apparently i’m not done

i am doubly irritated when i look at my calendar today and see how little work i got done, having been completely sidetracked by the energy it took to write to CrappyClient and then to hemorrhage the anger energy following it.

this is why i gave up angry. it’s such a useless, wasteful emotion for the most part.

i’m glad most of you think it’s very un-belen. that tells me i am doing something right 😉

but today i’m having a hard time letting go of it.

and i know i need to. and i know i will.

but even after a walk and kittenwalking and yoga, i am still pretty wound up.

this client is special.

most days, i can take general client stupidity and crap in stride. it’s part of the cost of doing business.

but this one tweaks me for a few reasons.

no closure.
even when i am trying my hardest to enforce the project management golden rules, and pushing back on scope creep (like the request to “add a button to let clients log in and fill out their forms in a directed online flow” – yes, he expected all the development too). the thing is, in this case, he clearly understood that it wasn’t the animation he had issue with. yet he still felt it necessary to “hold” payment to indicate to me that there was more work to be done. no asshole, when you hire a contractor, they do the work requested, you pay them, and then if you want *more* work, you ask for another contract. i know in his mind, he saw his actions as keeping me vested in his project. but i saw it as blatantly holding me hostage in a project that was DONE. i know it isn’t even about the money to him. it is about the power. for any other client, i would have happily fixed the things he wanted additional work on. but any other client would have followed the respectful protocol of paying me and then asking me to do more work. for 2 years, i played a game of Chase The End of The Project with them. i was done. and he thought it was acceptable to wait 2 months after the final files and invoice were sent to tell me i wasn’t done.

the fucking mindgames
in the very beginning of our working relationship, he came to me and said “you have done such an amazing job for my wife that i want to hire you for my website.” nice…ok, sure. the first project was a logo. i gave him a bid. he told me he thought it was too high. he called me and told me again, he thought it was too high. i told him that was what it cost me to custom make a logo and that there were plenty of places that could do it less expensively because they worked from templates, and that he should look into them. he told me “no, belen. i want *you* to design my logo. i want it to be as good as i know you can make it. i feel confident we can come to some sort of agreement that will make both of us feel good.” he stroked my ego some more, again refused the idea of anyone else, and then suggested i throw in a stationary suite design (letterhead, envelope, biz card) for the same cost and he was game. i was charging him a pretty nice rate, so eventually i agreed.

that was the formula for every interaction after that. i wanted to be nice. he wanted to push to get the max for the min and was not at all hesitant to play to my every strength and weakness.

the manipulation is where this anger festers
i could sit back and watch this man play me every time we communicated. he praised me. he asked me “to be reasonable” (of course, implying that i wasn’t). he always couched things in terms of “finding the agreeable solution for both of us”. he played on my perfectionism. he played on my desire to please. he played on my professionalism and my desire to stand behind my commitment to bring his vision to life. his assistant, with whom i had most of my contact was *painfully* nice and always very understanding and apologetic.

even as strong and self-aware as i am, i sat in another place, watching myself in this situation, telling myself that i would just finish this contract, that i would just keep my commitment, and try as hard as i could to give them what they paid for and then be *done*.

it is *so* rare for me to encounter truly wholly manipulative people any more. i have insulated my life in a lovely way, carefully chosen my friends, and am *particularly* sensitive to that sort of personality and keeping them the fuck away from me. i well remember the feeling when i encountered it in my personal life and it was a lesson seared into my memory.

and so it is so hard to let go of this. to let go of my anger at him for being such a disrespectful, manipulative fuck. and to let go of my anger at myself for trying to see this through to the end. what i could have said, what i should have done, keeps playing through my head.

and most of all, i feel weak. and vulnerable. and utterly panicked at the feeling of someone trying to pull my strings like that. i know i did what i needed to in the end. i know i am strong enough to not be lead in such a way. but it makes me feel so taken advantage of and so thoroughly disrespected and helpless.

and that just pisses me off more.

<sighs>

i have a date with the elliptical machine to sweat this out some more. and then some time in the hot tub. and then some time making quesadillas. and then some time snuggling the boy and kitties. and maybe with some wine, i will feel calm enough for sleep and a fresh day.