Are people getting more shouty?
I quit interacting with my neighbour after the last time she shouted at me. I don't know for whom or how many being shouted at is considered acceptable. I only know when I was raised it was not and it only happened when someone uncouth was in the area. A ragged neighbor or crazy man in public, that sort of thing. Once in a while it was my parents losing it on us but again, that wasn't okay behaviour, it was "end of my rope" stuff. So many people I've run into since moving into this house are such shouters! I think it's this neighborhood and they think less of me for not tolerating it. They consider me weak and selfish for making a fuss over a little facial blasting. I wish I knew again that world where people control themselves a bit better. I was less likely to lose it too, because I wasn't being pushed to it the way these shouters like to do. They goad one until one responds dramatically. I don't know why. I honestly don't get it. Why must we all shout and feel like crap for hours or days afterwards?
So yeah I quit talking to them but the quiet husband piped up from the fence when I was talking to my orchids. So I told him to tell his wife about our plans to sell out in around 5 years so that we two households can co-ordinate and improve the purchase attraction of our properties. Of course, sentiment may cause them to do exactly the opposite, but the developers can afford to buy one lot and rent it out to crappy tenants until it's neighbors move in despair. Don't think they won't. It's what's going on in this area and neither house is a "charming cottage". If mine were so ludicrously small theirs would qualify. It's got 3 bedrooms and two baths crammed in, and a family room, but the basement has been getting flooded regularly for decades. It's old, y'know, and small and never was more than a simple bungalow. Listed, it'll only count for about 600 sq ft because they don't count your finished basement. that's why mine only comes in at 325sq ft.
Meanwhile the magazines rate a small cottage at 1,200 sq ft. LOL!
Seriously, a boat wouldn't be that much of a change for us. It would, yet compared to the average canadian's living space, it wouldn't. I guess I'll really never have a dance room again. I still miss that. I used to put the living furniture in the dining room and put mirrors and a dance bar in the living room. The floors were hardwood in the houses I was renting so I wound up with a perfectly lovely space and I'd dance many times a day just for the joy of it. Now I'm cramped, dancing in one meter corridors between counter, chair, couch, aquarium, desk, cage, etc. I do my twirls in the corners and intersections where there's the most room but it's not the kind of thrilling it was with the mirrors and the space to leap and twirl in the air!
Let's face it, there's just not enough room to have it all no matter what resources one might have. One's brain, one's lifespan, one's diurnal cycle, all these restrict the volume of joys available. That's when you presume no challenges or troubles to eat up attention and time! So you pick lifestyles the way you pick cable packages. Some of what you want just doesn't come with the packages you prefer and they come with some stuff you don't want. You simply can't fit a ballroom on a cheap sailboat and you can't talk the TV provider into pick-and-choose packaging!
Although, I hear the government has been discussing whether to force them to do so. I suspect they'll quit providing entirely if they lose this fight. There may not be enough profit in it anymore.
I wonder just how much profit it takes for an average corporation to be interesting. I mean, some of these guys are taking home astonishing numbers but still acting dissatisfied!
Oh the many ways to be mad. They call me crazy because I think about philosophy and can't handle a lot of stress or pressure. They say I'm crazy because I speak non-sequitors, or have unique opinions not given to me by the group. They say I'm crazy because I persist on wearing what I like and looking as pleases me instead of what the group dictates.
Oh the many ways to be mad. Is the man barking into a cell phone any less mad than the man barking into a garbage can?
Please, folks, chill, would you? Being angry does nothing useful. It makes you stupid because anger stupifies automatically. I'll leave it to some scientist to demonstrate it chemically, but trust me, you aren't thinking when you're mad. You've gone and given over to the amgydala I suppose, who reacts, nothing more.
Being angry is always intended to be menacing. It's a menacing posture. So you're threatening progressive unpleasantness. Sure, you think you've got a limit, but you're not telling us where it is, are you? So you're making your targets frightened and stressed, so they're getting stupid too. Now everyone's scared stupid and pissed off. Oh yeah, great state of mind to solve problems. Yeah, well done, morons!
