Tag Archives: advice

When did that bit change?

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I used to be absolutely frothingly nasty about people giving me unsolicited advice. At some point after being married I softened. I started giving people the benefit of the doubt. I started trying to soften my reaction so I wasn’t so “mean”. I think I took a wrong turn.

Recently the kids and I were at a store doing a bit of shopping and a lady heard us talking. She asked us where we were from because she couldn’t place the accent. We had a charming conversation for a while. Then she started proselytising to us. The kids were fairly confused why she kept trying to talk to us about going to church. I was evasive and soft as I tried to say that I was not interested in monotheism and I don’t really care that she thinks Jesus is waiting for me with open arms.

I need to start saying I’m a witch and when someone tells me that I can always turn to Jesus with my troubles I should tell them that the Gods and Goddesses of their ancestors are really hoping they will say hi sometime.

Fuck being polite. It is not polite to shove your world view down my throat so why do I need to be polite to you? I have this weird thing about not wanting to step on people’s toes about religion. But they don’t extend me the same courtesy so I need to get over it.

I need to get over a whole lot of thinking about other people’s feelings. It is not serving me. My anxiety is high and it is partially related to me not wanting to be rude about telling people I don’t want to hear their opinion about what I’m doing.

Unless I say something like, “Hey what do you think about me doing _____” or “May I ask you for advice about _______” it’s pretty safe to assume I am not interested in your opinion on my behavior, life choices, or plans.

I learned a while ago that it was not good for me to give other people my unsolicited opinion about their life choices. I’m not sure why people think I deserve less courtesy. But they really really really do.

It is to the point where I am deliberately censoring a bunch of topics I might otherwise write about because then someone will feel free to tell me their opinion about me doing it. That’s bothering me. I don’t have pot as a crutch for emotional management. I don’t think I will go on other psych meds. Starting tomorrow I’m on a pretty strict budget and I can’t keep drinking.

That means I need to get a lot more free with “Stop telling me your opinion of my actions” and I need to go back to writing more. I have lost friendships (partially) because I was free with putting in writing why I was upset with people. I need to start seeing those friendship endings as a necessary cost of me being healthy. I mean, I shouldn’t rant about how I think other people are stupid or making bad decisions… but I need to be able to talk about myself and my feelings. Not all of my judgments… but my feelings about my life.

Because let me tell you, whether I share them or not I have judgments about how you are living. Notice how I don’t just show up to share them with you? That’s called being polite.

I did not have children because I wanted a convenient, easy life. I am not looking for more time to watch Netflix or sit around being idle. That is not appealing to me in any way shape or form. But I’m also not real driven to just “find a job” to fill my time.

My kids will go back to school when/if they choose to. It’s ok with me that they are done for the foreseeable future. I asked EC what made her decide that she was done and she said, “Mom the most important thing I am going to have in my life is my time. School wastes a lot of my time and I won’t be able to get it back.”

How can I argue with that?

I have decided I am not publicising a financial review because someone will feel the need to make comments and I might blow up a friendship over it right now.

I’m really over advice.

I want to spend 2020 making art, reading books about witchcraft, cooking, learning about the local ecosystem, and meeting people who can teach us about Scottish culture. I want to live as frugally as I possibly can. I want to spend time alone and time with my kids. I want to work on setting up outdoor play spaces for my children and I want to start shaping my garden even though I’m not spending money on plants yet.

I want to spend a lot less time worrying about other people’s feelings. If people don’t like me snapping at them to not share their opinions… maybe they should not share their unsolicited opinions.

I have survived the loss of many important people. I can survive the loss of other relationships. Life hurts. I will cope.

Mmmm nervous energy

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Otherwise known as: what I’m doing with all this anxiety. Cause I’m still feeling a lot of anxiety. Thankfully I’m capable of using it in ways that will make me happier long term.

I have been working on cleaning up the garage and paring things down a little more and a little more and a little more. The shed in the back yard has been awesomely handy for most of the time I’ve lived here, but at this point there are almost as many leaks in the roof as there is roof. Given that it is a cheap metal shed ‘fixing’ it would mean just tacking a tarp over it and my freak out about getting away from my white trash roots mean that I just can’t live with that as a solution. Last year with all the lovely rain we developed a rather unpleasant mold problem and a bunch of stuff had to be trashed. Thus my goal right now is to go through stuff in the garage and shed and get to the point where all of our stuff fits comfortably in the corner of the garage so Shanna can still have a playroom and we can get rid of the shed. I’m not sure how that will long-term affect what I do with the back yard but I can’t help but think it’ll be a good thing to not have random crap living out there that we never touch. 🙂 I’m working pretty seriously towards this ‘minimalist’ lifestyle thing and it’s making me happy. I am pretty convinced that we will not be able to move out of this house any decade soon and that means we will need to fit in this space comfortably as our kids grow up. This means making room for their stuff. So I’m getting a head start on that process so it’s not a tug-of-war power struggle over who has to get rid of stuff later. 🙂 Not to mention that the less shit we have the less cleaning we have to do!

So Shanna’s toys are consolidating. The pantry is consolidating. I’m trying to figure out the happy medium between getting rid of too much stuff that we will actually miss and getting down to just the stuff that improves our life.

