It Will Take the Time It Takes

Don’t you just love your adult voice? I certainly love mine, and it does seem to visit when I’m most in need. And it just did — she did — with this overused but always instructive line: “It will take the time it takes.”

And what exactly was “I” talking to “me” about?

Let’s see…

I was walking back from a non-appointment appointment – physical therapy wherein the therapist, the second one mind you – agreed with me that we’re getting nowhere with my funky left hand that has been a mystery problem for months.

The result: We talked rather than repeating any of the exercises and manipulations that haven’t proved helpful. And as competent and articulate as I believe this physical therapist to be (the opposite of Mr. Tales From the Crypt who was unequivocally unhelpful), he was in complete agreement that without any progress thus far, a different approach is required.

So, I was given a referral to a hand specialist to see if she could figure out what is going on and how to deal with it. How long will it take to actually get an initial appointment? Another two, three or four months? Longer?

I could feel the anger rising in my chest as I was imagining more phone calls, more waiting, more months passing… all of which has already occurred; taken a toll physically, emotionally and financially; and is likely to take place again. But is this anything I can control? Does it make sense to expend more emotional energy — stressing and distressed — over something I can’t control? Might I get lucky and not experience another demoralizing delay?

And there she was, my adult voice, attempting to soothe me no matter how it all plays out by saying: “It will take the time it takes.”

I felt my anger subside.

Sometimes we are surprisingly good at parenting ourselves, aren’t we?

On another front, I spent the weekend engaged in a series of activities on the back end of my technology platform. Here. Techie-me in the role of the Wizard Behind the Curtain. Cutting to the chase — in the 10th hour of wearying work, there was a serious snafu — not of my making, but unleashing a set of “known issues” to do with the user-friendliness of what I manage behind the scenes. And this has added another flavor of “crazy” to my daily plate of crazy, none of which is, hopefully, apparent to you, the reader.

As I began to process how complex “undoing” and repairing will be, and the fact that it is likely to take a full-time effort for the better part of the week, I was furious.

I paced, I fumed, I lay in bed and fumed (it was night). I tried watching a movie in bed but couldn’t concentrate. I got up and paced some more, fumed some more, tried reading to no avail and eventually, very late, I dozed off.

Muddled in the morning when the alarm went off (after only three hours of sleep), I trudged into the kitchen like a zombie, brewed coffee with my eyes half-shut, gulped down my cuppa Joe, threw on crappy clothes and cabbed to my latest Adventure in Physical Therapy where, as I already explained, I was given contact information for a specialist. Make that a different specialist.

Later, as I was walking several miles back through the city streets, usually a source of people-watching pleasure, I was running schedules through my mind and trying to determine how to cope with the utterly unexpected “new workload” for the week — how I might shortcut the hours needed, and how in the hell I was going to get everything else done that I had actually planned. Feeling my anxiety bubble up again, the voice chimed in. Steady, stalwart, soothing.

It will take the time it takes, she said, oh-so calmly, but with a little hint of sympathy all the same.

I took a breath. I began to relax. Well… relax enough to put things in perspective.

And in case you’re wondering, this doesn’t impact what you see here, but it significantly affects the “user friendliness” of my ability to write, edit, and manage images behind the scenes.

Here’s the net. What I needed was acceptance, not resistance. I needed my inner adult, not the hot-tempered adolescent. I was fighting the inevitability of attacking tasks that I have no choice but to tend to — a software predicament that seems to occur about once every two years. The only reasonable solution was — is — to set aside the emotions that deplete energy I need for problem-solving. And that, of course, is the very point of the statement that conveniently rose to the level of a conscious directive to ease the anxiety of my fitful, fretting, frustrated self.

Okay. So. Reality Check. I still resent what amounts to gobs of time ultimately wasted over the weekend since I will now have to undo, redo, and do “anew” — though precisely what and for how long, I don’t know yet.

This isn’t just about time; I’m also stewing over the complexity of the tasks involved, and the research I will have to do in order to diagnose and then fix what has gone awry. It’s draining. I’d rather be “drained” chewing over a writing or editing challenge, not this back-end techno-tedium.

But get this! At seven this morning my rational, pragmatic, borderline-cheerleading adult voice offered up a bright side with these wise words:

You’ll be working your brain. You’ll learn and then apply a series of detailed processes. You’ll dust off your HTML. This requires concentration, not to mention managing multiple simultaneous steps in an organized fashion to solve a complex set of coding issues. This may not be “memory fitness” but it certainly exercises cognitive skills. Irritating? Yes. Tiring? Yes. But good for you.

Right. The adult voice. And a convincing one at that, don’t you think? Aren’t we lucky when we’re in touch with our inner adults? Are you in touch with yours?

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