Three Years Without Sawyer

Posted on April 23, 2025 by admin

Last Saturday, April 19th, was the third anniversary of my dog Sawyer’s death. Hard to believe it’s been over three years since I last got to visit, hold, hug, kiss, snuggle, cuddle, walk with, play with, nap with, and care for him. Here’s how it went and how I’m doing after three years without Sawyer.

As always, this anniversary of Sawyer’s death was painful. Overall, it was more painful than an average day in my life. I felt extra sadness all this month, and even some late last month knowing what was coming. To my surprise, however, there were almost no tears. The few that did happen mostly came from rereading Mister Rogers’ lovely book When A Pet Dies that morning. As always, I felt better after that brief cry.

This anniversary of Sawyer’s death was the calmest so far. Unlike the first anniversary when I took a bunch of orphaned baby possums to a rehab facility in another city or the second anniversary when I went to still another city for a wedding rehearsal, I got to stay in town this year. I juggled with some friends in a local park, pet a cute, friendly little Dachshund, and did lots of letting go at home. In fact, most of my day consisted of staying home and getting things done in between letting go sessions. That’s why it went as well as it did and why I felt ok for most of it. Peace turned out to be much more abundant that day than I thought it would, thank goodness.

Extra busyness at my new job made this year’s anniversary both easier and harder. It was easier in that burning off extra energy helps me sleep better and heal, and good money coming in regularly means less stress and a greater ability to get what I need (and some of what I want). What made it harder was that I had less time to let go without distractions during the work week (letting go while I do other things is still incredibly difficult for me) and some stresses on the job have added to my pain burden. More than anything, I’m glad my new job gives me Friday through Sunday off every week. Having enough time to rest, play, celebrate, and mourn without going to work at all during and around the anniversary of Sawyer’s death was wonderful.

My own experience on this day each year is that everyone who told me, “The pain never goes away” was wrong. Mister Rogers said it well in this quote from When a Pet Dies: “It can be very hard when a pet you love dies. You may feel that you’ll never stop being sad, that the hurt will never go away… but it will.” While sometimes the pain is overwhelming on certain days, all the letting go work I’ve done over the past three years has both drastically reduced the total amount of pain around life without Sawyer and minimized the intensity of the remaining pain. I’m certainly glad that the pain has gone down so much over the last three years while the memories, pictures, videos, and several of Sawyer’s personal belongings remain. With continued work over the remaining pain, I believe that it will someday go away completely.

One reason I’m glad that the pain is going away is because each passing second not only takes me further away from my last Earthly moments with Sawyer but also closer to the point that I will have been remembering Sawyer for longer than I knew him. Since we had eleven years together and he’s been gone for three years at this point, it’ll still be a good many years before that happens. While it’s still a ways away, though, I know how fast time can fly. For example, it seems like only yesterday that I was in high school despite the fact that I graduated almost thirteen years ago. With that in mind, I want to be well prepared for the day when Sawyer’s absence from my life will be longer than the time he was present. If I can manage to work through the lingering guilt and shame around things I wish I’d done with Sawyer, things I wish I hadn’t done to him, and how I wish I’d better stood up for him in his final days on Earth, then I’m sure I’ll be able to effectively handle the point at which my time without Sawyer exceeds my time with him. I hope that’s how it will work out, and, above all else, I hope that each moment that takes me further away from my last Earthly visit with Sawyer will also take me closer to our eventual Heavenly reunion.

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Who and What I Miss Most

Posted on April 16, 2025 by admin

There is so much I miss from past parts of my life. Since April tends to be one of the most painful months of the year for me, I’ll go over some of what I miss most in this post. Here we go.

To start, there is my dog Sawyer. Anyone who’s read one of the posts I’ve published in the last three years knows how much I miss him. The remaining pain over his death and subsequent absence is always at its worst in April, which was the month in which he died nearly three years ago. Thank goodness I’ve released as much pain as I have since April 2022. I can’t imagine how I’d have gotten through Sawyer’s death or any of the other huge, heartbreaking happenings that happened in the years since. It’s been hard enough even with all the healing I’ve done.

A close second to Sawyer are my human family members who have died, most of all my grandparents. I so wish I had more time with them, could still visit with them, had seized more opportunities to spend time with them in the past, and had gotten to know them much better. Both my paternal and maternal grandparents lived through some huge moments in human history, and I would have loved to have heard about their experiences in some or all of those events. I often feel sad whenever I remember that I can’t call or visit with them and tell them about the good things that are going on for me as of late, especially my maternal grandparents since they were in my life for so long and knew at least a bit about the hard times I experienced over the past twelve years. I hope they didn’t worry too much about me or how my future would unfold. I wish I could ask them about that and let them know that I’m doing better now.