Okay, so there's modes of anger. There's disgust (see above) and disdain (also above) and rage (makes ya stupid.) Anger can lend you some extra motivation and will, but don't mistake that for power. You still have exactly as much power as you did before, you're just willing to pick it up and use it. Why not act before you're angry, while you can still enumerate your complaints and prioritize your demands? It's amazing how often people co-operate if you complain before you are on the offensive. it just takes a little foresight and the trust that you deserve to have things adjusted for you. People do it all the time. Oh, well, if you never adjust yourself for others, that'll definitely affect your level of satisfaction. It's kind of one of those things we demand equity in.
Yeah, so shouty neighbor, I told her husband about our moving plans. I don't know if he'll pass it on. Firstly, she's a distracting person given to cutting him off, and secondly he is dealing with brain deterioration and I don't know how much his memory works. Poor old guy, he's just fading away. He was always her shadow from what I can see, and now he'll fade like the sun going behind a cloud. Well, he seems to have been fairly satisfied so I guess it's not so bad.
I saw a video of a woman dancing at her 90th birthday and she was so strong and energetic I knew it's not unreasonable to plan for a few decades of active lifestyle yet. I remember a woman on TV when I was a teenager. I was in the phase of realizing suicide was going to keep failing because there was a deity getting in the way. I was realizing that I had a strong chance of living very old, to 108, and it was yet another reason to be depressed. Then this talent show, and this woman and man came on dancing. They were doing modern jazz ballet with incredible dance stunts. That woman's body held straight as a pole and then went as limp as a noodle exactly when it should as she was tossed around by her partner. She dipped, she floated on tiptoe, she twirled in the air, it was breathtaking. As the panting dancers posed for applause the camera zoomed into the woman's face. That dancer was 89 years old. The MC asked her when she started dance, and she'd started at age 67! I understood then that I would be living more than one lifetime and a: I 'd better give a damn about my body and b: it's never too late to get it together if you can't do it today.
Now again, as I switch from planning hand rails and stair elevators to diving, sailing, cycling, fishing and hiking, I see another one of these amazing women with fitness so far into the last years. I don't have to worry so much about being unable to do these things just as soon as I get it together to do them. I have only to keep my fitness going as a priority and the rest will follow.
Thank you paleo diet. Thank you so much for the next fifty years of my life. They've been given back to me. I was NOT looking forward to spending that long in obesity and healthcare spirals. yuck.
Even my asthma is improving and if I add seaweed to my diet when I'm out there (there'll be a lot around) I just might cure my thyroid and stop needing doctors again. i have to do more research on that, though. I'm not sure if it works for low thyroid or high, or how well.
Today I need to get to the store. I should have gone yesterday I suppose but in fairness it was labour day. Dan being around really interferes with my executive functions. He demands so much attention and assistance it interferes with my work. So I don't work when he's home and that helps. I had to eat stew for breakfast because that's all there was handy. I'm still thinking how I'll make stocks and how to store them or else how to replace that in my cooking. I only just discovered working with glace and concentrated stock cubes and in 7 years I intend to give up my chest freezers for something about the size of an ice cream carton. It'll do for ice for drinks I suppose. Really, the galley on boats just isn't up to standards. A cook would do better on a shoreside fire!
Of course I might score a job in a small restaurant or cafe as a cook and get it out of my system that way. Fun dream. I mean, I'm that good of a cook, just completely clueless about the higher functions of a chef re: cooking for massive numbers or doing the ordering/managing for a kitchen. Now if it was a small kitchen with just a couple helpers I bet I could turn out some amazing paleo miracles. Don't think I haven't pretended to be a pro cook when doing my thing at home!
I simply don't think I can handle the stress demanded of pro cooks in every kitchen I've ever seen. It's horrible how everyone gets all adrenalized and bitchy. I mean, I don't expect pretty please and thank you, but a curt "salt, now" needn't include a stream of verbal abuse to function. you ever hear G. Ramsey in the kitchen? My heavens, someone should slap that man up side the head for making such a hostile work atmosphere! I've noticed, however, that he's mellowing over time, so maybe he's getting a clue.
It just seems so much more common to witness verbal abuse than I remember. Is that because my family had good manners, or because manners have been blown out the window in general? I dunno, maybe if I went to church I'd spot quiet people again. They do like to gather in churches. Mine didn't, mind you, but most of the dutch i've met in Canada are religious.
