Questions questions

How do you tell the difference between your problem and someone else's problem? We should be humble, responsible people who take burdens unto ourselves -- burdens, blame, culpability, etc. . . But sometimes, isn't it appropriate to recognize that the world isn't a fair place? Other people who held the keys to this kingdom or that kingdom or are somehow connected to something you or I may want to do may be the cause of the problem. I mean, considering the petty, fucked-up people I've met in my everyday life, one has to assume that those same people work behind desks or computers in my professional life as well.

Taking personal responsibility and blame for everything is actually better in many ways than blaming others -- not because the self-help books tell you to do it --because then you have control. If I did it, then I can fix it. If the problem is the quality of the work I am doing, then I will improve the quality of the work. . . If the problem has nothing to do with the quality of the work that I do, if the problem is some kind of messed up thinking on the part of someone else that they can't even see, let alone fix, without years and years of therapy and a good whack upside the head with an aluminum baseball bat, then what the fuck am I supposed to do?

When I was around 28 or 29, I had some revelations about life. I won't bore you or myself with them here. Once you have revelations you either act on them or not, but repeating them is a bit of a smelly fart. Anyway, I remember thinking, "Yes, that probably is true, but I'm not ready to give up my anger yet." I wanted to be bitter and angry because I had always been bitter and angry and sometimes it was a comfortable feeling. It was a comfortable feeling. It also seemed at the time like the right response to a number of things even if, in an Oprah-ish kind of way, I recognized that it wasn't productive. It still seemed right. Just. Morally right to respond angry.

Now, years later, I don't have very many revelations about life to go off of. I haven't really been thinking about those big questions for awhile -- and I miss them. I really do. -- But I feel like I don't want to be angry anymore. So things don't go my way, so the work is stupidly fucked-up, so people are stupidly fucked-up, so I keep spinning through a cycle of hope and melancholy, so, so, so. . . I really can actually feel the bile in my joints and my blood and I want it out. . . I don't want my first response to anything to be annoyance, followed by a rant. Injustice, unfairness, irrationality. . . Is there another response I can have besides anger? Is there another response that still motivates action and keeps the blood moving through the veins? A response that isn't naive optimism that looks more like ignorance of reality?

I'm sure there is but I can't think of it. Shows how good and comfortable I got with anger.