Next up is 2018 and the many wonderful things I experienced in that wonderful year. I loved going out swing dancing several times a week, having sleeping routines that felt more comfortable and practical for my free time, visiting friends both nearby and far away, going on several wonderful trips, experiencing a year that was mostly good after a year that was mostly bad, and having a lighter work schedule that let me have more fun and downtime while still bringing in enough money to do all the lovely things I did that year. Almost everything back then seemed to have a magical, warm glow around it. Given how disappointing 2019 was in comparison to 2018 and how awful most of the years since 2019 have been for me, I’d do almost anything to relive 2018 (or at least have a year that’s similarly lovely).

If I could group everything I miss into one point that pretty much sums it all up, it would be the point about how I miss being a kid. Despite lots of struggles and plenty of things I wish had never happened, being a kid also gave me a lot of play, fun, and a sense of adventure. The only responsibilities I had were schoolwork, some extracurriculars, and a few small things around the house. With most weekends and longer breaks from school eliminating all but the house responsibilities, I had lots of time to play, swim, watch TV and movies, read, go on family trips, and just enjoy being. No bills, no job, and no huge expectations from myself or anybody else. Others gave me rides everywhere I needed to go and at least a few places I wanted to go, made sure I had the essentials, and took care of enough stuff that I could have lots of fun with few to no big-picture worries. There was a sense that everything would be ok, which I also miss dearly. So much nice stuff has been removed from my life and even more will be removed before my time on Earth is over. Looking back to before 2020, I see plenty of wonderful times with a bit of struggle. Looking back over the last five years, I see mostly pain and struggle with only a small handful of good times. It’s hard to be optimistic about the future when the recent past has been so painful.

The huge changes that have happened over the past few weeks make it seem as if the wonderful humans, animals, places, and events that are no longer around have been gone for even longer than they have. Sawyer was with me from before I started my first regular job until a few months after I left the one I had in late 2021. I so wish he were still here to celebrate with me in the good times and make even a horrible day instantly better by loving on me as soon as I walk in the door at home. I also wish my grandparents were still here to show me unconditional love and support through all seasons of life. I’ve had so much nostalgia lately about them and the wonderful times we shared together, and I’ve been using this lovely song to help me release some pain. Now that neither Sawyer nor any of my grandparents are around anymore, my life feels so much emptier. One of the worst parts of all this is that it can sometimes seem as if they were never here in the first place. Since my grandparents’ house was sold back in January, almost nobody in the family talks about them within earshot of me. Similarly, hardly anybody has mentioned Sawyer since he died almost three years ago. The absence of much conversation around my dead loved ones adds even more to the pain that their absence from Earth has caused.

It seems like I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes. Every few years, some big change comes along and blows my existing life into pieces. Even when those changes have been good for me, they still make it seem like the life I had before they came along dies in the process. I’m currently going through the death of the life I knew from the time Sawyer died until late last month and I have no idea what this next phase of my life will hold. Unlike many past phases which were awful, I hope this one will be positive. I’ll find out over time, and I’ll let you know along the way.

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Renewed Hope

Posted on April 9, 2025 by admin

Lots of my recent posts have been negative. Today’s will be different. Let’s explore some things that have given me renewed hope as of late.

After years of financial struggle, I’m now making good money regularly again thanks to my new job. If things go well here, I’ll soon be in a much better financial position than I was when I left the regular working world in late 2021. Beyond that, by this time next year, I’ll be in a better financial position than I’ve ever been before. That has given me so much relief and is helping me get back to a solid financial place.

In addition to some great money, however, this job has also brought a number of difficulties. The biggest have been huge changes in my sleeping schedule and the morning and nighttime routines I stuck to for almost three years. It’s been hard to adjust the time I spend by my dog Sawyer’s grave every morning and night. The job has also taken away a lot of my free time during most weekdays, which has forced me to get more creative about going through my hobbies, self-care, and other activities before bedtime. Even though I can do it, I’d rather not have to do so, which is always a difficult place to be.

Back to the positives. The increased physical activity from my job has made it much easier for me to fall asleep and stay asleep for most of the night. That and sticking with my new bedtime routine has resulted in me feeling more refreshed after waking up on most days. In fact, I’m probably getting more sleep now than I was before I started this job. To my delight, it took less than a week for me to adjust to both waking up and going to bed many hours earlier than usual, and it’s quite easy at this point for me to fall asleep at my new bedtime. I’m so glad it’s been a much faster, easier adjustment than I thought it would be.

