First Written: 11-Jan-2023 | Wed 15:44

Ok, story time. Winter Break. 2022. December. Making plans.

My buddies and I all had 6 or so days off from work. It wasn’t enough time to travel the world, but oh man was there time for a juicy road trip.

I was pumped. 2 of my good buddies, packed in a crummy 4-seater, road-tripping. Oh baby, this was going to be good.

I talked to my roommate and then one of our mutual friends. Nothing was set in stone, but everyone seemed on board.

Road trip time! I was stoked.

We were about a month out from the trip, so for 3 weeks, I was getting excited for this trip. “We’ll hit up Las Vegas! And then we’ll hike some National Parks! And then we’ll camp in Death Valley! Dude, it’ll be awesome!”

The days roll on and I plan out the entirety of the trip, including where we would meet and what we’d be doing each day. (And by the ‘entirety of the trip’ I mean I picked the major cities – planning sucks).

Well I guess I never, uhh, you know, actually told anyone any of this plan. It was a master plan, all cooked up, ready to go… but all stuck in my head. This juicy vision of 2 good buddies and me existed solely in my head. Apparently, nobody else knew the good times that were in store.

I had given both of my buddies about a 30-second preview on what I was thinking and assumed that was adequate.

That’s Where It Went Wrong

So another week went by and we were getting closer to rolling out. Vacation was on the horizon. There was about a week until we had to leave, and being the not-so-planner-type, we didn’t have flights yet. I did some digging and found some surprisingly cheap ones. (Thanks Frontier)

I had flights lined up and before booking, I figured I should dial up my boys and confirm the trip. Uh ohh.

Another World

Electrified back to planet Earth, I was shell shocked discovering that the whole plan was scrapped. What?? My roommate told me he was out. He told me already agreed to drive the 12 hours to go fishing with his brother on the coast of Florida.

What the hell, man?!

My roommate wasn’t coming.

Dude, I was pissed. I felt robbed. Betrayed. Lied to. It was just over a week before we were leaving, about to buy plane tickets – come to find out one of the 3 people on the trip was in no way planning on going to Las Vegas. 33%! 3 down to 2. Logistics, driving, rental car, hotel – Down to 2 people! How the hell was that going to work??

I was pissed. I wanted to yell at him.

“You blindsided the group and went rogue! That’s so god damn selfish! You can’t just decide to not go and not tell us. You’re alienating 2 other people and didn’t feel the need to say anything about it?? The expenses. The car. The living arrangements. They were based around 3 people, not 2. How can you just bail like that??”

The plan was dead in the water. Upsetty-spaghetti is probably the term I would use to describe the feeling.

He retorted that I never “even told him what the plan was”.

He assumed the trip wasn’t even happening in the first place.

I couldn’t believe it. Outrageous. What an asshole. It sounded like a shallow excuse just to get out of taking responsibility for ditching us. It felt fake.

He originally agreed and now all of a sudden planned on totally switching up plans, just because it was convenient? Just because his brother had a ‘better plan’? So as soon as something that sounds more fun comes along we can just bail on our friends? We all had stake in the game and he felt like he could just shirk responsibilities. Perhaps a bit extreme, but it smelled like entitlement and betrayal. When people are counting on you, you can’t just ‘opt-out’ whenever you feel like it.

You can’t just ‘decide not to’ when people rely on you.

In the moment, I was so freaking heated that the only thing in my brain was disbelief and exasperation. After I cooled off, I gave it some more thought.

What the hell… Was he right?

I hadn’t told him what the plans were. I hadn’t given him any information on the trip. I had barely even given him updates. The only thing he heard was that once upon a time, a trip might have been planned. He had no idea if the trip was on.

Here came along an opportunity to go fishing with his brother. Sounded like fun, how could he say no?

I had given him no timeline. I hadn’t kept people up to date, and 3 weeks had gone by where I just assumed all of us were on the same page.

He certainly could have kept us in the loop, but I should have kept him in the loop. There was zero communication on both ends. I assumed no communication meant ‘great, trip is still a go’, but that’s not fair to expect other people to behave the same way you do.

Other people don’t think the same. Other people don’t have the same upbringings and beliefs and expectations. You have to put yourself in their shoes and get them up to speed on what you are thinking. To expect them to already be on the same page is ignorant, naive, and frankly, the slightest bit narcissistic.

We can’t expect other people to know what we’re thinking. It’s our job to get them to where we are.

But the only way we can bridge the gap is if we ask them what they’re thinking and tell them what we’re thinking.

This whole debacle could have (and should have) been a simple fix if we just told each other what we were thinking.

Damn, I guess you really can’t mind read.

Note to self: Overshare because people will tell you if you make that mistake. The corollary isn’t true.