I’m late.
This post was written by Tim Urban and originally published on Wait But Why.
I woke up this morning to a text. It was a link:
"optimistic-people-have-one-thing-common-always-late.”
Intriguing. Nothing's better than the headline: "The reason people are [bad quality that describes you] is actually because they're [good quality]."I got to reading. And as it turns out, according to the article, late people are actually the best people ever.They're optimistic and hopeful:
"People who are continuously late are actually just more optimistic. They believe they can fit more tasks into a limited amount of time more than other people and thrive when they're multitasking. Simply put, they're fundamentally hopeful."
They're big-thinking:
"People who are habitually late don't sweat over the small stuff, they concentrate on the big picture and see the future as full of infinite possibilities."
Late people just get it:
"People with a tendency for tardiness like to stop and smell the roses…life was never meant to be planned down to the last detail. Remaining excessively attached to timetables signifies an inability to enjoy the moment."
By the end of the article, I had never felt prouder to be a chronically late person.
But also, what the hell is going on? Late people are the worst. It's the quality I like least in myself. And I'm not late because I like to smell the roses or because I can see the big picture or because the future is full of infinite possibilities. I'm late because I'm insane.
So I thought about this for a minute, and I think I figured out what's going on. The issue is that there are two kinds of lateness:
1. OK lateness. This is when the late person being late does not negatively impact anyone else — like being late to a group hangout or a party. Things can start on time and proceed as normal with or without the late person being there yet.
2. Not-OK lateness. This is when the late person being late does negatively impact others — like being late to a two-person dinner or meeting or anything else that simply can't start until the late party arrives.
John Haltiwanger's Elite Daily article is (I hope) talking mostly about OK lateness. In which case, sure, maybe those people are the best, who knows.
But if you read the comment section under Haltiwanger's article, people are furious with him for portraying lateness in a positive light. And that's because they're thinking about the far less excusable not-OK lateness.
1. OK lateness. This is when the late person being late does not negatively impact anyone else — like being late to a group hangout or a party. Things can start on time and proceed as normal with or without the late person being there yet.
2. Not-OK lateness. This is when the late person being late does negatively impact others — like being late to a two-person dinner or meeting or anything else that simply can't start until the late party arrives.
John Haltiwanger's Elite Daily article is (I hope) talking mostly about OK lateness. In which case, sure, maybe those people are the best, who knows.
But if you read the comment section under Haltiwanger's article, people are furious with him for portraying lateness in a positive light. And that's because they're thinking about the far less excusable not-OK lateness.
All of this has kind of left me with no choice but to take a quick nine-hour break from working on a gargantuan SpaceX post to discuss not-OK late people.
When it comes to people who are chronically not-OK late, I think there are two subgroups:
Group 1: Those who don't feel bad or wrong about it. These people are assholes.
Group 2: Those who feel terrible and self-loathing about it. These people have problems.
Group 1 is simple. They think they're a little more special than everyone else, like the zero-remorse narcissist at the top of Haltiwanger's article. They're unappealing. Not much else to discuss here.
Punctual people think all not-OK late people are in Group 1 (as the comments on this post will show) — because they're assuming all late people are sane people.
When a sane person thinks a certain kind of behavior is fine, they do it. When they think it's wrong, they don't do it. So to a punctual person — one who shows up on time because they believe showing up late is the wrong thing to do — someone who's chronically late must be an asshole who thinks being late is OK.
But that's misunderstanding the entire second group, who, despite being consistently late, usually detest the concept of making other people wait. Let call them CLIPs (Chronically Late Insane Persons).
While both groups of not-OK late people end up regularly frustrating others, a reliable way to identify a Group 2 CLIP is a bizarre compulsion to defeat themselves — some deep inner drive to inexplicably miss the beginning of movies, endure psychotic stress running to catch the train, crush their own reputation at work, etc., etc. As much as they may hurt others, they usually hurt themselves even more.
