Just feeling tired

Strange philosophical question at the end of this. Also perhaps slightly whiny, so be forewarned.

I'm going to kind of elide details here in case anyone who knows me IRL and not primarily for the blog happens to read this. But. Over my lunch hour someone came to me (not a student) and essentially said, "I missed an important deadline for this thing and the instructions were unclear to me and what I wanted to happen didn't happen. Fix it."

And I responded, "I can fix part but not all of it."

And I proceeded to fix what I could of the thing, and I e-mailed the person back to tell them I had (all of this communication took place via e-mail).

I might add that fixing it took a little effort on my part, and resulted in my not getting a thing or two done over lunch that I intended to do.

Then the person e-mailed me back, and essentially said, "Whoops, ha ha, I guess I'll wait for the next deadline and the next round of Thing."

And I just looked at the e-mail and felt monumentally tired: I tried to do a good and helpful thing, something that put me out a little bit (though not a lot), and now the person responds, after I told them I fixed what I could fix to never mind, they didn't want it now.

I think this plays on some very deep-seated stuff in my brain. When I was a kid, I always had the sense (completely unfounded, I might add) that I forgot something or screwed something up or didn't have the right bit of paperwork, there would be no one to bail me out and no one would care. And I would be stuck, stranded, with no help, and it would probably go on my Permanent Record as well.

As I said, I don't know where I got that. Realistically, if I missed the bus one day, my mom would drive me to school. (Now, if I missed the bus two days out of every week, that might have been a different matter). But no, in my child-mind, missing the bus (or forgetting one's homework at home, or not getting a permission slip signed on time) was nigh unto The End of the World. And that by not letting any of those things happen, I could hold together fragile reality.

As I said, I don't know where I got that. My parents knew I was a fundamentally responsible and capable child, and if some kind of problem caused me to forget my lunch at home one day, or some other minor issue, it would be taken care of, and I would not be left hanging. But, ironically, my fear of being left hanging (or perhaps, my fear of putting someone else out, which might actually have been a more realistic feeling) was sufficiently great that I never (or, almost never - I think I can count the times in my 12 years of grade schooling my mom or dad had to bring something to school for me on one hand) let it happen.

I'm still the same way. Planning for going to some meetings I have to go to the end of this week. I already have a printout of a map showing the path I need to take and driving directions. And a printout of the motel room confirmation. And details on other motels in the area in case they somehow lost my confirmation and got full up*. Yeah, I might be a little compulsive about those kinds of things.

(*I suppose I would be within my rights, in that case, to be controlledly angry with them and to insist they help me to find an acceptable room elsewhere. But somehow it just seems easier to have a Plan B. And sometimes, I think it's a bit of magical thinking on my part: that if I have a Plan B, I will not need it).

And it makes me wonder - how does one child grow up to be so very anxious and very concerned about everything being "just so," and feeling that she can never just trust that someone will make things right if she slacks off, even if there is no objective reality to suggest that she will be left stranded, high and dry, because of one moment of inattention. And how does another child grow up just expecting that others will snatch his or her fat out of the fire on a regular basis, and manage somehow to travel through life in what looks to me like a lackadaisical state, with others picking up the slack when slack inevitably happens? And that this person never suffers anxiety about, I don't know, the possibility of running out of gas on a highway that is miles and miles from a station?

I figure neurotransmitters have to be a big part of it. That's the only way I can explain having grown up in a secure and loving family where if I did screw up, it would be taken care of, and with minimal admonishment, and yet, I am terrified of screwing up, or even of the random betises that seem to happen in day to day life.

So as a result, I grew up into "the responsible one." I'm often seen as the one who can fix things, who will step in at the last minute and clean up messes. And I find that as much as I try to set rules and deadlines, there are a lot of people who don't like abiding by them. I remember when I was chair of a Committee here, I would set a date for our every-semester meeting. I would announce the date campus-wide a couple months beforehand, and tell people when the deadline was to get requests for consideration in. The deadline was maybe a week and a half before the meeting - so I could get everything copied and distribute it to my committee, so they could read the requests ahead of time. Anyway, EVERY semester, even though I would send out a reminder about a week before the due date, I'd get someone coming to me, a day before the meeting and saying, "Um, whoops. I guess I forgot to get this in. Can the committee still look at it?" I usually grudgingly said yes, especially if I had a day or two lead time to get it copied and sent out.But I reminded them of the deadline and reminders and "in the future...."

But I remember one semester someone showed up AT the meeting with a stack of stuff, and said, "Yeah, we were working on this up to the last minute. We want you to consider these changes." And I told them no, the agenda was already set, we didn't have time for a big load of additional requests ESPECIALLY since we had had no lead time to look them over.

The person got a little huffy with me. I don't remember the outcome but a semester or two after that I gave up being chair of that committee, as it was very stressful.

But this is the thing: all my adult life I've been the "responsible" one, more or less. The one who puts their own wants on hold to meet the needs (and sometimes wants) of others. And yeah, I get that I'd be doing that on a regular basis if I were a parent. But here's the thing. Being the "responsible" thing means I'm not exactly a barrel of laughs. I'm not spontaneous and not good at being spontaneous. And this sounds strange but.....sometimes I get a little tired of who I am: rule-bound, attentive to deadlines, fearful that without a Plan B things will go very wrong and I will be left stranded and no one will be able to help me. And, I don't know, I'd like to be more spontaneous and "fun" but I don't quite know how. (I don't know how much of this is "brought to you by" the meme that men like the manic-pixie-dreamgirl type who is fun but a little flakey, but are mostly bored by the woman whose pumps are firmly planted on the ground and who gets her checkbook to balance every month)

And maybe the answer isn't figuring out how to be different but figuring out how not to be tired of who I am.

But what I wonder is - is that just a totally strange thing? Do other people ever get tired of some of the fundamental bedrock things of their personality and wish they were different? Even when those things are generally regarded to be an asset?