Middle of the Road

Center:  A point considered as the middle or central point of activity.


One of the reasons I was at all conflicted about the music documentary is that I have a long, storied history of saying I was going to do something and then not actually doing what I said I was going to do.  I frequently exacerbated this bad habit by not telling anyone I was changing my plans.  At the last minute I would decide to do something else I thought was going to be more fun or I'd forget or pass out or just not get up off the couch and make the effort.  


I tried to continue this technique when I was getting sober.  I really stuck with it as far as phone calls were concerned.  Someone in The Program would call and I wouldn't call back.  A lot of it was simply fear; I was afraid of dealing with other people.  My buddies confronted me about it, though.


"Did you get my phone call?" they'd ask.  "Pick up the phone and call back."  They brushed off my excuses, explaining that actions like returning phone calls was part of the social contract between adults.  It wasn't negotiable or weird or an unreasonable thing to expect.  Someone calls and you call back.  Move to a cave if you don't like doing this.


The flip side of the coin is that nobody likes to deal with rigid, inflexible people.  All of us make plans then change our mind, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for trivial ones.  Who among us hasn't agreed to do something and decided later on that they didn't want to do it?


Yes, you in the back there, with your hand up?  No?  I didn't think so.


All of us get to bail every now and then.  I'm OK with it when it happens to me.  I understand.  I do it, too.  I don't do it terribly often, though, because I think I need to be reliable with my commitments, which is another area I wouldn't mark as one of my strong points.


More middle of the road stuff.