Lane rage

Lane rage

I go swimming three times a week, though I am a functional swimmer at best. My front crawl is never going to win any prizes, but I can manage over 1,000 metres without drowning myself. I say this not to show off (anyone who’s actually seen me swim should realise that), but just to help you understand that I’m a middling swimmer.

My swimming pool, like many others I suppose, designates some lines slow, some medium and some fast, and usually I end up in a medium or fast lane. Unfortunately, when there’s a choice of two lanes – one slow and one medium – because there’s a school swimming lesson going on in the rest of the pool, I sometimes end up in a lane with someone going slower than I am. And herein lies my problem.

I get terrible lane rage. But it’s terrible British lane rage – I get annoyed, but don’t do anything about it. I huff and I puff when the slower swimmer doesn’t let me pass at the end of the lane. I mutter to myself in my head about how inconsiderate the slower swimmer is. But I do nothing.

In the rules, displayed clearly on the wall, it says that if you want to pass someone, you should tap their feet as you swim, so that they know you’re behind them – a water-based version of the blue flag in Formula 1. But I can’t bring myself to do it. It just seems too aggressive. So I go back to my British passive-aggressiveness.

But I shouldn’t. A couple of years ago, I posted about a bizarre and totally unnecessary confrontation on a train where a child was moving about in his seat and jogging the man behind, who was trying to watch something on his iPad. The man eventually exploded, made the boy cry and caused the boy’s mother and grandmother to start having a go at him. If the man had asked the boy early on to settle down a bit, all that yelling would never have happened. It’s the same in the pool. I should just get over myself, tap the feet of the slower swimmer, as I’m supposed to, and carry on swimming.

As I sit here, still smelling slightly of chlorine (no matter how much shower gel you use, there’s always a faint whiff left over), I’m wondering to myself how much I get lane rage at other times in my life, when I hide away from confrontation, rather than face up to things, resolve them and move on in peace. That initial conversation might be difficult and/or embarrassing, but the rewards far outweigh that one-off awkwardness.

So better the redeemed relationship than the festering wound. Better the real peace than the awkward truce. Better the tapping of the feet than the passive-aggressive front crawl.

Solving a problem

Solving a problem

A while ago, Emma Coats, a Pixar Story Artist, published a list of 22 top tips for storytelling. There are some great ideas in there (check it out here, though it’s been widely reported and reblogged, so is available in a variety of places). Many of them, though, are applicable to lots of different contexts.

Suppose you’ve got a decision to make. It’s an important one, and making the wrong choice could cost you in terms of money, reputation or time. The fear of making the wrong decision can be scary, paralysing even. Here’s where one of the storytelling rules might help.

Take a look at rule number 9: ‘When you’re stuck, make a list of what wouldn’t happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.’ So, think about the decision you’ve got to take. Reiterate the boundaries of your project and then make a list of all the possible choices you have, even the ones that seem faintly crazy or out of your reach. Go through all the options and rule out the ones that are unacceptable or don’t fit within the scope of your project.

What have you got left? Are any of the choices left acceptable decisions? If not, why not? What do you need to change to make it more positive? Or are you going to have to make an uncomfortable decision?

 

Photo: Coolcaesar (CC)