1. Drama - Particularly recently, I've noticed that there are people around me who always have extra drama, and seem incapable of solving their own interpersonal problems without and intermediary. Some of these people are family members, so while I certainly can't be rid of the person (and I wouldn't anyway, since that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater), but I can surround myself with people where that isn't an issue. It's really freeing to not have to second-guess what the people closest to me say and do, and be able to take them at face value.
I should probably note, by drama I'm not talking about people worrying over big life issues (paying the bills, getting/keeping a job, etc) I'm talking about things like - and this is a real example - someone getting pissed because for someone else's birthday, a third party wants to go to dinner at a place 20 minutes away and insists that it's closer for everyone, and then complaining about it for a good half an hour and needing two people to calm everyone down and get things worked out.
2. Excess craft supplies - Oh man, this one's really hard, and it's been a big temptation lately. I keep a pretty good sized "project bag", where anything in that bag is something I can work on, and I have to wait until I finish one project before I can put another in. I'm trying to use up my craft supplies before I move in a few months, but I keep seeing interesting patterns and yarns and I reeeeeaaaallly want to work with them. There's not a lot here I can do except keep up my willpower and work on things I already have materials for.
3. Stress - I've been finding lately that I seem to have an almost constant level of stress. It's not a super high level, but enough to damage my immune system and leave me grinding my teeth and getting headaches. I'm the sort of person who always feels like I just need to suck it up, so it's been hard for me to take time for myself and take it easy, but that's really what I need to do to get myself back up to par.
4. Clutter - Partially because of the coming move date, and partially because it feels good to purge my items occasionally, I've been doing a lot of cleaning and organizing lately, both in my digital and physical realms. It's really cool to realize that I genuinely don't need that much stuff, and an interesting challenge to myself to see how well I can organize it and streamline my routines (Cooking for Geeks got me started on this kick; putting things near what they're used with and finding the most efficient ways to store them - seems like common sense, but I definitely don't do this enough!)
5. Internet comment sections - This morning a news/blog compilation I follow posted about how a 9 year old child from Canada with ADHD, Asperger's and ODD (oppositional defiance disorder) was handcuffed by police at his daycare. The jist of the story is that he was being bullied by his peers, got upset (it's not explained what "upset" looked like in this context), was placed by himself in a classroom, and proceeded to barricade himself in and throw paint around. The police were called in and, before a parent arrived, broke through the door and had him handcuffed.
Being in the field of working with kids on the autism spectrum, I was displeased with several aspects of this story. But then I made a major mistake, an internet rookie error: I read the comments. It was interesting to get perspective from people who agreed with the actions of the daycare, but as I went further back in the comment history I started to find comments that were increasingly derogatory toward his conditions, implying or straight out saying that they are non-existent. And then I found one that essentially said that not only is autism not a real thing, it's just kids acting out because of poor parenting.
At which point I stared at my screen in disbelief for a few moments, then slowly closed my laptop before turning into a giant squid of anger and ranting to the nearest person about correlation not equalling causation and how hard parenting is even with a neurotypical child and AAAAAAARRRRRRRGH.
Ahem. Anyway. All that to say, I like being able to interact on the internet, so maybe it's not the comments system I want to get rid of. Instead, I'd just like some civility, thoughtfulness, and understanding.
Ugh, comment sections. I took a few courses in Canadian Studies, and for one of them our prof had us look for news items about Aboriginal people. I made the mistake of reading the comments section of one of them, and I can remember being almost in tears afterwards because I was so frustrated and angry with the things people were saying and sort of hopeless for the future of humanity. I think the comment sections of anything tend to bring out the worst in people, for some reason.
ReplyDeleteI swear a lot of it has to do with anonymity, which is why I like that more and more sites are linking profiles to Facebook - and not because I think Facebook is the be all end all, but it generally uses people's real names. Anecdotal evidence: my small town newspaper website's comment section use to be filled with awful, horrible things being said about others, sometimes into the hundreds of comments. They switched to Facebook-only, and now we have.... between 0-4 comments on something that are generally fairly civilized (though there's the occasional person who just doesn't care if people see them being jerks).
ReplyDelete