Twice now, I’ve caught myself making assumptions about the subjects of my reportage. First, I felt spurned by an individual who had clearly received my attempts at contacting him, but responded only by texting that they would be available several days later — I was on deadline, and it frustrated me. The second time I was interacting with an office with control of public records, and after sunshine requesting those records I hadn’t received them for a few weeks. I felt they had slow-walked them.

My emotional response, in both cases, was to assume negative motivations on the part of the other party. In the former case, it was because they were visiting a family member after a medical emergency. The second case is still moving along, but regardless of motive the people I assumed were responsible in fact had little control over the situaiton.

“Getting in my feels,” in this gig, is an easy way to find myself making unfair assumptions about folks, and possibly treating them differently as a result. I need to lock that instinct down.