Additionally, I’m only working with a small handful of guys at my job. We all work well together and like each other, and they’ve done a great job welcoming me in and showing me the ropes. While there’s still plenty for me to learn, I’ve already learned quite a bit in the short amount of time I’ve been there. My guess is that I’ll pass the initial trial period with flying colors and be with this company for many more years.

Since I’m still figuring out how to handle my days outside of work (both on workdays and my days off), I’ve withdrawn from most of the socializing I did for years. Although I still go to some events on the weekends and plan to continue hosting my usual juggling meetings, I don’t go out nearly as much as I once did. There are many people whom I used to see at least a few times a month but haven’t seen at the time of this writing since late February. While I do miss some of them, I’m glad to be away from so much loudness, nonstop talking, interrupting, judgment, and other stuff I hate. It’s so nice to have much more peace, quiet, and serenity in my regular life.

It’s wonderful to have all these positive things going after so many years of struggle. When it comes to getting my life together again, I now no longer fear that I’m going to lose before I even start playing. That huge stress reduction has made it much easier to handle my remaining emotional pain, which means that this job is helping me with two of my three goals for this year. I look forward to seeing how the rest of 2025 plays out as I continue to improve at my job, rebuild my finances, and release old pain.

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Good Riddance, March 2025

Posted on April 2, 2025 by admin

March 2025 was both my worst month of this year and the worst month I’ve had in a long time. Here’s what made it awful and why I’m so glad it’s over.

My health got quite bad for most of last month. The issues were similar to that of March 2024, except even worse in some ways. I felt concerned about what might be happening, especially when the methods that had worked in the past seemed to exacerbate the problems this time around. It’s fairly rare that I have bad health issues and even rarer that the usual methods fail, so this was a big scare for me.

March also featured some disappointments in my search for a second job. I attended a job fair after learning about it the night before. While some attendees landed interviews or even got hired on the spot, unfortunately, I did not. Determined to keep going, I started using a job-finding website to look for jobs I’d be able and willing to do. The website also made it easy to apply to those jobs, so I started applying to one new job each day. Despite not hearing a word back from most of those places, I did manage to get an interview with one! It ended up being a few minutes and left me with the impression that I wouldn’t get it. That got me feeling majorly depressed. A much better second interview at the job a few days later gave me hope that it just might happen. I also applied to a few other jobs the very next day. Even if I get a good one, it will still take quite some time to improve my financial situation, and I have lingering concerns there.

One of my financial struggles as of late was a big, unexpected expense. That really discouraged me and seemed like a huge slap in the face, especially after all I’ve done to try to get back on my feet after being down for so long. It also made me feel even more desperate for a gig, more hours at my current job, a second job, or something else to bring in emergency money before it’s too late.

There were a few more experiences that added even more to my pain and left a bad taste in my mouth for March as a whole. Archie the rhino died at my local zoo after living there since 1975. He was one of the oldest rhinos in the world and his over sixty descendants helped keep the Southern white rhinoceros population going. I’ll miss seeing him on my zoo visits. To top it all off, I had a brief fight with a family member on one of the final days of the month that brought up a lot of old pain and left me feeling angry, scared, and depressed for nearly two whole days last weekend.

All of this had me feeling majorly depressed. Even more than the normal amount of depression I’m prone to feeling. By the time March ended, I was feeling a ton of despair, hopelessness, and seemed to be at the end of my rope. It was as if all the ways I have messed up my life had come back to haunt me, and that there was no way to avoid or recover from all the bad seeds I had sown. I also felt extra sad knowing that April would bring with it the three-year anniversary of my dog Sawyer’s death. His absence made everything mentioned above even more painful and harder to handle.

Fortunately, there were some good things in March. Some of my favorites were the extra time I got to spend with family members whom I don’t see often. Several of us had lunch together one day at my aunt and uncle’s house, there was a similar visit at my older sister’s house another day, and I spent a lovely afternoon with my aunt a bit after that. I had lots of good juggling afternoons with some great people, including a wonderful gig on the first day of March. I enjoyed playing some fun board games and had many fun times at the zoo; although I wouldn’t consider paying tribute to Archie at his celebration of life to be fun, I’m still glad I could participate. The worst of my health problems seemed to finally go away, thank goodness, and I feel much better physically than I did for most of last month. I also I met with a job coach shortly before starting a second job fairly quickly after talking with the owner of the company. It seems promising and I’ll keep you updated on it.

