Random Thoughts - Sinusitis Edition

It has taken three go-rounds with the Neti Pot to almost make me feel like the hollow places in my skull are not filled with chunks of raw liver and wet macaroni. Almost. The S/O won't use the Neti Pot because he claims it makes him feel like he's being waterboarded. He attributes that to a deviated septum. I attribute it to him being a BABY.

Having a head cold and driving around for 2 hours in 92-degree weather in a car with a black interior and no air conditioning is like driving around with a wet sleeping bag tied around your head.

You know who irks me? People who leave their shopping carts in the middle of parking spaces. Really, walk your lazy ass over to the cart corral. Who else irks me? People who mangle idioms. Hard road to hoe? Really? You ever see anybody hoeing a road? How does that even make sense? It's a hard ROW to hoe.  

Read an interesting blog post somewhere on the interwebs asking if you would read a blog that contained curse words. Several people said, "No, because using curse words are a sign of someone with a limited vocabulary who has difficulty expressing themselves." Really? I take umbrage at that.  Now, I belong to the George Carlin school of language: there are no "bad" words, only words used inappropriately or in inappropriate situations . For instance, I would not go up to Queen Elizabeth II and say, "Fucking awesome hat, Mum!" In my other blog, I go for a more professional tone, so I would censor what I say in deference to the audience I'm writing for. But words are words: they have impact and nuance and specific inferences. it's called "discernment." Use it. Capriciously dismissing words or the people who use them to effect speaks poorly of you, not them. Personally, I am much more offended by someone saying, "Boy, that's a hard road to hoe," than someone saying, "That's the stupidest fucking thing I've heard you say today."

Why does Hotmail randomly sign me out, even if I was just using my inbox? Gmail never does that. I could understand if there's no activity for like 12 hours, but I can write an email, read another email, and then go to read the next email, and find that Hotmail has signed me out and wants me to sign back in for my own safety. Why? In case aliens abducted me and replaced me with an indiscernible double between emails? Don't they think the aliens would have used their brain beams to fish the password out of my head? Stop it, Hotmail.

Lesson learned this week? Apropos of my continued work on getting the novels ready for publication over the next six weeks, I learned a valuable lesson about not being able to please everybody all the time. As an over-achiever kid, I really did try to prove my value by being the absolute best at everything, by making sure that everybody liked me. At a certain point, that became the proverbial millstone and I found boys and beer and mentally said, "Screw you, authority!" There were times when I was not a very nice person. In the years between then and now, some bad things happened, some way worse than things that happen to other people, most a lot less worse than things that happen to other people.

During that period I learned to be a nicer person, to work harder, to be kind when there was nothing in it for me, to try and temper my pessimism. But I also reverted back to that insecure overachiever. Why, if I just tried harder, if I was just better, if I pretended to be something I wasn't, people would like me. I did things not because they were right or kind or true, but because I was trying to please people who would never be pleased. I subverted myself because I feared if I didn't, people might think poorly of me. I let other people have control over my happiness. Over my worth.

At some point, I found the switch there in that dark room and turned on the light. I still struggle. Boy, do I struggle. But we all struggle. So that's my message for the week. Flip a switch somewhere. Open your mouth when you've kept it shut. Be brave. Stand up for someone or something you believe in, even if it's just yourself. There will be critics, now and always. Take what you can from those of good intent and ignore those of ill will.  You're not going to make everybody happy. Write that down on a piece of paper and mail it to someone who cares.

Now it's back to work. Bestsellers don't write themselves, you know.