I spent around 15% of my youth standing on some sidewalk alone, angrily kicking rocks, because yet again, all the other kids had gotten picked up and I was still waiting for my mom. When she finally arrived, instead of being able to have a pleasant conversation with her, I'd get into the car seething. She always felt terrible. She has problems.
My sister once missed an early morning flight, so they rescheduled her for the following morning. She managed to miss that one too, so they put her on a flight five hours later. Killing time during the long layover, she got distracted on a long phone call and missed that flight too. She has problems.
I've been a CLIP my whole life. I've made a bunch of friends mad at me, I've embarrassed myself again and again in professional situations, and I've run a cumulative marathon through airport terminals.
When I'm late, it's often the same story, something like this:
I'll be meeting someone, maybe a professional contact, at, say, a coffee place at 3:00. When I lay out my schedule for the day, I'll have the perfect plan. I'll leave early, arrive early, and get there around 2:45. That takes all the stress out of the situation, and that's ideal because non-stressful commutes are one of my favorite things. It'll be great — I'll stroll out, put on a podcast, and head to the subway. Once I'm off the subway, with time to spare, I'll take a few minutes to peruse storefronts, grab a lemonade from a street vendor, and enjoy New York. It'll be such a joy to look up at the architecture, listen to the sounds, and feel the swell of people rushing by — oh magnificent city!
All I have to do is be off the subway by 2:45. To do that, I need to be on the subway by 2:25, so I decide to be safe and get to the subway by 2:15. So I have to leave my apartment by 2:07 or earlier, and I'm set. What a plan.
Here's how it'll play out (if you're new to WBW, you're advised to check this out before proceeding):
Making plans on time.
Maybe some procrastination.
Avoiding the issues.
Arguing over avoiding the issues.
Some dawdling.
Some more dawdling.
And some lingering.
And some more lingering.
Is this dragging my feet?
This is dragging my feet.
This is becoming a problem.
This is feeling uncomfortable.
This IS uncomfortable.
This IS a problem.
But I’m cool.
So cool.
Ice cold like a fighter pilot.
I’m a chillin’.
Now worries my way.
Not thinking about it.
Positive thoughts.
Positive action... well now.
It will all workout.
Maybe I’m gonna be late.
I’m gonna be late.
Oopsie.
And that’s the traffic.
It’s the traffics fault.
This map is broken.
Perfect timing on being late. Nailed it.
CLIPs are strange people. I'm sure each CLIP is insane in their own special way, and to understand how they work, you'll usually have to get to some dark inner psychology.
For me, it's some mix of these three odd traits:
1. I'm late because I'm in denial about how time works.
The propensity of CLIPs to underestimate how long things take comes out of some habitual delusional optimism. Usually what happens is, of all the times the CLIP has done a certain activity or commute, what they remember is that one time things went the quickest. And that amount of time is what sticks in their head as how long that thing takes. I don't think there's anything that will get me to internalize that packing for a weeklong trip takes 20 minutes. In my head, it's eternally a five-minute task. You just take out the bag, throw some clothes in it, throw your toiletries in, zip it up, and done. Five minutes. The empirical data that shows that there are actually a lot of little things to think about when you pack and that it takes 20 minutes every time is irrelevant. Packing is clearly a five-minute task. As I type this, that's what I believe.
2. I'm late because I have a weird aversion to changing circumstances.
Not sure what the deal is with this, but something in me is strangely appalled by the idea of transitioning from what I'm currently doing to doing something else. When I'm at home working, I hate when there's something on my schedule that I have to stop everything for to go outside and do. It's not that I hate the activity — once I'm there I'm often pleased to be there — it's an irrational resistance to the transition. The positive side of this is it usually means I'm highly present when I finally do haul my ass somewhere, and I'm often among the last to leave.