It took me a while to determine whether January or March was the worst month of this year for me (which gives you an idea of how 2025 is going for me if two of the three months that have happened so far were both incredibly painful). After all, I had some health issues back in January as well. A bit of car trouble, saying goodbye to Banks the jaguar at my local zoo, and the loss of my grandparents’ house all gave me a great deal of pain in January. However, because of the different sort of health issues that were more concerning to me, the death of Archie the rhino, that family fight, financial issues that didn’t come up until last month, and a huge amount of emotional pain, I now consider March to have been my worst month of 2025. I hope that each month from here on out is much better as far as my health, relationships, finances, and emotions go.

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Things I Wish I Could Change About My Past

Posted on March 26, 2025 by admin

Lately, I’ve been feeling quite depressed over my current life situation, especially after getting some bad news today. There has been a lot of regret over many things I wish I’d done differently in life. Sometimes it boggles my mind as to how much I’ve messed up my life and how many bad decisions I’ve made in a relatively short amount of time. I feel grateful to have learned as much as I have from various authors, leaders, friends, family members, and others who have shared wisdom that has, undoubtedly, made me better equipped for both handling the bad and maximizing the good that life has thrown my way. Still, I wish I could inform my younger self about various skills to learn, pitfalls to avoid, opportunities to seize, and so on. My life situation would be vastly better at this point if that were possible. While I may not be able to do that, I can still compile a list of changes I’d make if I could and share it with you here. Without further ado, here are the biggest things I wish I could change about my past.

  1. Live a better life with Sawyer. Out of all the things I regret in life, my greatest regrets are all around life with my dog Sawyer. I so wish I’d treated him better, spent more quality time with him, taken him on many more walks, advocated for him toward the end of his life to possibly get him more time and better health before his death, taken more pictures and videos of him, traveled more with him, and better met his needs. Making our time together much better would have likely give me far less pain to heal after he died due to having far fewer regrets, both over things I wish I had done and things I wish I hadn’t done. Even now, almost three years after his death and after releasing the vast majority of the pain caused by his absence, the pain is still sometimes overwhelming. Sometimes I physically hurt over the fact that I won’t get any chances to do things differently or take better care of him while I’m on this planet. If I ever adopt another animal friend, I will do a much better job with that new friend than I did with Sawyer.

  2. Learn emotional intelligence as a kid. This is THE skill I wish I had learned when I was a little kid. The central technique from Letting Go by David Hawkins has transformed my life since I started practicing it regularly in late 2020 and allowed me to survive the insanely painful last five years. Still, I would be much better off if from a young age I knew how to heal pain as it came up. It would have been much easier to recognize emotional disturbances in myself and in others and respond mindfully, compassionately, and effectively if I knew how to handle negative emotions from a young age. Additionally, it would have prevented emotional pain from sticking around, festering, and solidifying to the point that it caused lots of other emotional and physical health issues and became much harder to remove later on. I’m sure that clearing out pain as it arose throughout my life would also have resulted in significantly less pain after Sawyer’s death and gotten me back on my feet much sooner.

  3. Develop effective communication skills at a young age. Here’s another one I’d like to have learned from the start. Even at their best, my communication skills have never been as good as I’d thought they were. While they’ve improved a lot over time and I still hope for even more improvement over the course of my remaining life, my upbringing would have been so much better if my communication skills were as good then as they are now. I would have avoided so much trouble with family, friends, teachers, classmates, folks on the job, etc. My interactions with others, both past and present, would have been much better as knowing how to effectively resolve conflict would have prevented so many burned bridges and ruined relationships.

  4. Take good care of myself from the start. Even when I knew the importance of taking good care of myself, I still neglected it many a time. It’s still a struggle for me to focus on healthy eating, exercise, proper breathing, stress management, etc. Consistently getting enough quality sleep is about the only thing I did as a kid that contributed a lot to my health; that’s strange to think about as I hardly ever get enough quality sleep at this point. I wonder if all the years of bad self-care either caused or exacerbated the health issues I’ve dealt with since last year. Either way, I hope that taking better care of myself from here on out will improve my physical health and make at least that part of my life situation better.

  5. Get smart about money much earlier. Money is another big area of struggle for me, especially since last year. However, my money problems started long before 2024. I wish I had gotten a job much sooner, started investing much earlier, avoided reckless spending, saved more money, made far fewer impulse purchases, and been wiser about knowing when to spend some money now to avoid having to spend more money later on (such as putting off spending a decent amount of money on needed maintenance for my car that resulted in a much larger repair bill on down the line). All of that would have put me in a much better financial position and overall life situation over the last five years. It would also have given me a much bigger emergency fund to keep me afloat after Sawyer’s death when I couldn’t even think about working a regular job and could only take on the occasional performing gig, which would likely have kept me in good financial shape until I’d healed enough to get back into the regular working world.

