I don’t know if it’s just me. I have a set of principles that I go by, internally, and usually when someone doesn’t really adhere to these principles, it can leave me questioning things or even worse, absolutely annoyed.
Now I need your input on this as I really don’t know if it’s a personal ‘thing’ that I have or if it’s a trait that others have. I have a friend who is constantly travelling and of course, we try to catch up. We are both adults – with our own schedules, commitments, and so on. When I commit to something such as being present at a meeting I need to follow up and I let the other person know that I have these meetings that I simply can’t defer. If I am going to be busy for a certain period of time (ie work deadlines), then I let them know, if I am going to travel I let the other person know that I am going to be away. Basically my principle here is to keep communication lines open and to keep things transparent.
So, I have a friend who is really keen to catch up – in fact he would message twice over a period of two months “let’s catch up when I’m here!”. However, when he is actually in London, I have plans already – travelling (3 countries, 3 cities anyone?), courses, work commitments so I keep things transparent and mention that I am busy and it needs to be on certain days that I am free. That’s the go right? You catch up on the days that you are free. And now he is out of town, on his nomad thing, and the catch up timeframe is now lost and I am left quiet frustrated and a bit guilty that I was ‘too busy’.
Ok, what is your take on this? Am I guilty for being too busy or is this simply the nature of global, constant nomads and that there is a next time at some point in time?