Obligation Tennis, Perpetual Availability, and Boundaries

And most importantly: how to enforce them

I feel like this post is long overdue. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing it for a very long time, but struggled to put fingers to keys for fear I may come across as cold, unhinged, hypocritical and generally very unfriendly, when in truth, I am none of those things most of the time, and only some of those things some of the time, eat your heart out Bilbo Baggins (actually I’m probably technically marginally unhinged morning, noon and night, but in a bumbling, incompetent, awww Gemma’s-Having-Another-Moment sort of way).

What I am 100% percent of the time is a woman with an appreciably minimal amount of resources at her disposal and a decreasing stock of patience, with some considerable experience of unfortunate behaviours from others that, in my opinion, are becoming more commonplace and problematic. So I think it’s time to remind myself of these little things called boundaries, as more as a type of personal mission statement perhaps than anything else, because I feel as if I’m starting to once again slip slide into other people’s nonsense with the grim predictability of a melting polar ice cap collapsing into a gradually warming ocean.

I’m aware that these kind of definitive declarations of intent come with risks. I expect to be misunderstood and misinterpreted, that goes with the territory whenever you express definitive opinions publicly. It is a general rule that, whenever a person tries to enforce any sort of personal and/or professional boundary (especially women or other marginalised individuals) they are misrepresented as unpleasant, as controlling, or, my favourite, as ‘a bitch’ or ‘snowflake’ or other derogatory denomination. Because of course. How dare we have any sort of definable standards when it comes to our social interactions? How daft of us. Please, next time we meet, why not just spit in my mouth and stick your index finger in my belly button? Mmm, I’d love that. I really would (plz don’t). I mean, people are so sensitive these days, right? What’s a little light sexist banter, a little bum-pinching, a little ear-sucking between friends? Also, while I’m here, fancy writing a blurb for my book?

Ahem. Without getting too absurdist (I need to stop retreating into deflective humour when I’m trying to be serious, but it’s hard, it really is), I think this is also an important post for me to write, not least because I am constantly spinning plates and trying to make a go of this thing called life with as little stress as possible, and not managing that bit very well, but because I know I’m also not the only one. The frequent conversations I have these days with other writers, friends and peers is showing me that we’ve got a bit of a problem, and it has to do with our perpetual availability, or the expectation of it, and also little thing I like to call Obligation Tennis, but we’ll get to that presently.

In general, it does feels like we’re living in a time of great anxiety and stress, not only in the publishing landscape, but in wider terms. This decade in particular has seen a prolonged period of turmoil across the planet that’s had a marked effect on many of us. Things seem to me to be more fraught, more precarious, more exhausting. Part of this is a natural, if unfortunate by-product of spending a lot of time ‘online’, but we seem to have forgotten than human beings have had a greater period of history without the internet dominating our lives in such a huge way than with it, and so naturally, we haven’t evolved as quickly as the technology. Our faculties, at least. All of this means some of us might be finding it hard to manage our online personas, interactions and general virtual wellbeing, and that inevitably leaks over into our real lives, and not in good ways. Disrupted sleep. Increased anxiety. Binary ways of thinking. Expectations of other people that perhaps aren’t realistic. Expectations of other people that are realistic, but often not met.

Ultimately, I come back to a simple truth that has helped me a lot with all of this. One: I can’t stem back the tide when it comes to technological advancements. Nor do I wish to, really, although I, like many others, feel unsettled and threatened by the rapid advancement of some ‘innovations’. But I know I can’t do anything about that, I am but one woman, and that woman is sadly not Sarah Connor, no matter how bad ass a goal that is to aspire to.

Nor can I affect or change the behaviour of any other person, or group of people. I just can’t. Not even when they’re being a colossal twatcrumpet that might benefit from a sturdy intervention or two. It just isn’t in my power or remit to effect change on another human being’s behaviour (excluding that of my son, which I am duty bound to try and influence as positively as possible, but that’s another story for another time.) And again, who am I to try and enforce anything, or attempt to educate, or even lead by example? I’m nobody, in the grand scheme of things. Just a writer scribbling nonsense on a daily basis.

But that aside, what I can change is my own behaviour. I can change how I interact, react, and behave with others in a way that benefits my mental wellbeing.

And to that effect, here are some of my boundaries. I hope they help.

Keep your work talk to email

The rising prevalence of messenger apps and people talking work via social media has created, in my opinion, the misconception that people should be available, no matter what time of day or night it is to talk, well. About work.

Again, in my opinion, this makes it inanely difficult to differentiate your work life from your personal life. Let’s say you’re watching TV at 9pm, having crunched hard all day, and you’re mindlessly scrolling twitter as part of your wind-down (I mean if you’re winding down using twitter we should probably talk, but I digress), and suddenly, your dms light up. A little blue dot that needs your attention. You try to ignore it, but you can’t. You hold off looking as long as possible, but eventually you open the message to find someone irately asking you for that endorsement they emailed you about two weeks ago. The one you didn’t reply to, because you didn’t have time, or didn’t want to, or needed a bit longer to think about whether or not you had the capacity to do it. No matter that it’s now 10pm your time. You feel slightly harassed and obligated to reply. Perhaps that isn’t the best example, but the point stands. Your personal time has now become your work time. Your brain goes into work mode, and doesn’t switch off easily after. It’s pernicious, how available we are expected to be no matter what our circumstances. So in these instances, I direct everyone to my email, over and over again. It protects my peace a little better. Other people prefer the immediacy of talking work over social, and that’s fine, I cast no shade. But for me, it doesn’t work. It blurs the lines, and affects professional relationships in a variety if impactful ways.