  6. Take one college class per semester from 2013 onward. This is the only item on this list that gives me some hesitation. I stopped going to my local college in late 2012 after accumulating 27 credits through dual enrollment during my senior year of high school and the fall semester after graduation. The one class I’ve taken there since then was in late 2022. I had such a negative experience with the professor, the overall experience, and the fresh pain from Sawyer’s death a few months earlier (which made all other pain I felt during that time even worse) that I haven’t been back since. If instead of stopping completely in 2012 I had just scaled back to 3 credits per semester, I figure I would have accumulated enough credits to get an AA by 2016 while avoiding overwhelm and still leaving plenty of time for work, play, travel, rest, family gatherings, etc. Besides having accomplished that within the lives of Sawyer and both of my maternal grandparents, I might also have better job opportunities (past and present) and a better current life situation as a result. With all the current stress around my health issues, desperately bad financial situation, and increasingly dwindling hope for the future, I can’t even think about going back at this point.

  7. Realize how little time there is. The idea that “It’s never too late” couldn’t be more wrong. So many of my loved ones have died, including some who were younger than me and seemed to have decades of life ahead of them. Even more painful has been the deaths of close family members, whether I knew them for decades or just over a decade. The void they’ve left after knowing and loving me for so long has been awful, as has the knowledge that I can’t ever have another Earthly visit with them despite desperately wishing that I could. Unfortunately, I repeatedly gave up time that I could have spent with many of those loved ones in exchange for far less meaningful and important things (some of which I could still have gotten after spending time with loved ones instead of having to choose one or the other). My only hope is that we’ll all be reunited after death and get to spend a peaceful eternity together, with no more disease, diverging life paths, obligations, death, or anything else tearing us apart ever again.
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Asking for Your Help

Posted on March 19, 2025 by admin

This is going to be a different type of post than usual. It might seem to come out of nowhere, and you will probably feel surprised and maybe even offended by what I say in here. And now, on with the post.

When I first started this blog way back in August of 2018, my original intention was to monetize it. After putting up tons of posts, however, I changed my mind. I love having the freedom to say what I like without worrying about scaring away sponsors, disrupting my content with endless ads, pushing products or companies just to get affiliate deals, etc. As far as I can tell, that will always be the case, and I will continue to enjoy the fact that my blog is one of the rare websites that has no advertising.

That said, I’m still struggling financially. Taking lots of time away from the regular working world helped me tremendously in healing the pain of my dog Sawyer’s death. It also, unfortunately, tanked my financial situation, and it’s taking much longer to recover than I thought it would. I’m still taking performing gigs where I can, working at my job whenever shifts become available, and am looking for additional work. Since my financial situation continues to deteriorate, it costs money to keep this blog going, I’ve had some recent health scares, and one of my goals for this year is to thrive financially, I hope that the work I’ve done and continue to do toward greater financial prosperity will get me to a much better financial place by the end of 2025. That would relieve me of so much stress and bring so much peace back into my life.

Before I make my pitch, I’ll say I do feel embarrassed to be asking this. If you’ve enjoyed the content I’ve posted here throughout the years, and if you’d like to help me accomplish my financial goals, then here’s what you can do. I have added a “donate” page to my blog! You can find it in the top menu of any page or by clicking on this link. This blog will continue to be free for everyone who wants to read it, as it always has been. I will continue to share my ever-expanding take on the world here, as I always have. There is no requirement for you to donate in order to continue accessing this blog or any of its posts. If you donate, what will happen is you will help me keep this blog going, get me into a better financial situation, and receive my undying gratitude. Thank you for being here, thank you for reading my posts, and thank you for helping me.

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Instead of That, Read This: Volume 2

Posted on March 12, 2025 by admin

This post is a continuation of the series I announced in a recent post. The two books we’ll be examining today are 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. Let’s go.

The two fairly lengthy books are united by both being meant for self-improvement and having a fair number of fans. That’s about where their similarities stop. I find 12 Rules for Life to be confusing, needlessly overly complicated, and containing little actionable advice. Even when I read it years ago, I got the sensation of wanting to like and understand it more than I actually did. In contrast, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is much easier to understand, comprehensive, and full of practical recommendations for every area of life. It’s essentially a one-stop shop for self-improvement books, in my opinion.

