Out of my control

This week was a hard one for me. I ended up being summoned for jury duty on Tuesday (in SF, you are on call for an entire week and every afternoon you have to check and see if your group has been summoned). Luckily I had left my classroom prepared enough to write some sub plans to cover the minimum day without going back when I found out (at 4:30pm). I missed two important conferences but left notes for the other teachers to share on my behalf.

Unfortunately we ended up being brought down to a courtroom almost immediately for jury selection. I was never called to the box, but I spent six hours listening to other people answer questions with the only outlet being my phone (which I wasn’t supposed to be looking at). For a girl with ADHD, it was pretty brutal, especially as I was constantly worried I would get called to be a perspective juror. It was the worst combination of anxiety and boredom. Restless does not even begin to capture how I felt.

They didn’t finish jury selection by 4:30pm so we were sent home with instructions to return on Thursday (Wednesday was Yom Kippur so there was no jury service). I appreciated having a day at work to prepare for yet another day away. I also appreciated going to martial arts on Tuesday night, instead of back down to my classroom.

Tuesday was really frustrating for me, and I struggled to figure out why I was so upset by the whole thing. I realized another stressor was waiting for our tenant to sign the buy out agreement we gave him almost two weeks ago. Despite multiple emails inquiring as to when we might expect him to return it, we heard nothing. I felt so powerless and everything felt so uncertain. I realized I felt the same way about jury duty, sitting in a florescent lit room waiting for my name to be called arbitrarily and the next few weeks of my life made immeasurably harder.

So yeah, I handle feeling powerless and being out of control badly, but there was something else at play, and then I finally put my finger on what it was. It’s one thing to manage uncertainty, but I become enraged and resentful when I feel that uncertainty is being caused by someone who I deem unworthy of having power over my life.

I believe our justice system is fundamentally broken and that the jury selection system causes undo stress and hardship to the small percentage of people who actually show up. The system is flawed and unfair and I am resentful that it can turn my life into chaos with no regard for the fact that I am trying my hardest to be a productive, law abiding member of society.

I could write a novel on my thoughts about the unfairness of the tenant rights situation but everyone’s time is best served if I don’t. Needless to say, I absolutely resent the power our tenant holds over us, when we have been responsible, fair landlords and he has not upheld the spirit of our lease agreement dozens of times over (I say spirit because it would be impossible, in a court of law, to prove he broke our agreement). The fact that we are at the whim of his inability to make decisions and commit to his agreements is infuriating to me.

So yeah, it was a rough week, and I’m working through my anger and resentment about it all.

Wednesday night I was up late writing sub plans and Thursday morning I was back at the “Hall of Justice” expecting to sit through another brutal day of jury selection. Imagine my surprise when the judge came in to tell us that one of the lawyers had a family emergency and he had granted a mistrial, which meant we were all excused from jury service. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be a massive understatement. I initially considered driving to work but I had spent so long writing sub plans that I decided to take the day for myself.

On my way back to the bus stop my husband called to say that our tenant had finally responded to our emails. He wants more money than we agreed upon (after weeks of initial negotiations). I wasn’t surprised. He has a long history of agreeing to something only to decide that he doesn’t actually agree to it a few weeks later, after we’ve already taken costly action. We immediately changed the contract and put it in his mailbox, communicating that if we didn’t find it there signed by Friday at 11:59pm we would be withdrawing from buy out negotiations. Even if he does sign we have 45 days of uncertainty ahead as he is granted that long to opt out of the contract without penalty. We’re hoping that if he does sign his habits of procrastination and inaction will finally be working in our favor.

If he doesn’t sign we are in for a long and costly legal battle that we may not even win.

I am trying to see the nuance of both the jury selection system and the tenants’ rights situation in San Francisco, as I know they both exist for good reason, reasons I can support when they aren’t wreaking havoc over my personal life with seeming reckless abandon. Getting an impromptu day off is definitely helping.