Email also dominates for me for several other reasons. Email trails, for one, which are lifesavers for anything contractual you aren’t sure about, keeping on top of deadlines, keeping abreast of developments in a project or collaboration and having a single, manageable, filterable source of work communications that doesn’t involve you scrolling through dozens of apps to find out when you’re getting paid for that story or who said what about whom when and so on.

Additionally, email has the added benefit of giving you back your own time. By this, I mean, no read receipts, blue ticks, double ticks, ‘online active’ status, ‘seen’ reports and so on. If someone sends you an email, they generally have no way of knowing when you open and read that communication, unless they’ve requested a read receipt specifically, which most people don’t bother with. It sounds like a small thing, but it really does take the pressure off a bit to know that you can read the communication on your own time without worrying about people getting cross with you for not replying right away. Which leads me to another thing: unless you’re on some sort of deadline or time-bound project where your ability and willingness to communicate in a timely fashion is an accepted part of the success of the thing you’re working on, and a reasonable thing to expect from you, generally, in most other cases, you don’t have to reply to an email until you are good and ready, and sometimes, not even then. Sure, it’s polite to reply, but doing so only when you are truly ready and able and willing to do so does everyone a favour including you. Sometimes, you need to think about something and take your time with a response- especially if you want to avoid overcommitting or getting involved with something that might not be a great use of your energy or resources. It’s very tempting, with social media messaging, to get flustered and give into something right away and say ‘yes’ when you don’t really mean it- especially when you can see the other party online waiting for your reply. Email removes that pressure considerably.

The other benefit of email is you also can’t see people typing and replying in real time. Again, this might sound dumb, but if I wanted that sort of real-time interaction I’d call or Zoom someone. Or meet in person. I don’t really want to sit and watch you type and wonder what the hell is coming my way, no offence. It’s work. Again, perhaps this is curmudgeonly. I suspect it is. But it makes me stressed and anxious and that always affects whatever the thing is that I’m working on negatively. Just a thought.

Bottom line for me is: work stuff stays in email wherever possible. It’s a lot more manageable. This goes for blurb requests, anthology invites, event information, general queries, anything to do with contracts, payment or admin and most other things, too. Social for socialising, email for work. Boundaries.

You don’t always need to reply

To back the first point up: I used to feel this enormous responsibility to reply to EVERYTHING. Dms. Texts. Comments. Replies. Quote tweets. Story tags. Emails. It got so unbearably overwhelming, especially when my efforts at social media marketing began to pay off, and I got a little more traction in my career. The more success you experience in that arena, the more interactions follow, that’s just how it works. Mostly, these interactions are pleasurable, but its impossible to expect you to see, reply or interact with every tiny thing. You just can’t. And you don’t have to. I promise.

Again, for me, this comes down to only having so many available hours. If you work hard all day, spend all the time you’re not working doing chores and childcare and trying to care for your house, pets, spend time with your spouse, and any other of the myriad obligations you’ve got knocking down your door then you genuinely do not need to reply to every single message or interaction you get, as I said before. If it’s important, the person messaging you will find ways to reach you. If it’s not, it wasn’t that important anyway. No one reasonable is going to be mad at you for not replying to that 25-tweet thread you were tagged in, not if it isn’t a priority. If they are, red flag. Your time is yours, not theirs. You don’t always need to reply, even if you do strive to be a Perpetually Polite Person.

Don’t be bullied into giving your phone number away

Sounds like something that shouldn’t need to be said, but I’ve given my personal number to people after being tricked or bullied into it, and then instantly regretted it. In my opinion, getting your phone number should be something people earn, possibly via a series of ingenious and gruelling Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom style tasks, because let me tell you, as soon as you give those digits out, people want to use them. Boy, do they want to use them. You’re a lot better off only giving your number to people you trust and know extremely well, who are much less likely to exploit it.

