Dealing with ...

Now here's a quandry... There's This Music Guy that I work with. I'm going to leave out a lot of details, but here's basically the problem: He wants to physically arrange his performers in a certain way. For someone who doesn't have the locomotor problems I do, it's a non issue. It's not a non-issue for me.

I had a talk with him today about where he wants me to be located in this particular performance. I tell him, I'd rather be over there because it's easier for me to get in and out (of the performing space), especially when I need to get to the bathroom. He says that he'd rather have me somewhere else. After all, I'm doing musical-thing A, and that'll work out better if I'm where he wants me. Yes, I say, but I'm also doing musical-thing B, and that actually would work out better if I were where I wanted to be. Well, basically, he wouldn't come out and say this, but the truth of the matter appears to be that he wants me where he wants me, and he doesn't care what I want or why I want it.

I don't mind disagreeing with people. What I mind is when people don't care that there's a reason that I ask for what I ask for. That when I say I need some extra slack, it's not about "preference."

Yeah, could I tough it out? Hell, I tough out M.S., I suppose I could. But what's really the point here? That I need to tough things out more than I maybe want to? That I need to get up the courage to tell people -- politely--that yeah, you want what you want, and I agree that you have good reasons for it, but I need what I need, and I can't do anything about that--can't we find a compromise?

I really don't want to go down the road of "at some point, given the choice between having the fun in performing and having to deal with this s--t, and not performing any more, I ain't performing any more." Because to avoid that choice, I'm going to have to deal with some s--t of my own.

Sure would be nice to find a path that wasn't s--t-encrusted.

Like I don't have enough problems just having MS.