So last week I cancelled my Dutch course, on the Saturday in fact.   And the guy seemed pretty angry on the phone, because I cancelled by email on Saturday and then he called me on Sunday or Monday to say that I can’t cancel and I should have to pay the whole lot or something.

To which I explained….that as I hadn’t paid yet, ….i was definitely not going to do that, especially considering that I won’t be going to the classes. I mean what kind of bullshit is that?

Plus, I found this Dutch course on facebook and it required you to pay 150 euros in advance before even turning up for the first class.
I’ve obviously lived in China for a while, so I’m pretty cynical when it comes to these kind of things.
And for those thinking… oh but that’s just normal, that’s just smart….  Yes, that is also cynical. Cynical is sceptical of people’s intentions.  So don’t give me that shit that being cynical is bad.

So this dude tried to say ‘normally you pay first, and then if you don’t like it …you tell me after the first class and I will refund’
To which I said, ‘ …no, normally you have a trial class first, and then you see if you like it, and then you can decide if its something you want to do.’

He didn’t seem too happy to hear that I wasn’t just giving in to what he said.

Plus, I mean wtf was he thinking?  … if I just hang up the phone… that’s the end of it, he’s got my email address, & my phone number, that’s it.  There were no contracts signed, so what the hell does he think is going to happen?  Plus if he tries to describe this situation on social media, to make me out as the bad guy, I can just tell the truth, that I thought his classes were shit.

And that is probably the reason he wasn’t offering trial classes, and had that policy in place because otherwise he wouldn’t get any money.

Anyway, the point is, and this is something that one of my favourite comedians stated very clearly…. Is that cancelling things is awesome.

It’s not the act, or the process of cancelling something, but it’s the result.  It’s the …’oh it’s Wednesday evening, normally I should be at a crappy dutch language course at this moment, …but.. instead I’m sitting comfortably on the couch eating M&M’s whilst watching the latest episode of Westworld’

Awesome feeling.

I realise that to a few of you, this sounds pretty bad.  Like the trade-off between bettering yourself by learning another language and possibly meeting a few other people, or just sitting there doing nothing.
But sometimes, just sitting there doing nothing, just relaxing ….especially when you know that others are doing something busy….is incredibly nice.

Check out John Mulaney’s clip:

I wonder if it’s worth just signing up to random things, and then just cancelling them for the false sense of joy that comes from knowing you’re mean to be doing something, even though you had no intention to do it anyway?