IT SAID IT RIGHT THERE ON MY CALENDAR: Dentist appointment! Each day I would sit at my desk, turn on my computer, look at my calendar, and…UGH. Every day it was one day closer, no matter what I did. Dentist appointment! The only way I could make it disappear was to live through it, and I could only get there one day at a time, day after day, DENTIST APPOINTMENT, until I was there and it was done and over and a thing of the past. I was powerless to avoid it, I had to get it done, I wanted to put it behind me but it just kept creeping closer and closer, one damn day at a time. Dentist appointment! “The future,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” It might just as well have been something else equally odious. AUNT GUSSIE IS COMING OVER TOMORROW. The dread is palpable as one nears a date on the calendar that signifies an obnoxious event. This is one of the reasons we have teeth, I imagine; so we can grit them as we’re doing our best to survive such unpleasantries as the dentist, or Aunt Gussie, or your sister’s daughter’s piano recital, or whatever.
See what works for you!
Hello HenryM.
I rarely have that sort of problem because one of the great advantages of having a lousy memory is that these things don't occur to me until the alarm goes off on my phone about 15minutes before any appointment. Sometimes I have to rush a bit to get there/wherever in time, but mostly I just hop on my bicycle and I'm there for the allotted time. There is no time to contemplate whether or not I 'want' to attend. That decision is usually made at the time of making an appointment. Those appointments I do not wish to keep, I do not make in the first place. If it's not on my phone, it doesn't exist for me!
I like your concept of 'one day at a time' - that is how the phone diary/calendar works for me!
Best wishes
Bill
Hi Henry,I can relate totally, only in my case it wasn't the Dentist appointment I dreaded. Until I got a root canal, going to the Dentist was never something I found particularly awful. When I was in high school, I had my first experience with public speaking. We had to present a five minute speech to our English class; the subject was up to us. I was terrified beyond words, and the date loomed large on my calendar. We were given suggestions for topics, and one was to speak about a famous person we admired. I chose Winston Churchill. We were allowed to have 'notes', but were not allowed to read our speech, or memorize it. When the time came, I managed to get through it, but couldn't remember a thing about it immediately afterwards. I think I was in a trance!It did nothing to lessen my fear of public speaking. I had to get over it years later when I was leading life skills classes with my clients in the area of social work I was in at the time. Perhaps not surprisingly, public speaking doesn't bother me at all anymore, but I think it has more to do with me not giving a toss what people think of me.
Terry
I found that my poor memory was counterbalanced by an increased ability to 'think'. There was a drawback in that sometimes people would pick me up on my stance on certain things because what I had said on a previous occasion did not match up with what I was thinking later on. When this happened, I had to explain that my thoughts on the subject had moved on and hopefully matured!
Best wishes
Bill
