Archive for September, 2011

You got your feelings hurt on a social network? Well, what did you expect?

Posted: September 23, 2011 in Uncategorized
Tags: , ,

Really? What did you expect?

You sat down at your computer and you had a lot on your mind. It could have been the fight you had with the spouse/significant other/various other PC terms that I don’t give a rats ass about.

Or maybe you wanted to share a political point of view or something happened at work and you wanted to talk about it. Maybe you just wanted to say something and get it out of your system.

You sat down and you wrote about it and you poured your heart and guts into it and then you did the unforgivable.

You hit the enter key or the share key and you put your words out there for the entire world to read.

What did you expect? What did you really think would happen?

You thought that you would be accepted and that you would be understood and maybe even loved a bit for your words and your heart and your soul. You actually thought everything would be OK and that your world would be better for the one sin y0u committed that will never, ever be forgiven.

You had the audacity to communicate.

How dare you! How dare you go against the norm of THIS society and actually put down, in words, what you think and what you feel. No, you aren’t supposed to do that. You are NOT supposed to rock the boat or have a different opinion than others.

You have NO right to have an original thought.

You should burn in hell for that. We should all string you up, laugh at you, share your stupid post and be done with you!

But I won’t. I will read what you have to say. I will comment or not, but I will know that your words came from your heart and soul and it has nothing to do with what I think and I will not pass judgement on you until you do something really stupid and then I will nail your ass to the wall for it.

And that stupid thing is when an idiot comes along and bashes you and then you do something really idiotic.

You defend what you wrote! What? Oh no, don’t do that.

Then, because stupidity has a tendency to go downhill very fast, you then begin to argue and the fight begins.

You see, the reason you defend it is because there was something about what you wrote that wasn’t really “you” or who you are and you got nailed on it.

Soon the postings are going back and forth and I sit back and watch. I shake my head because you could have done several things and been fine with it.

You could have deleted their stupid comment. Remember, this is a social network and not a democracy and as far as I’m concerned, it’s my post and I don’t owe anyone anything.

You could have blocked them and saved yourself a lot of time and grief and used that for creative energy.

You could have ignored them, which is the biggest insult of all and trusted your dedicated readers to oust the troll that got out of his cage and chase him away.

The opposite of love is not hatred. It is indifference. You could have yawned your way out of it.

But you didn’t. You carried on with the drama and lowered yourself to their level. The more you defended your position, the greater the value you gave him. You showed everyone that this persons opinion of yourself was more important than your own.

Now, I can live with most of that, but then the real harm can follow after that which bugs the hell out of me.

You stopped communicating. You decided that it was all so horrible and terrible and no one likes you and you went outside and ate some worms or had a drink or even worse, came back on your post/blog and whined.

Screw you if you can’t take it. Seriously, screw you if you let anyone get in your way of communicating.

Because the thing that you forgot was for every negative comment you received, there were at least ten positive ones.

You kicked us good guys to the curb and that pisses me off. Even if no one ever responded or stroked you or said a word, why would you care?

Do you write and post to get approval? Go to hell and don’t waste my time.

But if you have something to say, then say it and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe no one will approve, but so what? These are your words and your stories and your soul and if you don’t think it’s important, why should I?

Go ahead and communicate and keep it up, no matter what.

I dare you.

Self-esteem. Lesson #6. Don’t blame.

Posted: September 19, 2011 in Self-esteem, self-respect
Tags: , ,

Whatever happens, don’t blame someone else, including yourself.

Blame is when you point your long or stubby little fingers at someone else and exclaim “They did THIS to me and it’s all their fault!” If you are REALLY good at blaming others, you’ll keep this attitude for the rest of your life and will turn into the worse person you can be.

That’s on you and you’ll get no sympathy from me.

God knows I’ve spent plenty of time blaming others for what they did to me. Including, but not limited to, cheating on me, betraying me, talking badly about me behind my back and firing me. OK, I still think the guy who fired me was and probably still is an asshole. Sorry, but I just can’t quite let that one go.

