21.07.26
End runs
It’s taken a solid week, but we’re entering the endgame in this huge archive run. I’ve shaken pretty much every tree, and anything that’s left up there and yet to fall out is hanging by a thread. Whatever’s left should arrive over the next few days or so.
A principle that I’ve long known, but have had occasion to reacquaint myself with, is that you need to be assertive to get anything done. I put in a load of these requests back in April, and there’s been a large measure of slow-walking and avoidance, I suspect this is a tactic designed to weed out the people who are not that serious, or who won’t follow up, and the requests can then be quietly dropped.
As soon as I started being pushy and quoting the legal statutes and these agencies’ responsibilities, they started delivering - straight away, overnight. So that’s something to remember: if you want to get things done, you need to be a bit pushy, throw your weight around a little bit.
That is not the way I generally like to behave. I’d prefer it if people responded in a timely and accommodating fashion to polite requests. Sometimes they will, and some individuals have been great, but quite often they think that if they ignore me, I’ll go away. And in those instances you have to wade in with your size twelves.
Anyway, it’s all coming together at a good time. I’m off on a family holiday with the kids soon; I’ll hopefully come back to a clean slate, everything sitting ready for me to begin again. I’m feeling positive about it.