Last night, I was talking with a friend about boundaries. How to set them, how to maintain them. If you feel taken advantage of (your time or your attention) often the response is an increasing sense of being TRAPPED – as opposed to a natural and intuitive re-setting of boundaries. It’s hard to say “No” to someone. It’s hard to realize, “I have reached my limit. Got no more to give at this present time. Need to re-boot. Handle your own damn problems.” What can also be difficult is to say “No” to some request (for time, a listening ear) without letting that feeling of being TRAPPED enter into your tone, and making the whole thing a negative brou-haha. We were sharing stories about this from our lives, talking, listening, helping each other.<\/p>\n
So I was so pleased, so happy, this morning to see this particular piece by Richard Oram on “The Decline Postcard.”<\/a> And here is a piece on “the best decline letter of all time<\/a>“. It really is awesome. I would love to see the Decline Postcard have a Renaissance. I suppose it’s similar to automated email responses, like: “I’m out of the office. I’ll get back to you at my earliest convenience.” Or screening your calls. But the Decline Postcard has something else going on with it: It’s an elegant and yet very firm way of saying, “You know what? NO.” I love the Decline Postcards that are openly cranky, due to the fact that the writer has been bombarded with requests the entire time he has been successful. He has experienced all of the requests, and already knows, beforehand, what he will and will not do. And he is already annoyed. Not because he is naturally cranky (although sometimes he was that too), but because he has experienced all of these things time without number, and he feels harassed by them.<\/p>\n A comparison could be made with my Comment Policy here<\/a> (and most other Comment Policy pages I’ve seen on personal sites – at least the ones that have a readership outside of close personal friends): Every single item on that list is something I have had to contend with repeatedly since I started the blog (or: since I switched from a political theme to an arts theme in 2004.) These were not just drive-by annoyances from random commenters: these were regular power-struggles that went on between me and my regular readers<\/i> at the time, many of whom came from links I received from big political blogs and then stuck around. As I switched the focus, I already knew what the comments would be for many of my posts (I would write about Oscar night, and talk about J. Lo’s dress and etc., and the majority of comments would be sneers about Hollywood liberals and how stupid and vain all actors are – and I realized – wow, I’m hanging out with the wrong crowd, they are no fun at all, and don’t “get” what I’m doing here at all) – so I created that comment policy to nip things in the bud. I hadn’t started out with a Comment Policy. I figured early on the kind of TONE I liked to have in the comments – light, respectful, intelligent – but I hadn’t realized how obnoxious so many people are, and how consistently THE SAME all the comments would be. It was repetitive, those types of comments, and that was the worst part. The hostility towards the things I wanted to write about seemed to chase away the folks I wanted to be reading here: movie-lovers, people who love the arts, curious, intelligent, open, all that. People still come to my site and immediately violate my entire comment policy in their first comment – it’s hysterical – so all I need to do is to provide a link to said policy, and say, “Here are my ground rules.” It’s a TIME SAVER, above all else. I don’t need to even get into it. It’s boundary-setting from the get-go. It is deciding to not be dominated<\/i> by those who are strangely irritated by the main topic of a personal website<\/i>, but it’s also flat out refusing to give up your precious time to arguing the merits of things you hold dear. Not so much because I want to squelch anyone’s self-expression (I mean: you can set up a blog for FREE, so you are free to go and rant about stupid Hollywood actors and stupid Oscar night and Hollywood liberals to your heart’s content – although I certainly won’t be reading your blog if that’s your topic) – but because there are not enough hours in the day to deal with all of those fights, and frankly it no longer interests me. I’d rather talk about James Joyce than try to convince someone with a chip on his shoulder that James Joyce is worth talking about. My classic example (true story) is when I wrote some post back then about a book I had read or a movie I had seen, and someone commented, “Just wondering when you are going to weigh in on Abu Gharib.” “Weigh in”? What am I, CNN? It was so weird. Would you go to a blog focused on crafts, or making your own jewelry, or cooking, and demand that the blogger “weigh in” on the situation in Darfur? Very strange. If you would like to hear my opinions on Abu Gharib, then I would certainly welcome a check from you for $100, and I’ll go to town on the topic. Otherwise, I beg to be excused accordingly.<\/p>\n I was bored with all of this about a month in to the change-of-topic on my blog with those fights, and knew I wanted new readers. I want to protect myself from boredom<\/i> most of all.<\/p>\n The Decline Postcard, cranky or otherwise, recognizes that one of the most precious thing on the planet is TIME. And it is up to YOU to police your own time. People will come to you with requests. Friends, or (if you’re famous) strangers. To have to repeatedly say, “I don’t work for free”, or “No, sorry, I won’t read your unpublished poetry chapbook” is tiresome and takes up too much TIME.<\/p>\n Hence: the Decline Postcard.<\/p>\n George Bernard Shaw’s are the best<\/a>. They are very angry. He is already angry.<\/p>\n Oram has collected Decline Postcards from many authors, wanting it to be its own genre, and he has some awesome examples. I liked this, because it does make the point that these Decline Postcards, unlike regular rejection letters, or form rejection letters, suggest a level of personal involvement from the author, showing that they have experienced ALL of these things in the past, and want to set their boundaries against such intrusions BEFOREhand. Some of them would edit their Decline Postcards, as new requests came in for things they hadn’t even thought of. (Check out Shaw’s emendations to one of his Decline Postcards, because he obviously realized that there were boundaries he hadn’t even realized he had – and once they were trespassed he needed to re-draw the lines immediately.)<\/p>\n Oram writes:<\/p>\n Even more mild-mannered authors, such as Marianne Moore, could be driven to the use of decline postcards. Moore\u00e2\u0080\u0099s list* includes \u00e2\u0080\u009crecommend editors favorable to verse by children or work bequeathed for publication,\u00e2\u0080\u009d suggesting that she had received more than a few requests along this line.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Go read the whole thing – it’s wonderful<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night, I was talking with a friend about boundaries. How to set them, how to maintain them. If you feel taken advantage of (your time or your attention) often the response is an increasing sense of being TRAPPED – … Continue reading