My folks? Well mom was raised in a slum during a blitzkrieg so religion consisted of wondering what kind of God could let this happen, and thanking same when it was over for having survived. Dad, on the other hand, came of rational thinkers and had a college degree in mechanical engineering. He was raised in an inner city suburb in a small city. Not too ugly, but not terribly privileged. The family who didn't interact with him were quite wealthy but he was not socially welcome so he got to work his butt off while unknown cousins enjoyed fairly pretentious wealth.
I can certainly see why they moved to a land where none of that counted anymore. it astonishes me to contemplate how wealthy some of my distant cousins are. and with whom I share a surname, but it's not much value to me. Well, I do have one fave daydream where I wind up an heir to a useable sum of money and get out of debt instantly. But hey, don't we all? The funny thing though, is the tiny share of royal DNA in me comes from my mother's side. Turns out, if you follow seven generations through the maternal line, you get a bastard daughter of William of Orange. We know about it because her mother signed a non-disclosure document which remained on record. Ironically, that document became the disclosure! it's worth nothing to me materially but it's fun to know.
I'm teaching Dan to be less shouty. I really am. He's getting better and the less often he goes into shouty mode, the quieter the dogs get. it's real. Sadly he hasn't enough self perspective to observe it. He can't tell when he's shouting! I have to stop him right in the midst of it for him to even notice it going on. That's what I'm doing. I feel like a parent to a child when I do it, or a trainer to a dog, which is mostly how I'm approaching it. After all, the principles of good training apply regardless of species. So, I bark back and then reward compliance with pleasant behaviour in return. I have to subsume my own emotions quite a bit, but I do get to express them with considered words later, which he is learning to hear and that's more constructive than going into hysteria any day! I'd rather restrain my hysteria and express the feelings in words, but he's dismissed anything short of hysteria so often I became quite distressed quite often.
I've been fighting back for a while now. of course, the energy of the better diet (as she eats more forbidden chocolate candy and chips) has helped with fighting back. It's just, well, you can't fight to do damage. You fight to break down the walls. You fight to open the curtains. You fight to open the doors and windows. If it hurts, it's because the problem is hurtful, not because you struck a blow.
Pacifist fighting means not doing damage. It's how a mother lovingly copes with a toddler's tantrum. She isn't trying to hurt the child, even though the correction might upset him.
Please, if you find yourself shouting daily, please try to fix it. it's not okay.
So yeah I quit talking to them but the quiet husband piped up from the fence when I was talking to my orchids. So I told him to tell his wife about our plans to sell out in around 5 years so that we two households can co-ordinate and improve the purchase attraction of our properties. Of course, sentiment may cause them to do exactly the opposite, but the developers can afford to buy one lot and rent it out to crappy tenants until it's neighbors move in despair. Don't think they won't. It's what's going on in this area and neither house is a "charming cottage". If mine were so ludicrously small theirs would qualify. It's got 3 bedrooms and two baths crammed in, and a family room, but the basement has been getting flooded regularly for decades. It's old, y'know, and small and never was more than a simple bungalow. Listed, it'll only count for about 600 sq ft because they don't count your finished basement. that's why mine only comes in at 325sq ft.
Meanwhile the magazines rate a small cottage at 1,200 sq ft. LOL!
Seriously, a boat wouldn't be that much of a change for us. It would, yet compared to the average canadian's living space, it wouldn't. I guess I'll really never have a dance room again. I still miss that. I used to put the living furniture in the dining room and put mirrors and a dance bar in the living room. The floors were hardwood in the houses I was renting so I wound up with a perfectly lovely space and I'd dance many times a day just for the joy of it. Now I'm cramped, dancing in one meter corridors between counter, chair, couch, aquarium, desk, cage, etc. I do my twirls in the corners and intersections where there's the most room but it's not the kind of thrilling it was with the mirrors and the space to leap and twirl in the air!