How about the authors themselves? Well, I used to enjoy Jordan Peterson’s psychological analyses of society and pop culture. At this point, though, I think he has the bad habit of going deep where it’s not needed and shallow where it would be better to go deep. He also focuses much more on thoughts than emotions, which means that he misses out on a lot of opportunity for personal growth, whether for himself or those who look to him for guidance. What’s more, he tends to make negative assumptions about those who appear to disagree with him and sees the world as an epic fight between good and evil; I’d rather see him strive for more civil conversations in areas of disagreement and realize that many of those who see things differently are pursuing a path that they believe will make things better rather than intentionally trying to make things worse. Additionally, I wish he would abandon the bad ideas that are integral to his philosophy (such as his foundational belief that “life is suffering”) and did more to practice what he preaches. Since he’s struggled so much in his own life over the past several years, it seems odd to hear him so strongly criticize the world and speak as if he has the answers to all the world’s problems.

My opinion of Stephen Covey is much more favorable. He’s someone I still admire and whose life seemed consistent with what his work advocated. Although he set a pretty high standard with his work, he was honest about his struggle to live the habits every day. In the few interviews I’ve seen of him, he comes across as very genuine, humble, and relatable. Exactly what I look for in a mentor, whether that mentor is someone I personally know or who has helped me indirectly through various works.

There’s nothing I can think of in 12 Rules for Life that helped me after my dog Sawyer died. In fact, I can easily imagine Jordan Peterson scolding me, telling me harshly to stop crying and keep on going, and perhaps even calling me or Sawyer a mean name while I was in the deepest grief of my life. Meanwhile, the empathic listening and self-care components in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People were invaluable to my recovery. I can imagine Stephen Covey hearing me out, comforting me by identifying how much I love Sawyer and how much his death hurt me, and encouraging me to take it easy while still taking good care of myself. I’ll take that gentle approach over the cruel approach any day.

Last time, I left off by saying that one book was decent, the other was excellent, and that both are worth a read if you have the time. This time, it’s different. I highly, highly recommend reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and I highly, highly recommend avoiding 12 Rules for Life. Life is too short to spend time reading books like 12 Rules for Life that take you way down the wrong paths. You time is much better spent reading and practicing the wisdom contained in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

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My Least Favorite Conversation Habits

Posted on March 5, 2025 by admin

The more I learn about effective communication, the more it hurts to be around ineffective communication (as painful as hearing it can be, the pain is even worse when I’m on the receiving end of it). While I’ve written countless times before about lots of stuff I detest about so much modern communication, I don’t think I’d ever made a post describing what I hate the most. Since most or all of these unfortunately crop up in most conversations I’m in, I’ve been taking more time to myself and especially getting away from those who regularly do one or more of them. That has made me feel much better recently and inspired me to make this post about the top things I’d remove from conversation if I had that power. Without further ado, here’s my list.

  1. Interruptions. If you’ve read any of my previous posts about communication, you likely know that one of my least favorite things about interacting with others is when they interrupt me. This has happened throughout my life, whether in school (from classmates and teachers alike), different jobs, social groups, random strangers, people in stores, and in both calm and stressful situations alike. I don’t understand why so many people think it’s ok to barrel over my sentences. It often takes a lot for me to put together a coherent thought when speaking, and I hate when someone interrupts me when I’m barely a fraction of the way through it. Even when I listen for minutes on end to what they have to say, they still tend to interrupt me almost as soon as I start talking. If there were one item on this list I could eliminate from conversation forever, it would be this one.

  2. Monologuing. So many people have talked my ears off over the course of my life. In the most extreme cases, this has gone on for literally half an hour or longer of them talking nonstop without ever seeing if I was interested in what they were saying, had something of my own to contribute, or had other things to do. Besides this making me feel frustrated by preventing me from adding to the conversation, I can only process a small amount of information at a time, which is why I have to hear the same things repeatedly when I’m learning something new. I can’t handle hearing dozens of pieces of information from someone in one conversation without forgetting most of it and not caring about the rest. It’s just too overwhelming to face such a strong torrent of words, especially since those who do this never seem to tire of talking (or if they do, it’s only long after I’ve grown tired of listening). Conversations are meant to be give-and-take, which means that anyone who does nothing but take would be better suited for a one-man play than an actual interaction with one or more other folks.

  3. One-upping. This can be in the form of sharing a more impressive story just after someone else has talked about something cool or sharing a more depressing incident than what someone else has just said. So many people have done the latter to me since my dog Sawyer died by talking about animal friends or other loved ones of theirs who have died, as if that will somehow make me feel better or add value to the interaction. When two or more people one-up each other, it ends up sounding a lot like this sketch, only much less enjoyable. It quickly gets annoying to be around someone who won’t let a minute pass without bringing the conversation back to himself and never lets anyone else have a moment in the spotlight.

