Ahem. The theme of the week is: flaking. Thank you to all the people this week who have cancelled on me at the last second. You are truly teaching me to be a better person, so again, thank you.

Let me start with this: I've been guilty of everything I am about to say. So you know what, it may be karma that this week I've been flaked on ten-fold. But at least I'm learning from my mistakes. I don't like to get flaked on, so I'm making a real effort to not flake on people. I'm practicing the golden rule.

If you make plans, it's simple: stick to them. I'm not even talking about plans that were made within a week of the event. I'm talking about plans that had taken weeks to put together, where people had requested off work in order to make the event happen. If you end up not being able to make it, give a couple days notice. Don't decide all of a sudden that you don't want to go a few hours before the event, because people actually made an effort to make the event go smoothly.

Now that we have established why it's important not to flake on people who have been planning an event for a week, we can talk about how frustrating it is when you act like you're going to hang out with someone somewhat last minute, and you don't commit to it. It's annoying when you say you're going to do something and cancel last minute, but it's even more annoying when you say you're going to do something and you never get back to the person planning at all. Do you think it's okay to just never answer? Leaving them hanging is not cool, man.

That brings me to one more thing that bothers me about making plans. It may not necessarily be considered flaking, but if you say you are interested in doing something, make it happen. A great example of these sort of plans is taking a trip. Don't sound serious about planning trips with your friends if you have no intentions of making any of them happen. You have unnecessarily pumped up your friends for an epic adventure, just for them to be shot down with your excuses about not affording things, not having time, etc. If it is a priority, you can make anything happen. If you really can't make it happen, don't give someone the impression that you're actually trying to plan something.

So after so many cancellations or lack of communication with people this week, I am trying to make a conscious effort to not flake on people. If I say I'm even mildly interested in doing something, it's going into my calendar. It sounds excessive, but at least I'll have no excuse for cancelling on people last-minute. I want to be aware that it makes a difference to people when I give them the time of day when they do the same for me, because in the end, it reflects on me as a person. I want to be considered reliable.