Let's face it, there's just not enough room to have it all no matter what resources one might have. One's brain, one's lifespan, one's diurnal cycle, all these restrict the volume of joys available. That's when you presume no challenges or troubles to eat up attention and time! So you pick lifestyles the way you pick cable packages. Some of what you want just doesn't come with the packages you prefer and they come with some stuff you don't want. You simply can't fit a ballroom on a cheap sailboat and you can't talk the TV provider into pick-and-choose packaging!
Although, I hear the government has been discussing whether to force them to do so. I suspect they'll quit providing entirely if they lose this fight. There may not be enough profit in it anymore.
I wonder just how much profit it takes for an average corporation to be interesting. I mean, some of these guys are taking home astonishing numbers but still acting dissatisfied!
Oh the many ways to be mad. They call me crazy because I think about philosophy and can't handle a lot of stress or pressure. They say I'm crazy because I speak non-sequitors, or have unique opinions not given to me by the group. They say I'm crazy because I persist on wearing what I like and looking as pleases me instead of what the group dictates.
Oh the many ways to be mad. Is the man barking into a cell phone any less mad than the man barking into a garbage can?
Please, folks, chill, would you? Being angry does nothing useful. It makes you stupid because anger stupifies automatically. I'll leave it to some scientist to demonstrate it chemically, but trust me, you aren't thinking when you're mad. You've gone and given over to the amgydala I suppose, who reacts, nothing more.
Being angry is always intended to be menacing. It's a menacing posture. So you're threatening progressive unpleasantness. Sure, you think you've got a limit, but you're not telling us where it is, are you? So you're making your targets frightened and stressed, so they're getting stupid too. Now everyone's scared stupid and pissed off. Oh yeah, great state of mind to solve problems. Yeah, well done, morons!
Okay, so there's modes of anger. There's disgust (see above) and disdain (also above) and rage (makes ya stupid.) Anger can lend you some extra motivation and will, but don't mistake that for power. You still have exactly as much power as you did before, you're just willing to pick it up and use it. Why not act before you're angry, while you can still enumerate your complaints and prioritize your demands? It's amazing how often people co-operate if you complain before you are on the offensive. it just takes a little foresight and the trust that you deserve to have things adjusted for you. People do it all the time. Oh, well, if you never adjust yourself for others, that'll definitely affect your level of satisfaction. It's kind of one of those things we demand equity in.
Yeah, so shouty neighbor, I told her husband about our moving plans. I don't know if he'll pass it on. Firstly, she's a distracting person given to cutting him off, and secondly he is dealing with brain deterioration and I don't know how much his memory works. Poor old guy, he's just fading away. He was always her shadow from what I can see, and now he'll fade like the sun going behind a cloud. Well, he seems to have been fairly satisfied so I guess it's not so bad.
I saw a video of a woman dancing at her 90th birthday and she was so strong and energetic I knew it's not unreasonable to plan for a few decades of active lifestyle yet. I remember a woman on TV when I was a teenager. I was in the phase of realizing suicide was going to keep failing because there was a deity getting in the way. I was realizing that I had a strong chance of living very old, to 108, and it was yet another reason to be depressed. Then this talent show, and this woman and man came on dancing. They were doing modern jazz ballet with incredible dance stunts. That woman's body held straight as a pole and then went as limp as a noodle exactly when it should as she was tossed around by her partner. She dipped, she floated on tiptoe, she twirled in the air, it was breathtaking. As the panting dancers posed for applause the camera zoomed into the woman's face. That dancer was 89 years old. The MC asked her when she started dance, and she'd started at age 67! I understood then that I would be living more than one lifetime and a: I 'd better give a damn about my body and b: it's never too late to get it together if you can't do it today.
Now again, as I switch from planning hand rails and stair elevators to diving, sailing, cycling, fishing and hiking, I see another one of these amazing women with fitness so far into the last years. I don't have to worry so much about being unable to do these things just as soon as I get it together to do them. I have only to keep my fitness going as a priority and the rest will follow.
Thank you paleo diet. Thank you so much for the next fifty years of my life. They've been given back to me. I was NOT looking forward to spending that long in obesity and healthcare spirals. yuck.
Even my asthma is improving and if I add seaweed to my diet when I'm out there (there'll be a lot around) I just might cure my thyroid and stop needing doctors again. i have to do more research on that, though. I'm not sure if it works for low thyroid or high, or how well.