  4. Hostility/judgments. While these are two different things, they are similar enough to discuss both simultaneously. Both of them immediately escalate the exchange into bad territory and make it incredibly hard to get it back to a good place. Also, why everyone seems to feel the need to have opinions on everything and share them without being asked, I’ll never know. What I do know is I’m sick of bringing up a thought, preference, or idea only for someone else to immediately dismiss, contradict, criticize, or otherwise judge it or me. Whenever someone brings either hostility or judgments into a conversation, I immediately lose most of my interest in continuing that exchange. This seems to happen more often over time, even over small matters. I recently realized that the reason for so much hostility and so many judgments on big, controversial subjects is because most people are used to bringing hostility and judgments into conversations around small, trivial subjects. I suspect that it’s a negative feedback loop in that displaying more hostility and judgments on big things also makes them more likely to display hostility and judgments on small things; as humans, we fall to our level of preparation, so someone who is used to bringing in judgments and hostility will default to that, especially in stressful situations.

  5. Being “on” all the time. In short, this is being inauthentic. Some examples of this are compulsive joking, acting differently than how you feel, and generally acting how you think others expect you to act. While sometimes I will smile and play things up when I’m at a performing gig, I almost never do this when I’m on my own time. That’s when I do my best to be genuine, even if that means not laughing at jokes I don’t find funny, admitting when I feel upset even if others around me seem to be feeling good, and staying quiet when I have nothing to say. I wish others would put me at ease by being more genuine so that we’d both better know what the other would need and not have to wonder what’s really going on.

  6. Rushing. Conversations seem to keep getting faster every year. Whether this is due to anxiety, a desire to say everything one is thinking before anyone else jumps in, fear of forgetting something, or something else, it’s stressful and exhausting to be around a bunch of folks who are speaking at Mach 1, especially when trying to keep up with everything so I can spot a place to jump in. It’d be much nicer if everyone would slow down, breathe deeply, think before responding, and speak at a much more leisurely pace.

  7. Nonstop activity. For as long as I can remember, I’ve seemed to run out of conversation long before most others. This can result either in awkward silences if they want to keep going or monologuing. It amazes me how long others can continue an exchange; just as I think it’s about to wind down, it immediately starts back up again. I wish more people would allow themselves (and me) to enjoy silence, stillness, and saying nothing for extended periods of time.
Posted in Communication, Getting Along with Each Other, Inspirational People, Life Hacks, Personal Freedom, Self-Improvement | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on My Least Favorite Conversation Habits

Instead of That, Read This: Volume 1

Posted on February 26, 2025 by admin

I’ve read a lot of books over the last decade or so. Most of them have been self-improvement books that focused on communication, emotions, interacting with others, and effective action. As such, I’ve noticed parallels between different books that discuss similar subjects. That got me thinking, as did the point in the next paragraph.

While I generally believe that more is better when it comes to reading as lots of folks read hardly ever or even never, this is only true up to a point. As Carl Sagan beautifully says here, we simply don’t have enough time to read all the books in the world before we die. Since we’re limited on how many books we can read, any book that gives a lot of bad advice or fails to satisfy the reader prevents that reader from reading a book that gives good advice or otherwise proves satisfactory. That gave me the idea to compare different books on similar subjects and give my opinion of which one is more worth the read. This may prevent someone from going down a bad path (or at least a less effective path) and having to relearn a lot of stuff in order to be more effective, as I have.

I don’t know how long this series will last or how many books I’ll pit against each other. At the time of this writing, I have two posts in mind, including this one. This week, I’ll compare two books I’ve previously reviewed: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.

Both books focus heavily on influencing and communicating with others, and they have some degree of overlap. Perhaps their strongest point in common is presenting ideas to others in ways that will appeal to their interests rather than one’s own. On most of their points, however, the books offer opposing advice. For example, How to Win Friends and Influence People encourages you to get people to say “yes” early on in the hopes of getting them to agree to several more things before finally agreeing to your big ask. In contrast, Never Split the Difference recommends using questions designed to elicit “no” responses based on the idea that saying “no” makes people feel safe and more open to what you have to say. Having read both books multiple times, it’s interesting to see how similar they are at times and, at other times, how different. It sometimes seems as if Never Split the Difference is an updated version of How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Whenever I read a fascinating book, I often like to learn more about the author. At this point, I know a good bit about Chris Voss and what he offers beyond Never Split the Difference. His company, the Black Swan Group, has a website with tons of free information, a free weekly newsletter, and lots of online and in-person training workshops that can be purchased by those who want to dive deep into improving their negotiation skills. The techniques espoused in the book are constantly improving as the whole team is always finding new things or different ways to better use the old methods. Even without going for any of the paid training (which I haven’t thus far), the abundance of quality, free information is astonishing, and it can take anyone much further than they’d go if they only went as far as reading the book.