3. Finally, I'm late because I'm mad at myself.
There's a pretty strong correlation here — the worse I feel about my productivity so far that day, the more likely I am to be late. When I'm pleased with how I've lived the day so far, the Rational Decision-Maker has a much easier time taking control of the wheel. I feel like an adult, so it's easy to act like an adult. But times when the monkey had his way with me all day, when the time rolls around that I need to stop working and head out somewhere, I can't believe that this is all I've gotten done. So my brain throws a little tantrum, refusing to accept the regrettable circumstances, and stages a self-flagellating protest, saying, "NO. This cannot be the situation. Nope. You didn't do what you were supposed to do, and now you'll sit here and get more done, even if it makes you late.”
So yeah, that's why I'm late. Because I have problems.
Don't excuse the CLIPs in your life — it's not OK, and they need to fix it. But remember: It's not about you. They have problems.
This article originally appeared on 04.07.16
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It's hard to date when you're fat, but not for the reasons you might think.
"You know what I like about you? You’ve got fat pride. I felt that way, too, until I realized I wanted anyone to fuck me ever."
We’d been talking online for weeks — he was funny, erudite, nerdy, kind. He’d told me he’d lost weight in the past. I’d done my due diligence of telling him how fat I was, working hard to avoid repeats of past hurt and disappointment. I’d weeded through dozens of profiles about wanting to meet "healthy," "active" women and several that pointedly instructed that fat women weren’t welcome. Many men had sent graphic, sexual messages, and when I politely declined or didn’t respond, they issued lengthy screeds. "U SHOULD BE GRATEFUL." "I wouldn’t even rape you."
In amongst all of that, I’d found someone who seemed like a gem. And then, on our first real date, this. It was frustrating, isolating, and made me feel so big and so small, all at the same time.
I gently pushed back. "You know you’re saying that about me, too, right?"
"What?"
"When you talk about no one wanting to fuck fat people, you’re talking about me, too."
He shook his head. "Don’t take it personally. It’s not personal."
I got quiet then asked for the check. He said he’d walk me out. When we got outside, he tried to kiss me then asked if I wanted to go back to his place.
Years later, I was falling for a new partner.
We’d been dating for several months, and she was extraordinary: full of life, wildly intelligent, absurdly beautiful. I’d tell her often — maybe too often — how stunning I thought she was. With equal frequency, she’d talk about my body. "You’re so brave to dress the way you do." "I want you to feel empowered."
At first, her responses sounded like reciprocity, but they always seemed to sting. I felt deflated every time she said it. Like that first date, she couldn’t see past my body. She valued me, but she didn’t desire me. When she spoke, she never spoke about my body — only about my relationship to it. She was amazed that I wasn’t sucked into the undertow of self-loathing and isolation that she expected from fat women. Those comments were a reminder of how frequently she thought of my body, not as an object of desire, but as an obstacle to overcome. She was impressed that I could. She could not.
When you and I talk about dating, dear friend, we have a lot of overlapping experiences because dating can be difficult and awkward for anyone.
It’s a strange auditioning process: all artifice to find someone who can respect your uncrossable lines, and failed auditions usually mean those lines get crossed. It’s easy to feel judged, stalled, alone in the process. It can get exhausting, exciting, frustrating, exhilarating.
But dating as a fat person means contending with so many added layers of challenge.
You told me once you imagined it was impossible to date as a fat person. It’s not; it’s just a lot of work. Lots of people are willing to sleep with fat people. Many are willing to date a fat person.
Few are willing to truly embrace a fat person. Almost no one, it seems, really knows what that means.
That first date, dear friend, is such a frequent moment.
My sweet, funny date was abruptly overthrown, overtaken by years of the same anti-fat messages all of us hear. He couldn’t reconcile being fat and being loved. All of that, suddenly, was visited upon me, as it so often is.
