Hunting The Muse

So yeah, business relationships.

So yeah, business relationships. They're different. Dynamics are strange. I've been working with salaried folks for so long that I got used to that set of dynamics.

I would usually feel like other salaried folks dealt with their life balance and feelings in a fairly consistent way. When you didn't know them too well, they'd be chatty and would otherwise not let you in much. Sort of toeing the corporate line, they'd repeat back the platitudes that are fed to them at the monthly corporate meeting. But you could tell their heart wasn't in it, and that the had this whole extra life. Then when you'd get to know them better, it would be a bit of a surge forward. You have that first conversation where gosh, you realize that you BOTH feel that the corporate line is actually a little bit of bullshit, and golly, isn't that amazing you both have that opinion in common! So then all of a sudden there is no ceiling. You bitch about work together, you accept that your work duties are pesky annoying gnats, and you go to work each day with your flyswatter of a brain just to get these annoying issues off of you, and then you clear it out of your head and go home and talk about whatever else you feel like to your real friends and family. No other boundaries save the basic boundaries like how vulnerable you feel with your girlfriend or if you're having bathroom difficulties.

Well, it's totally different with the self-employed folks. In short, that first layer of defenses isn't even there, which is nice. But you never actually quite reach that second layer - complete safety - which I find extremely fascinating. It might end up annoying me, but right now I find it fascinating. One thing I'm noticing is that it is a lot easier to mix up business and personal relationships. You're going to do business, on your own terms, with another person who does business on their own terms, so you really are just making up your own interdependent structure... which has a lot in common with friendship. And if you're not careful, you can easily start copying one set of dynamics to the other. I'm noticing two things about myself - one, that I'm getting a bit more brusque with some of my friendships (usually when we are organizing when to meet, what to do), and two, I'm sharing a bit more personally with my business contacts than I normally would if I were salaried. I think it's okay up to a point - I'm feeling more confident about my professional life, and I feel like it is more hooked into who I am personally rather than just the set of skills I happen to have, so it makes sense to be a bit more Curt when I'm interacting with folks.

But it is also jarring sometimes when I hit that mysterious wall, that boundary, of when business, just like that pushy HR person that is always annoying you in corporate land, cuts everything else off and pushes itself in front. The wall springs up out of nowhere, like it just coalesced out of shadow, and meanwhile the more friendship-like dynamics go off and sulk in the corner. I've hit that wall a few times now.

I have a client that is really cool, is about my age, has a lot of interests in common with me, and talks with me about all sorts of things like who wants to partner with him, what frustrates him, how he met his girlfriend, etc - but when I suggested maybe getting together sometime to do some music, he sort of shut down. I also have another client where one the project manager and I realized we were from the same hometown and some friends in common, and we talked about getting together socially at some point. And then his boss got stressed about the hours we were putting in and asked him to handle it, and there was that wall again - things sort of shut down a bit.

In general these people are the sorts that you can see into about six inches deep. It's really fascinating. I'm used to meeting people where I either can't see into them at all due to them being closed off, or where there's no protectiveness at all after I know them. Everyone in this life is right in between. They pick and choose where they shut down the pathways, and it's usually very subtle.

Anyway, this will be a challenge for me - I don't tend to like those halfway phases in any of my relationships... but I also see the need and value for it, and I'm noticing that I'm starting to adopt it here and there by necessity. So it's a challenge... but it's also fascinating and I think I kind of like it. Posted by Curt at April 8, 2002 01:10 PM