Regarding the usefulness of the techniques in Never Split the Difference, I’ve found them to be incredibly valuable in day-to-day life. Though I’ve not used them much in tense situations, I plan to try them when such situations present themselves; they work wonders at keeping good situations good, getting clarity and collaboration, and giving me some guidance where I previously would have had no idea what to say. That personal verification is enough for me. There are also many stories in the book of hostage negotiators using these tools to save lives by persuading kidnappers to release the hostages. For anyone who prefers to look at the science behind things, you’re also in luck. There has been a lot of neuroscientific verification of the validity of these tools, from canceling out negative emotions by calling them out to releasing bonding hormones through accurately verbally identifying how someone is feeling.

Now for How to Win Friends and Influence People. I’ll say that I have found several things in that book to be useful, and it will always hold a special place in my heart since it was the book that started my self-improvement journey. That said, I believe that it also exacerbated my people-pleasing tendencies and made it much harder for me to stick up for myself. The book has lots of big picture ideas and, unfortunately, little in the way of specific applications. Outside of a few examples, I struggled with applying the ideas in a variety of situations, especially when I was in tremendous pain after my dog Sawyer died and tended to just go along with whatever anyone said while offering little to nothing in the way of conversation on my end. I wish it gave more guidance for general conversations apart from just sitting quietly and letting others talk.

Aside from a handful of other books he wrote, the only major ongoing resource I know of for Dale Carnegie’s work is a speaking course intended to help people overcome their fear of public speaking. Since I don’t know much about how the ideas behind How to Win Friends and Influence People have changed over time, I can’t speak as to how much training around that book or some of Dale Carnegie’s other ideas currently exists and how similar it now is to how it originally appeared. The fact that Dale Carnegie died long ago means that there’s no longer an option for him to train anyone, add to his work, or make changes to it. With everything, I believe in taking the good and leaving the rest, including works that have been around for ages and are considered classics. Even ideas that have stood the test of time can still be improved as new discoveries are made, and that includes How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Overall, I consider How to Win Friends and Influence People to be a decent book. It gave me some good ideas, and I believe that the world would be much better if even half of the existing humans used its techniques. At the same time, I now consider Never Split the Difference to be the best communication book I’ve ever read, and I believe that the world would improve tremendously if more people used what it teaches. If you’ve got time to read and digest them both, go for it. If you only have time for one, I say pick Never Split the Difference and watch as all of your relationships undergo a drastic improvement.

Posted in Communication, Getting Along with Each Other, Great Books, Inspirational People, Life Hacks, Personal Freedom, Self-Improvement | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Don’t Tell Me Your Troubles When I’m Already in Pain

Posted on February 19, 2025 by admin

Don’t tell me your troubles when I’m already in pain

Don’t bring me more dark clouds when I’m drowning in rain

That’s no time to vent or gossip about all

Of the humans you know who fill you with gall

Please give me a break while the hurt is so strong

And refrain from saying that my emotions are wrong

Don’t contradict, correct, or otherwise deny

The words that I say, or else I will cry

Judging me or my feelings has no place in my life

And neither do those who bring me more strife

I don’t want to hear what you think I should do

To help me feel better when I’m feeling blue

I know what to do when I’m feeling bad

So telling me what to do will only make me feel mad

When I say Sawyer died, don’t take that as your cue

To say, “I know how you feel because I lost my dog, too.”

How could you know what it’s like to be me

When you’ve never been I and I’ve never been thee?

Why do you think it would help me to heal

To tell me about your losses with zeal?

And please don’t think you’ll send dark clouds away

By saying that everything will all be ok

Don’t make promises you know you can’t keep

And think this will comfort me as I weep

Telling me not to cry is a horrible curse

That, if followed, will only serve to make me feel worse

“Look on the bright side!” is an odd thing to say

When all I can see are drab days full of gray

You can offer me a hug or a listening ear

And accept me when I’m full of sadness and fear

Or ask me to share a story or memory

From loved ones who’ve meant so much to me

Sit with me in silence, I ask and I pray

If I run out of words and have no more to say

Sometimes I feel tired and only want space

When I’ve had too many humans getting up in my face

Some time to myself and a whole lot of rest

Will always get me back to feeling my best

These gestures will do more than any words spoken

To help me with healing when I’m feeling broken

If this seems like too much, then all I can say

Is please steer clear of me when I have a bad day

Posted in Communication, Getting Along with Each Other, Inspirational People, Life Hacks, Personal Freedom, Self-Improvement | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Don’t Tell Me Your Troubles When I’m Already in Pain