It was so stupid but what happened was not my fault! Honest, it wasn’t. I was hired by “He-who-shall-be-only-called-asshole” to answer phones in a tiny and dingy office while he worked at another job. He had started a business where he made these tile thingys that you would lay down on the floor and then insert the tiles to create something spectacular. I took the  job because I was desperate for money and was currently married to a guy that thought it was fine for his wife to work two jobs so he could stay home and write. Yeah, well I fell for that because I was very young and he was really good-looking. I’ll post another time about that.

So the office was in this industrial part of town and I was very isolated. The phone rang about two times a week, so after I spent the first hour of my new job cleaning the office, there was nothing left to do.

One day, some Neanderthal comes in to pick up his order. I go back into the warehouse to get it and he follows me. He starts making lewd comments about me and I suddenly realize I am in a very bad situation. As I reach up to grab a box, he slaps me on my ass. I freak out, yell at him and run back to the office. Fortunately, he left and I locked the door.

That afternoon when “The asshole” came in, I told him what happened. He looks at me and then tells me I deserved it!

I did what any young woman would do. I started crying and just then he tells me I’m fired. I tell him he can’t fire me because I quit. I grab my purse and make him pay me on the spot. I walk out the door in a huff and go to walk to my car but I had forgotten I didn’t have a car because the husband had it, so I walked around the corner and sat down and cried some more.

When the husband came to pick me up, I made the mistake of telling him what happened. He did a U-turn across four lanes of traffic because he wanted to go “talk” to “The asshole” but I somehow convinced him not to.

For a long time, I blamed this man for his insensitivity to me and what happened. I blamed him for me not making enough money and I blamed him for upsetting me and my husband and I blamed him when I couldn’t pay my rent the next week.

It was all his fault. All of it.

Granted, what he did was wrong, but blaming someone else isn’t the same thing.

When you blame someone, you are saying they are better, smarter, faster, prettier, etc. than you.

If you say so then it’s true.

What you say and/or think becomes real and true because…you said so, that’s why.

As long as you have that attitude, the other person will always be able to manipulate you but only because you let them.

Trust me, I’ve blamed lots of people for lots of things and it sure didn’t make me feel better about myself. In fact, it makes me feel pretty freaking bad and I don’t know about you, but I don’t like that feeling and I don’t like beating myself up for my many, many mistakes anymore than you do.

So let’s knock it off, shall we? Agreed? Agreed!

No human being has ever been wrong – ask anyone and they’ll tell you why their horrible actions were justified – so don’t ever think you’ll get anyone to admit it. You’ve never been wrong either in your mind.

We make decisions and if things don’t turn out like we had hoped, acknowledge the fact that you made a mistake and learn from it. We tend to only learn from our mistakes. I don’t know why that is, but it seems to be the case.

Don’t blame yourself or anyone for what has happened. It does no good and closes the door on your learning about yourself and life.

Instead, tell yourself you made a mistake and figure out what you can take away from it to have a better life and be a better person.

I admit there have been times when I wish I hadn’t talked the husband out of “talking to the asshole” but the actual problem wasn’t him. The actual problem was I was married to someone who didn’t work, didn’t want to work and if I had been truly honest with myself back then, I would have seen that and made better decisions.

But I didn’t. I justified it to the point that I took on another job that I didn’t understand but lied on my application. I sweet talked the guy into hiring me and I wasn’t honest with him that I had no idea what people were talking about when they phoned in. I am not a math girl, so I couldn’t handle the orders. Instead I told them “No problem,” wrote down what they said and then set it aside for when “The Asshole” came in.

I didn’t ask the guy to try to degrade me and scare me when he came in to pick-up his order. He was way out of line and as I look back on it, that could have been much worse. But the funny thing, I never blamed him. I just figured he was another pervert in this thing called life and I was fortunate that I got him out of there.

I never blamed him because I never held him responsible for my survival. But I sure as hell held my employer responsible for my life and I should have held myself responsible and not taken on a job that I didn’t understand. I should have held my husband responsible for making income but instead I justified it.

I did that and I can fix it. That’s what you say and that’s what you do.

So you’re not perfect.

Welcome to my world.

