiently I can complete a task. I tend to be optimistic that I can accomplish things quickly and easily, despite my vast experience to the contrary. Simple seeming tasks often end up taking longer than I anticipate.
This bugs my wife a lot. My work schedule keeps me away from home until 7:30 or 8:00 most nights, but due to some tasks taking longer than I planned, I occasionally end up coming home later than I told her I would. She doesn’t appreciate that, which I can understand. I try to call and let her know when I’m running late (I try to do that for my friends, too, but they’ve pretty much come to expect it anyway), but sometimes I think that instead of taking time to call her, I should just keep plugging away at whatever task is at hand and get home a few minutes sooner than I would if I did call. Well, that line of thinking doesn’t really go over well when I explain why I didn’t call.
I think that another reason I’m consistently late is heredity. My parents are the same way. When I was a kid, our family was always the last to show up for church on Sunday morning (a tradition I’ve carried on to my own family, by the way; it’s like a big “faith baton,” passed from my parents to me…). We’d scurry into the nave a couple minutes after the service started and make our way up to one of the front pews (which made it that much worse—everyone had to watch us come in late!). I always figured it was because of my three sisters and all their primping before we ever went anywhere. Turns out that wasn’t the reason—we’re just late people, apparently. Another example of this genetic tendency for being late is that I was almost always the last kid to be picked up from basketball practice, baseball practice, youth group, confirmation class, or just about any other activity in which I was involved as a youth. My parents knew what time my practices, etc., were finished, yet they were almost never there waiting for me afterwards. I nearly always had to sit and wait for one or the other of them to come pick me up. If not for that, though, I guess I never would have had all those nice chats with the evening janitorial staff…
I honestly feel terrible about being so late all of the time. I hate that I make my friends wait for me. I hate that I leave my wife at home, waiting for me to return from work so we can spend a little time together before bed. I really don’t like the stress that accompanies running late all the time.
When Charlie and I went to the National Association of Campus Activities conference in Rochester, Minnesota, this past April, we were running very late, and ended up missing the booth set-up time and… the fun, meet-people time, I think. Turned out to not be such a big deal, but still, it was stressful. I don’t think I was actually late that day, though. There were a couple other problems that delayed us. The first was related to my tendency to be overly optimistic about the amount of time required to accomplish a task—I didn’t plan an early enough departure time for the trip to Rochester. The second was that I forgot our performance contracts, which at the time seemed vital, but turned out to be completely unnecessary (not to imply that it was an unsuccessful trip…). So… even thought I technically wasn’t late (and I should probably point out that Charlie picked me up at my house right at the specified time, leaving me little opportunity to actually be late), it was still my fault that we were late that day.
So I guess I just want to apologize to all of my friends and to my wife and to anyone else who may have been forced to wait for me at some time. I’m sorry. I’ll try to be on time. I promise that I’ll try! In the meantime, it’s probably safest to add at least 15 minutes to whatever time I say I’ll be somewhere. Hmm… Ironically (but not surprisingly), since I ended up writing a bit more than I’d planned, I’m now running about 10-15 minutes behind schedule… I suppose I should go, then.
Adieu!
Matt
posted by Matt at 2:16 PM
6 Comments:
I remember one time when we were planning to head down to ISU to hang out with Casey and the gang that you told me when you would pick me up and then you didn't arrive for another 20 minutes. Upon arrival you got out of the car and promptly said, "Never ever listen to anything I say."
You've been bloggin for a while now. Why didn't you tell me you were doing this?
It would probably have been better for me to have said, "Never ever count on me to arrive on time." Other than that, I think I'm usually fairly dependable and believable.
I thought it seemed weird to tell people about my blog. "Hey, look at what I wrote!" I figured anyone interested in reading it would find it on their own. Also, you didn't tell me that you're keeping a blog, either.
Have a happy weekend!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I'll go ahead and proudly note that I was (as far as I know (and I certainly haven't done any research to back this up)) the first person to find Matt's blog. I agonized over quoting part of it on mine, since he seemed to want to remain anonymous, but then he outed himself so that seemed pointless. Anyway - yay, me was my point, I guess.
I'm curious about this part of your post - "(not to imply that it was an unsuccessful trip…)" Do you mean that you don't feel like an implication is strong enough or that you think it was a successful trip?
Wow, I totally missed the faith baton joke the first time I read this post. Caught it this time, though, and sprayed Dr. Pepper right square through my nose.
If you could come up with some sort of workshop to better explain the function of the lateness-baton that would be great.
As far as I know, Charles, you were indeed the first person to find my blog. You were definitely the first person to make known that you had found it. I told you that you could quote and link to it if you wanted. I don't care if people know about it; it just seemed weird to tell people about it.
The "not to imply..." line was sort of sarcastic, but sort of not. It proved true that we did not need any performance contracts, so from that standpoint, one might say that it was an unsuccessful trip. However, despite the trip not meeting our expectations, I still felt immediately afterwards like it was a success. The follow-up after the conference, on the other hand...
Sorry about the Dr. Pepper through the nose.
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