I’m having a quandary about something though. (Hint: this is one of the rare times I’m open to advice!) I have a gorgeous crystal punch bowl shaped like a huge brandy glass with accompanying tiny punch glasses. This is like 40ish years old at this point so it is very fragile. I think I would be afraid to actually use it because it is a family sentimental piece. It was my moms–one of the few things she managed to hang on to through all the years of her hellish moving. Despite my overall lack of sentimentality I would absolutely never just ‘get rid of’ this. I won’t sell it to strangers and I won’t donate it. But I feel like giving it back to my mother is… awkward. If I leave it at my Aunt’s house for my mom to pick up I feel like I will be opening the door for her to do the same thing to me and I don’t want that to happen. If I ask my niece if she wants it (to ‘keep it in the family) it would be a passive aggressive way of getting it back to my mom because my niece will ask my mom about it, not to mention that they are living together. I would kind of like to just give it back to my mom. This is an important thing to her and I have enough respect for her sentimental attachment to it that I can’t get rid of it… but it doesn’t really mean as much to me. Any ideas on how to resolve this situation?

{filtered} drama

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So I’m having a hard time figuring out what is a reasonable and appropriate response to a situation in my life. This is a request for advice. 🙂

There are two couples we have been dealing with lately. Couple A involves a chick Noah has been friends with since college. Couple B involves a chick I have known since high school. The husbands in both couples are folks neither of us know as well.

Basically the first time chick in Couple A impacted my life was when she asked Noah to buy her $75 worth of vitamins a few years ago and then mail them to her. I thought this was rather bizarre and inappropriate. She was married and making ends meet–this was crossing a boundary. Noah and I went round and round about this but she never had any idea I was upset. I figured that she was across the country so I sorta let it go but if the topic came up I got pissy again.

Then Couple A moved to the bay area. Our interactions with them have been kind of weird. They both have geek social issues but they have them in a more extreme way than almost anyone I’ve ever met. They just don’t seem to be able to interact with people who are not geeks. Most of the meetups haven’t been fun for me but they haven’t really done anything wrong. But they keep doing things that set me off.

They have no respect for other peoples time. They asked us to babysit quite a while ago so they could go to a time share presentation. They said it would be a couple of hours. It turned into six hours.

I went to the museum with the moms from Couple A and Couple B and the mom from Couple A didn’t show up for 3.5 hours after she said she would be there. There was a weird amount of communication between the mom in Couple B and the dad in Couple A but no one talked to me. I wasn’t thrilled by this but I let it go. Then both members of Couple A showed up but the mom stayed in the museum and the dad was just there to pick up the mom in Couple B and they left the museum to go shopping. The only reason this was a big deal is mom from Couple B had come to the museum in my car and didn’t tell me she wasn’t leaving with me. She just up and disappeared while I was off doing a diaper change. She said, “I couldn’t find you and I had to leave.” I felt like this was pretty rude and I told her so when I talked to her later. I feel like I get to be mad when someone does that kind of thing to me. The guy in Couple A (so not the husband of the chick I am mad at) writes Noah an email asking him how is best to approach me so that he can explain that I shouldn’t be mad at my friend but instead him because she did nothing wrong and it was his fault. Noah being the smart fellow he is forwarded me the email and I took it from there. I emailed this guy and told him that when my friend is rude I get to be upset about it. He doesn’t get to get in the middle of that. But if he wants I can think he is rude too.

Couple A has asked Noah to come help them move with almost no notice and he showed up and they hadn’t packed. They expected him to basically come do all of the work for them regardless of the fact that he has a family he really ought to be spending his weekends with.

Couple A have both started talking to Noah about stuff in their lives that really aren’t that big of a deal but they make a big production about how he shouldn’t tell me anything about them. They are essentially telling him to lie to me. They are doing this about stuff that there is no way to really keep it from me forever and they really don’t matter.

We have been ostensibly going to exchange babysitting back and forth between the three families (both couples have kids) but at this point I don’t think I have any interest in doing that. If they are telling my husband to lie to me I would put money on it that they wouldn’t hesitate to tell my kid to lie to me. Granted she isn’t yet at that level of speech but it’s not far away.

I feel like the amount of drama these people have generated is pretty ridiculous given how rarely we actually interact with them. I’m feeling pretty done. But I know it isn’t exactly polite for me to tell Noah to ditch them. Can I have some advice about this? I’m really frustrated and angry.

Meme-licious

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Advice. I often/usually hate getting it. I love giving it. I think most people have some advice they would like to give to someone. Maybe to a family member, maybe to a friend, maybe to yourself. I think it would be neat to provide this opportunity to give advice. You can leave the advice here or post it in your own journal. You can comment anonymously or leave your name. The advice can be for me or for anyone else. You can give context or not as you see fit. 🙂

No one wants my advice anyhow

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I think you are handling this all wrong. You can’t fix this problem with money. This will blow up in your face sooner or later. I hope that you don’t end up hated for what you are doing.

Until you take some responsibility everything will continue to fail for you. Stop being obsessed with fun. Fun is good and all, but you do have to do the more serious parts of life too.

I don’t understand how you can keep your mouth shut. No really–how do you live with yourself?

If you change the locks while he isn’t home then you don’t have to keep asking him to move out. I’m sure you can get some help in packing all of his belongings in a day.