Smack down on a gang banger.

Posted: September 6, 2011 in Pets
Tags: , , , ,

Sometimes in life, you have to stand up for yourself and let the chips fall where they may. You have to speak out and not worry about the consequences. If you think about it, you might not do it.

I was walking my dog Maverick last year. It was twilight but a warm evening in the summer. Maverick was getting older and wasn’t feeling great, so I made sure to give him short walks. He and I both needed to get out of the house that night.

This is my Maverick:

We were just turning the corner on our street. I saw three men standing on the sidewalk ahead of us with a couple of dogs. Because Maverick liked to bark and have a tizzy fit anytime he saw another dog, I walked us into the street and figured we would get back on the sidewalk after we passed them.

As we were walking by, Maverick started to get excited, but I reined him in. The two dogs were smaller and could have been pit bulls or some similar mix. I personally love pit bulls and don’t buy all the crap that is said about them. But the guys standing there had the full “gang banger” look going on.

As we walked by, one of the dogs barked and we kept walking. As we passed and returned to the sidewalk, I heard one of the men start to yell at his dog to shut-up and then I heard the dog yelping. He was hitting his dog.

No, I don’t think so.

I froze. I was about four houses down from them, but it was a quiet night. I turned around and yelled back at the man to knock it off.

I was a bit surprised those words came out of my mouth, but that’s what happens when you speak before thinking.

“What did you say, bitch?” was the reply.

I froze but Maverick kept walking. I felt the leash tug for a moment. My heart was racing and it suddenly dawned on me what I had done. I wanted to just keep walking but the sounds of that dog crying and him yelling at it were still in my head. I thought about what would happen to the dog if I just walked away and I couldn’t do it. I looked down at Maverick and knew I would never let anyone harm a hair on him and that I would do whatever I could if someone tried.

The dog that was getting beaten was the same as Maverick to me. The love I felt for Maverick suddenly transferred over to him and I was not going to walk away.

I turned around.

“You heard me. Get your hands off that dog or I’ll come back there and make you do it,” I yelled back. Maverick was now looking up at me, worried. He knew I was upset and he was trying to figure out why. Because he was older and because I didn’t want him hurt, I tied him to a tree and told him I would be right back.

Just as I started to walk towards the men, one of them said “You can’t tell me what to do. It’s my dog.”

“That doesn’t matter, you idiot! You lay another hand on that dog and you’ll have to hit me too!”

“Oh really?” he said. I wasn’t bluffing. I meant it. I had made my decision and I was hoping that today wasn’t my day to die.

“I’ll tell you what do to do, when I want. You get your hands off of one of God’s creature or I’ll come over there and take your dog from you.  You understand me?” I yelled back. I had stopped walking towards them. My whole body was shaking and fear started to arrive again and I pushed it back. I had gone this far and wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but I knew I could not back down.

There was silence. I tried not to think or worry about myself. I was more worried about Maverick.

“Sorry ma’am, you’re right,” he said.

What? Did I really hear that?  Did I really back down a gang banger or was this some insidious ploy to get me closer and then kill me?

“What did you say?” I yelled back. I was now three houses away from them. I started walking again. They weren’t moving and they looked so much taller and bigger than when I had first walked by. They turned towards me as I got nearer.

“I asked you a question. What did you say?” I asked as I came within twenty feet from them.

One man was kneeling down now, petting and stroking his dog. He was whispering in his ear. The other two men stood silently and watched. One of them knelt down and started to scratch the ear of the other dog, which began to wag his tail.

The man, who I think yelled at me, looked up, kissed his dog on his head and stood up. “I said you were right and I’m sorry I did that. It was wrong of me.”

All my anger and rage started to lift at that moment and I didn’t want it to. I wanted to stay angry at them. I was prepared to grab the dogs and run as fast as I could but I was not prepared for an apology. This threw me off.

I looked at them for a moment. My racing heart started to calm down but my body was shaking. I was prepared to get hurt to help the dogs but I didn’t expect this fight to be over so quickly.

