So, my TV experience last night was much different than I imagined it would be. At 5:00PM I called up my friend to find out where the studio was, and after we each said hello, he was like, "so, are you still doing the show next week?"
I went back and checked my Google Voice SMS logs, and lo and behold, he totally said, "
Will u be in this Thursday so u can be on the Chess Now program?" So, he had just told me the entirely wrong date to go on the show.
Now, I love Phil, but that's just about the flakiest thing he's ever done to me. I mean, it's one thing to make dinner plans and then forget or even blow them off; it's a whole nother thing to invite someone to be on your TV show and give them the wrong date.
On top of that, my job has been after me to do a little traveling for a project, and I've been trying to find the time within the next week or so. If the TV show had been on the date he'd told me originally, I'd be fine doing my trip next week. With the TV show happening next week, that would delay my trip by another week. And why should I let his flakiness determine my schedule for other things?
So my current thinking is that I should just say no to the Chess Now slot, do my traveling, and then maybe go back and do the show when I'm done with my other obligations, and when any additional flakiness will not result in a huge inconvenience for me.
On the general subject of flakiness, in general I don't mind it all that much if I'm just hanging out casually with someone. The times when I don't like flakiness is if a girlfriend is habitually super late or cancels a lot at the last minute, because I'll be really looking forward to seeing her. But if there's just some friend of mine who's flaky, as Phil can be, it typically doesn't bug me, whether we're super close friends or not so close friends.
The way I typically handle my flaky friends is, if they make plans with me, I just don't take the plan very seriously. So if something else comes up that seems like it might be fun, I'll just go do that thing, and send my friend a text saying I'm doing something else instead. In other words I take our appointment exactly as seriously as they do.
That's actually the perfect solution, because on the one hand, it means that if I end up waiting around for my friend, it's because there really was nothing else that I could've been doing; and on the other hand, if they don't like it, they can change the situation by not flaking out on me anymore, at which point I'll take our appointments more seriously, and I won't take other opportunities that conflict with the times I said I'd meet that friend.
So, it's not like I'm trying to train my friend; I don't like training people and I don't like them to train me. But I just don't see why I should take an appointment more seriously than the other person does.
Another reason why this is the perfect solution is that it makes me much less resentful of my flaky friends. I can be totally fine with them being flaky, because I abandon the appointments myself to go do fun things. Their flakiness doesn't typically ruin anything for me.
In this particular case, though, I'm resentful of Phil. He invited me to participate in something that was a pretty big deal, and he should've told me the correct date. This wasn't just skipping out on dinner. I was having all kinds of emotions about getting ready to be on TV, and he was responsible for me going through all that; and it turned out he put me through those emotions for no reason at all.
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