Today I need to get to the store. I should have gone yesterday I suppose but in fairness it was labour day. Dan being around really interferes with my executive functions. He demands so much attention and assistance it interferes with my work. So I don't work when he's home and that helps. I had to eat stew for breakfast because that's all there was handy. I'm still thinking how I'll make stocks and how to store them or else how to replace that in my cooking. I only just discovered working with glace and concentrated stock cubes and in 7 years I intend to give up my chest freezers for something about the size of an ice cream carton. It'll do for ice for drinks I suppose. Really, the galley on boats just isn't up to standards. A cook would do better on a shoreside fire!
Of course I might score a job in a small restaurant or cafe as a cook and get it out of my system that way. Fun dream. I mean, I'm that good of a cook, just completely clueless about the higher functions of a chef re: cooking for massive numbers or doing the ordering/managing for a kitchen. Now if it was a small kitchen with just a couple helpers I bet I could turn out some amazing paleo miracles. Don't think I haven't pretended to be a pro cook when doing my thing at home!
I simply don't think I can handle the stress demanded of pro cooks in every kitchen I've ever seen. It's horrible how everyone gets all adrenalized and bitchy. I mean, I don't expect pretty please and thank you, but a curt "salt, now" needn't include a stream of verbal abuse to function. you ever hear G. Ramsey in the kitchen? My heavens, someone should slap that man up side the head for making such a hostile work atmosphere! I've noticed, however, that he's mellowing over time, so maybe he's getting a clue.
It just seems so much more common to witness verbal abuse than I remember. Is that because my family had good manners, or because manners have been blown out the window in general? I dunno, maybe if I went to church I'd spot quiet people again. They do like to gather in churches. Mine didn't, mind you, but most of the dutch i've met in Canada are religious.
My folks? Well mom was raised in a slum during a blitzkrieg so religion consisted of wondering what kind of God could let this happen, and thanking same when it was over for having survived. Dad, on the other hand, came of rational thinkers and had a college degree in mechanical engineering. He was raised in an inner city suburb in a small city. Not too ugly, but not terribly privileged. The family who didn't interact with him were quite wealthy but he was not socially welcome so he got to work his butt off while unknown cousins enjoyed fairly pretentious wealth.
I can certainly see why they moved to a land where none of that counted anymore. it astonishes me to contemplate how wealthy some of my distant cousins are. and with whom I share a surname, but it's not much value to me. Well, I do have one fave daydream where I wind up an heir to a useable sum of money and get out of debt instantly. But hey, don't we all? The funny thing though, is the tiny share of royal DNA in me comes from my mother's side. Turns out, if you follow seven generations through the maternal line, you get a bastard daughter of William of Orange. We know about it because her mother signed a non-disclosure document which remained on record. Ironically, that document became the disclosure! it's worth nothing to me materially but it's fun to know.
I'm teaching Dan to be less shouty. I really am. He's getting better and the less often he goes into shouty mode, the quieter the dogs get. it's real. Sadly he hasn't enough self perspective to observe it. He can't tell when he's shouting! I have to stop him right in the midst of it for him to even notice it going on. That's what I'm doing. I feel like a parent to a child when I do it, or a trainer to a dog, which is mostly how I'm approaching it. After all, the principles of good training apply regardless of species. So, I bark back and then reward compliance with pleasant behaviour in return. I have to subsume my own emotions quite a bit, but I do get to express them with considered words later, which he is learning to hear and that's more constructive than going into hysteria any day! I'd rather restrain my hysteria and express the feelings in words, but he's dismissed anything short of hysteria so often I became quite distressed quite often.
I've been fighting back for a while now. of course, the energy of the better diet (as she eats more forbidden chocolate candy and chips) has helped with fighting back. It's just, well, you can't fight to do damage. You fight to break down the walls. You fight to open the curtains. You fight to open the doors and windows. If it hurts, it's because the problem is hurtful, not because you struck a blow.
Pacifist fighting means not doing damage. It's how a mother lovingly copes with a toddler's tantrum. She isn't trying to hurt the child, even though the correction might upset him.
Please, if you find yourself shouting daily, please try to fix it. it's not okay.