“OK, then. You ever hit another one of God’s creatures again I’ll make sure you pay for it. Somehow.  Someway.” I said with no idea how I could ever back-up that statement, but I was way past the point of thinking.

“Yes ma’am,” was all he said. The other two men nodded their heads in agreement.

I looked down at the dogs. They were happy and healthy and showed no signs of abuse. I smiled at them, turned and walked away.

I untied Maverick and we began walking again. I walked past my house and went around the corner. As brave as I might have been, I didn’t want them to know where I lived in case they had a change of heart. Maverick and I laid low around the corner for a few minutes. We kept peeking around the bush to see if they had left yet. Once they did, we came back around and almost ran up the driveway and into the house.

Once behind my locked door, I thought about what I had done and what could have happened. I don’t know if I was brave or just plain stupid, but for once I was glad I hadn’t thought before I acted.

I made Maverick cuddle all night with me, which he hated but relented.

Shoes I’ve worn once.

Posted: September 4, 2011 in funny stories
Tags: , , ,

Admit it. You have at least one pair of these, don’t you? Maybe you have more than one pair?

I am only willing to talk about one pair. Just one pair and I am NOT going to go through my closet and take pictures of the others. That would be pointless and would also make me feel a bit more foolish than I already do.

I KNEW it when I bought them that I would never wear them much but because they were so cool and on sale, I went ahead and got them. But since I am being honest here, the fact that they were on sale had absolutely nothing to do with my decision. I tell myself that to justify buying shoes I don’t need with money I don’t have. Hey, it works for me, OK?

I also justified it by telling myself I had so many outfits they would go with and I would wear these all the time. Besides, I have to look nice for work and somewhere during my twisted little thought process, I actually convinced myself that buying and wearing these shoes would help increase the income of my business. At the time, it made perfect sense to me but right now, I cannot even imagine how I spun that around but I know that I did.

They hurt my feet when I tried them on, but again, I told myself in great detail that the shoes would “give” the more I wore them and it would be OK. Sure, it might take a few days, but it would be fine and I really needed these shoes today and passing them up would mean the end of my career.

Again, at the time, it all made so much sense.

It also made sense that even though I found them difficult to walk in as they are at least 4” high, I would figure it out in a very short period of time and I just needed to get used to them and all would be right with the world once again. This is logical. This makes sense and this is the right way to think.

I bought them and brought them home. On my way back from the store, I mentally calculated all the things I could do without the coming week in order to afford them. I could forego paying my electric bill until next month unless the utility company got bitchy about it. I also didn’t need to fill up my gas tank at the station and could maybe survive on half a tank of gas unless there was an emergency and I had to hit the road suddenly. Yeah, that would work along with adding water to the bottle of shampoo in my shower and using that for another week rather than buying a new bottle.

I am not good at math, but for some reason, I felt like Einstein as I drove home with the amazing trajectories I was able to do.  It was rocket science and I was scary brilliant.

So I bought them and I came home with them and put them on. Sure, I was wearing my baggy jeans and a T-shirt I’ve owned for over 25 years, but I still looked good. I knew I was right because these shoes went with everything! They pinched my toes and I could feel the blood stop moving to my feet, BUT I LOOKED SO DAMN GOOD!

I mentally patted myself on the back for being such a good shopper and then I tried to walk in them. On a hard wood floor with feet I could no longer feel. On a floor that is tilted and uneven because I live in a converted garage. Yes I do and that’s a topic for another post but come to find out, when a landlord converts a garage into a studio apartment, they’re just looking to make money and aren’t too concerned about the minor details such as when you walk into the bathroom, you have to place your hand on the wall to steady yourself so you don’t crash into the closet. Just a minor detail that is annoying at 3:00 in the morning.

Suddenly I was headed for the dreaded closet and I couldn’t stop myself because the bottom of the shoes were slick and now I was rollerblading with my arms going all over the place as I tried to balance myself and find something to grab. My closet doesn’t have a door on them because that would have also cut into the landlords expense in remodeling a garage, so I crashed into the back wall of said closet but did manage to grab the rod that my clothes hang on. Fortunately the rod was strong enough to hold me, so I swung there for a moment and then let go and crashed onto the closet floor because I still couldn’t get feel my feet. I landed square on my butt and avoided the shoe rack. I don’t even want to think about that.

