Your journal entry should describe a past writing experience where you were misunderstood. This can be a text message chain, social media post, letter, etc.
You should also describe what you think went wrong in the communication. Why/how were you misunderstood?
Finally, your journal entry should reflect on how you might re-approach that writing experience now, after reflecting on it as a past event.
On friday, feb 23, my cat went missing. I posted about it on social media and told my manager I wouldnt be able to make it into work that day. I had to look for him. He has been with me for 8 years and i love him like family. Max is getting old, and old cats who are ready to pass away tend to do so away from home or in a safe hiding spot. So, ity should come to no suprise that i was freaking out and greiving all at the same time. I continued to post that day about how he was gone and how i was feeling. my coworkers were slammed at work that day and were struggling without me. i guess one of them saw my post and it got around that I called out because of my cat. It had been all day, and i still hadnt found max. I was very upset, still looking after dark with cat treats in one hand and a flashlight in the other. I was ready to give up when I approached my house, done searching the rest of my street, when I shine my flashlight towards my neighbors yard. I saw green glowing eyes light up, with a fluffy silhouette, and i knew immediatly it was him. I saw 30 cats that day, like i was some kind of cat whisperer- or there is a feral cat problem in my neighborhood. I was so releived that I had my maxwell back, and im sure he was happy to see me too, or just releived that I was taking him back to his fresh bowl of food and water.
The next day, I returned to work to find that my coworkers were stand-offish. Id expect a bit of this because they were severely understaffed on a very busy Friday because of me, but It was overwhelming given that I had gone through so much the day before. I would mention why I called out to a few of my coworkers and they would giggle to eachother like it was some kind of inside joke between them. It felt extremely insensitive and made me very upset. It felt like no one cared about me or my cat. I get that some people dont understand what its like to have pets and they dont get the bond you can have towards them. I think the miscommunication came about when I originally texted my manager that I wouldnt be able to come in that day due to a “family emergency”. On top of that, I beleive my one coworker who saw the post relayed it to another, causing everyone else to believe that my cat just “went outside”, and this was obviously not the case. They thought that I just made up something to get out of work, when really, Max is very important to me, and I couldnt just leave him to be missing. This was a family emergency to me, and I think thats all that matters. After work that night, I texted a couple of my coworkers who were being insensitive and fully explained how I felt that they were laughing at me and making jokes about my situation, and what the situation was really like for me. I received apologies from both of them, and they made it clear that they didnt mean to hurt my feelings, and if one of their pets went missing, they would do the same thing.
In the future, I might be a bit more straightforward with my manager, instead of saying I have a “family emergency”, I will tell her exactly whats going on and why i feel the need to stay home because of it. Additonally, I wont tell my coworkers about the situation at all and keep everything between me and my manager. However, this is hard for me because I trust my coworkers with most things, and we all have bonded over time. I think if the communication went a bit differently, they wouldnt have been so rude about it, and maybe all of this could have been avoided.
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