I only bring up my feelings about being a fat person after knowing someone for some time. But, with startling regularity, new acquaintances, dates, and strangers offer diet advice, trial gym memberships, and, even once, a recommendation for a surgeon. My life as a fat person is a barrage of weekly, daily, and hourly offers of unsolicited advice. At first, the detailed answers, the constant defense, the explanation of my daily diet and medical history are ineffective — no answer is sufficient. Over time, it becomes burdensome, then exhausting, then frustrating. And it doesn’t seem to cross the minds of most people I meet that I’ve heard what they’ve said before — not just once, but over and over again, in great detail. I have a forced expertise in diets, exercise regimens, miracle pills, and the science of weight loss.
That may not be your experience, dear friend, because people may approach you differently.
You might not know what it’s like to feel your face flush or your heart race when your body so reliably becomes a topic of conversation during dinner parties, work events, first dates. There’s a familiar wave of frustration, hurt, and exhaustion. It’s all the visceral, invisible consequence of unintended harm because few of us — even you, my darling — have unlearned the scripts we’re expected to recite when we see a body like mine.
As a fat woman, I just want what anyone else wants: to be seen, to be loved, to be supported for who I am. To be challenged and adored. To be worth the effort for who I am.
When I meet people whose first response to me is about my fat body, I learn something important about that person. Whether their opening salvo is "Fat bitch" or "I’m concerned about your health" or "Have you tried this diet?" or "I think you’re beautiful," they all send the same message: that I am invisible. Rather than seeing me or getting to know who I am, they can only see my fat body.
It’s true of so many people I meet. They’ve got this deep-seated block: They can’t see fat people as individual people with individual stories because no one expects them to. Nothing in our culture indicates that fat people might have individual experiences, different stories, life experiences as rich and varied as anyone else. Instead, we’re met with diagnosis, prognosis, quarantine: an anthropological impulse to demand to know why we are the way we are and to figure out how to stop us from having the bodies we have. We’re reduced to figures in an equation, a puzzle to solve. But truthfully, we’re so much messier than that. We’re just as contradictory, real, and human as anyone else you know, and loving us is just as complicated.
When we have conversations like this, you often say, "I had no idea."
It’s heartening, dear friend, and it’s also hard to hear. It’s a harsh reminder that even those closest to me are subject to all those same influences and impulses.
There’s so much work in just working up the mettle to date at all. Building your own confidence and battling your own doubt enough to date at all can be difficult, in part because there’s no template. Media representation is seriously lacking for many communities; seeing thriving fat people in media is nearly nonexistent. Being fat means not seeing yourself reflected anywhere as being happy, healthy, or affirmed.
Being fat means taking on the Sisyphean task of creating your own world, one in which you can declare a truce with yourself and learn to feel OK or feel nothing at all about yourself when the entire world seems to be telling you that is not possible.
It means finding whatever you can scavenge to build yourself some makeshift shelter of thatch and driftwood. It’s brittle and dry, and it’s something. You try to build something that can withstand the gale-force winds of seeing an episode of "The Biggest Loser" or hearing a stranger offer unsolicited diet advice that you’re already taking. You build it slowly, painstakingly — testing methods and gathering rare, essential materials over time. It’s precious and fragile, a labor of love and a means of survival.
And finding a partner means opening that hard-fought home to someone else, over and over again, knowing that person might destroy it.
Usually, they do.
You’ve mourned it a hundred times. Your skin has thickened. Sometimes that person burns it to the ground, setting a fire to watch it burn. But more often, they just forget to extinguish their cigarette. Yes, when we look for love, some of us are hurt intentionally, cruelly, because of our bodies and because of overt fatphobia. But usually, we’re hurt without malice, through rote scripts about who we’re allowed to be and an expectation that we’ll devote our lives to meeting those expectations.
Often, when looking for friends and partners, I search for those who will be gentle with the home I’ve built, ramshackle though it is.
What made such an impression on my partner from years ago was that I didn’t stop there: I wanted someone who would help build that home, someone who would protect it, someone who would call it their home, too. Because a lack of harm isn’t love.
I want love. And as a fat person, there’s audacity in that.