One would think that a normal and somewhat sane person would have immediately grabbed the shoes and the pretty box they came in and gone back to the store and returned them.

Of course I didn’t. I loved these shoes and I was on the brink of giving up FOOD for a week just to own them, so I realized that the actual problem was the floor and not the shoes and everything would be fine because we had carpeting at work.

I wore them the next day, but I didn’t put them on my feet until I got out to my car. It has carpet and when I got to work, I very carefully walked through the parking lot and up the stairs without incident. I shudder to think what I must have looked like walking but as long as I looked good, I was willing to pay such a small price.

All day my feet hurt but I refused to take my shoes off. I was right in my decision damn it! My staff is composed only of men – again, a whole other post coming up on that – so they of course don’t notice anything like my shoes, though one of them asked me if I had hurt my back from the way I was walking. I blew him off, told him not to worry and to get back to work.

Everything was going fine until I had been sitting at my desk for a while. I would wiggle my toes to make sure I still had them. Someone called me, so when I turned my chair around and started to get up, I hadn’t put my foot down exactly right and the next thing I knew, I fell flat on my ass. The chair I had been sitting in crashed into the glass door behind me and then bounced off of that and smacked me on the back of my head which then caused me to scream.

The next thing I know I have 3 men standing in my doorway, looking down at me with very worried faces. Then, as if they were in a herd, all scrambled to help me up but since there was only a narrow passage between my desk and a credenza, they couldn’t get through and began to shove and push each other, which made it only worse. It was classic slapstick and the more they tried to get to me, the further back they pushed each other.

I started laughing and told them I was fine but that I needed someone to take my shoes off. Suddenly they were silent with blank looks on their faces. The two married men weren’t too scared but the young single man was, so he silently slowly backed away as he shook his head. One of them came forward, sat down on the floor and took my shoes off with no questions asked. He had been married a long time.

I finally was able to stand up and grab my chair and sit down. I could feel the blood rushing to my feet again. I thanked him, told them I was fine and had just tripped. They wouldn’t leave my office until they were convinced I was fine. I went barefoot the rest of the day and no one said a word or asked one question. It was just “Susan is doing what Susan does” for the rest of the day. Just another normal day.

So here they are:

And I can’t give them to Goodwill like I do with all my clothes that I’ll never wear again. These shoes are cursed and dangerous and I don’t want to inflict them on another woman.

I can’t throw them away because I only wore them once, so maybe you know someone I should send them to. The woman who slept with your husband or maybe a woman who stabbed you in the back and pretended to be your friend and then betrayed you.

They are a size 8.

Self-esteem. Lesson #5. Demand it.

Posted: September 2, 2011 in Self-esteem, self-respect
Tags: , ,

We have a saying in sales that I think comes from Zig Ziglar:

     “You don’t get the close you don’t ask for.”

These words are true, not only for sales, but for probably all areas in life. If you don’t know what you want, you are going to have a tough time getting it. If you don’t demand what you want, you’ll never get it.

I am not talking about demanding something in an offensive or rude way, but you should always be direct and clear in what you want and what you don’t want.

Are you demanding self-respect from yourself and others? If not, it ain’t ever gonna happen. Yes, I am using those words and style intentionally to make a point. When you demand something, you are insisting on it and it’s not negotiable. How you allow others to treat you is a direct reflection on how you look and feel about yourself.

I remember in High School how what other people felt and thought about me caused me to define myself. Personally, I think this is a very common trait and I would rather eat insects, raw, then go through High School again. It was not a good time for me and looking back, I don’t think it was a good time for anyone except for the perfect looking cheerleaders that pranced around the school in their cute uniforms.

Yes, I am a bit bitter because I was twice their size with the wrong color and style of hair and no matter how many hours I spent the night before, putting it up in curlers and using tons of gel on it, by the end of the day it was no longer straight and looked like I had stuck my finger in a light socket. But they looked perfect and had the perfect boyfriends and drove the best cars and were the fussiest Diva’s I had ever seen prior to that time.