Watch out for master manipulators

Manipulation come in a wide variety of subtle and regrettable shades. Love-bombing. Obsessively liking, commenting and replying to things beyond the bounds of the relationship. Using overly affectionate or overly intimate language with someone you’ve never actually met or conversed with in any real depth. Gift-giving, and then reminding you of said gift. Same thing for doing you ‘favours’, then reminding you of that favour repeatedly so you know you are obligated to reciprocate, or else you are a bad fish. This is what I mean by Obligation Tennis, which I mentioned earlier. Sometimes, people will identify you as a person who might be able to add benefit to their lives in some way, and as part of preparing to ask you for something, they start out by unexpectedly and without warning doing ‘nice things’ for you, even when you are complete strangers, to all intents and purposes. With the Obligation Tennis pros, those nice things are then always, always brought up some point in the future as leverage. You can distinguish the good types from the bad very quickly and easily by spotting who plays Obligation Tennis. They are the sorts of people who often get wind of their shitty behaviour being called out and go on frenzied charm offensives, posting pictures of themselves with their children or pets or weaponizing their mental health or neurodiversity or sexuality or a wide range of other things as a form of pre-empting criticism. This is a tangent, I know, but if I had a penny for every MF who Obligation Tennised me into doing something for them, got called out for their pattern behaviour by someone in the community who’d had enough, then retreated into a series of ‘relatable’ charm offensive damage limitation posts about their kids and struggles and whatnot, I’d be considerably flush in the pennies department. This sounds horrifically mean spirited and bitter, I know, but it’s my personal experience, and a large part of why I have boundaries.

That being said, I am always intensely grateful to anyone who goes out of their way to support and help me whenever I can be, but I will not be grateful for favours that are bestowed only by way of some cynical, transactional, reciprocal obligation and for no other reason. It takes a while to spot these people, because they are crafty and clever, but ultimately, they want your time, and energy, and are vampiric, and the only way you beat them is by establishing strong boundaries.

Another note here: watch out for folks on support or clout recruitment campaigns, particularly those involved in any scenario where bad feeling or behaviour is suspected. I’ve had people try to slide into my dms to get me ‘onside’ (a podcaster most noticeably, who fell out with the women on his team) when I didn’t really have any knowledge of what had happened or really even know the people involved that well. It felt like a very calculated attempt to get me involved in something I didn’t want to be. Note, I am not talking about discourse where you consider each other to be good friends and want to inform or warn them of something. There’s a difference, and you can tell.

Don’t get sucked in

Drama (I hate that word because it minimises a lot, but can’t think of another, better descriptive term) happens wherever there are communities that thrive on, and off line. It’s very easy (I am a culprit and this is why I need to remind myself to stop doing it) to waste hours of your life deep-diving spats and arguments and clashes and catastrophes. And on the one hand, it gives you an idea again of who the good players are, and folks to watch out for. Gossip, I suppose, is also endlessly entertaining. But it also detracts from your day. It hoovers valuable time and energy you could put into creative endeavours. It also puts you at risk, particularly in an age where every single interaction can be screenshotted. In heated situations, especially online, I try wherever possible to not get sucked in. I’m healthier for it, I think. It’s hard, because sometimes I do feel as if I want to lend my support to an important cause or topic, or speak out about something that needs discourse and conversation, but I am also aware that my actions can probably speak louder than my words, so instead of contributing to online discussions, I’ve gotten more into the habit of dealing with these topics and themes in my work, or in posts like this. Doing so gives me more time to think about what I actually want to say, rather than be reactionary. That feels more helpful to both me and the issue at hand, but again, each to their own. I’m simply relating my own personal coping mechanisms here, I am definitely not advising or advocating for any one approach as superior or inferior to another.

Pay attention to your gut

If something or someone makes you feel uncomfortable, I’ve found it best to not dismiss the sensation. Too many of us have been brought up to be docile and accommodating at the expense of our own comfort and security. I’ve had to teach myself how to pay attention to that feeling, and how it manifests. It is my body trying to warn me, after all, that I’m not feeling safe or happy. If someone gives me the skeev, sure, I could be overreacting or too sensitive or too serious OR I could have a very functional, natural sense of danger and instinct and self-preservation. It isn’t shameful to want to protect yourself if someone or thing is making you feel ‘off’. It isn’t shameful to remove yourself from that interaction that quite frankly, isn’t for you. For some of us with issues around sociability and social cues and interactions, we can find other people’s behaviours and motivations confusing. In such situations, listening to my gut has served me well. I can always change my opinion about someone later down the line. An initial impression doesn’t have to be set in stone. But I can also preserve my peace by reacting in a way that removes me from anything deeply uncomfortable for me. Even if it gives me more time to think, process, and analyse a situation, which, if you’re anything like me, you might need to do. I’m no longer afraid of taking a step back, and listening to my gut.

Keep boundary breakers at arm’s length

If I’ve made something clear to someone, and they have betrayed my confidence or trust or routinely overstepped my boundaries, then it makes no sense for me to keep them close. Unfortunately it isn’t practical or realistic to block or ignore every single person in your social sphere who crushes your boundaries underfoot without a second thought, but you can keep them at arm’s length, and minimise the interactions you have with them. This all sounds rather Game of Thrones-ish, and perhaps it is, but in my opinion, it is healthier to keep those who respect the way you want to interact close, and everyone else further out on the peripheral.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. If any of my subscribers find this useful, I’ll probably do more on this topic, and if not, I imagine I’ll hear about it somehow, such is the way with these things. Either way, I do think it’s important to have a little list of things you will and won’t put up with written down somewhere, even if you refer back to it later and change your mind about certain things. Hopefully, some of you feel the same.

Gemma