Plus they didn’t have acne and braces and God I’m going to stop thinking about this right now…

No wonder I took up smoking and hung-out with all the other misfits. It’s a wonder I didn’t do drugs or start drinking but I was always terrified of my parents finding out. So instead I hung-out with the kids that did and hoped their “coolness” would rub off on me by osmosis.

But the funny thing was, as much as I might have been just a wee bit jealous of the cheerleaders and all my ex-friends that seemed to have moved onto better and more interesting people who were SO much better looking than me, what really bothered me was they got away with it. It never entered their little pin heads that anyone would say “No” to them and if anyone did, I never saw it.

Some of them were quite nice and pleasant to me as we had all grown up together in the same neighborhood but in High School, new and invisible lines were drawn and you didn’t know about them unless you accidentally crossed one. I have a tendency to ignore lines and don’t appreciate anyone telling me what my own space is.

But I watched these lines changed and I made new friends in other places and I watched as my old friends morphed into people who would no longer talk to me and I saw their attitudes shift as they became more and more popular and I found my own sense of myself get fuzzy. Soon I was someone who was trying to get other people to like me.

This had never happened to me before. This was new and I didn’t like it and yet I couldn’t stop it.

I felt I had been dropped onto another planet and I didn’t know the customs or how things worked or who it was OK to talk to and who wasn’t. Now I was with people I had only known a short time and some of them were nice and some were not.  Most of them did drugs and drank but I didn’t and the ones that did were  bothered by my abstinence and would push me to do it.

At first I tried to pretend that it didn’t bother me and the more I did that, the less I liked myself. There was no particular defining moment as this was a gradual deterioration over many months. I was more interested in getting people to like me than I was on liking myself. Things were changing so fast that I never knew what I thought from day-to-day, and yet I was the one person people would come talk to.

I am a great listener at least. So I listened and talked and tried to make friends and I allowed them to treat me any way that they wanted. I figured if I did that, then they would like me and that would make me a good person and I didn’t need to worry about all the friends I had lost as High School sucked our souls away from us.

It all came to a head one night when I went out with someone. From the moment I left my house with him, he began to talk down to me. I didn’t say anything because he was popular and I was lonely. The whole night was a nightmare as I kept my mouth shut and said nothing. His verbal attacks were very subtle. The disrespect he showed me wasn’t obvious at all, so it was a gradual feeling of despair and hatred towards myself that began early in the evening.

But it suddenly erupted and took me by surprise.

It was such a silly thing. He said he didn’t like the way I flicked my cigarette and tried to show me the correct way to do it. I don’t know, for some reason that was the straw. I grabbed my cigarette back from him, said something about what he could do with it and got out of the car and started walking home.

The fact that my house was 20 miles away didn’t enter my mind at the time. I was more angry with myself than him. He watched me walk down that road and I guess he realized he had been rude and he came and got me and drove me home.

I didn’t say a word all the way back to my house. I didn’t say a word when I opened the car door or when I slammed it shut. But as soon as that door was closed I told him to never talk to me again and right then I knew this has all happened because I had allowed it and accepted it. I let people treat me the way they wanted. I justified THEIR bad behavior, but I was just as guilty as them because I never drew my own line and made it clear of the consequences if they crossed it.

And what the hell? People had drawn their own lines to me, so I figured tit for tat.

How people treat you is on you. It’s not on anyone else. Sure, someone can blind side you. This can happen to anyone.

But how to deal with it shows them, and yourself, how you feel about you.

Someone says something rude to you? Don’t accept that it’s alright for someone to do that. Either walk away or deal with it, but push them back across that line.

Your date is looking at other women? Get up and walk out and don’t look back. (This also applies to men, so if the woman you’re out with is acting like trailer trash and you don’t like it, be a gentleman but don’t ask her out again.)

You’re in a business meeting and someone says something inappropriate to you? Let them know they were out of  line. I don’t care how you do it, but do it.

How you first deal with disrespect sets up the rest of the relationship.

If you don’t demand it, you’ll never get it.