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.
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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.

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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

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Screens and Distractions

Posted on February 12, 2025 by admin

I’ve recently started taking more time away from screens. It all started when I watched this video and took some time afterward to let its message sink in. While my memory is still good, it isn’t what it once was, and the same goes for my ability to focus. I figured that if excessive screen use caused them both to decline, then less screen time would improve them. Here’s what I’ve noticed so far.

It’s only been about a week since I started consciously using my screened devices less. As with almost all other changes I make in life, I’m starting slowly and gradually increasing my efforts over time. Still, despite the small, recent changes, I’m already seeing progress. The biggest changes I’ve seen are that my focus is improving and I’m becoming less absentminded. I also feel more relaxed, find it easier to be present, have more patience, am in much less of a daze when going through life, and have more time to do things I want to do. I’m glad to have seen such swift early progress.

I still often use screens every day. However, at this point I find myself using them more intentionally rather than merely habitually. I’m still using them habitually to a certain extent as habits often take a long time to break, especially habits that have been around for a decade or longer. With time, I believe my use of screens will become even more limited and intentional.

Even spending a little less time seeing (and sometimes intentionally seeking out) things on screens that upset me and which I can’t change is already improving my mental/emotional health. Humans in general tend to believe that the more they focus on something, the bigger an issue it is. Thus, constantly seeing negativity, which is a huge amount of what is shown on screens of all types, tends to make one see it everywhere, even where it doesn’t exist. That also tends to make one miss the positive in the world, even if one is surrounded by it. Stepping back from that has done wonders for my wellbeing and allows me to see more of the positive things in the world and even add to them.

I started using screens a lot more after my dog Sawyer died for distractions, looking at cute animal pictures and videos, seeking things to help me heal, and finding ways to kill time when I had more than I knew what to do with. Since I’ve healed so much in the nearly three years since Sawyer’s death, the desire for escapism is much smaller than it was when the pain was overwhelming. Still, it was only recently that I started actually focusing less on screens. Similarly to how someone who was shackled and weighed down for a long time might remain unnaturally postured long after being freed, so too has it taken some time for me to choose to use screens much less even though I had the option to do so much earlier.

So far, I’m enjoying the world outside of screens. The urge to be constantly online, have some compulsory background noise, immediate remedy for boredom, or otherwise use an electronic device is diminishing. I have no idea how much it will diminish. When I stopped watching TV over a decade ago during a three-week experiment, it was surprisingly easy to do. I started by ceasing to watch modern sitcoms and focused instead on older sitcoms and other kinds of shows. That was all I set out to do. Shortly after that, though, my interest in TV diminished to the point that even after the three weeks ended, I stayed away from TV. Since then, I’ve only occasionally watched a show on normal TV or streaming services. That’s a huge change after watching hours of TV nearly every day of my life from the time I was a little kid until after my high school graduation. I look forward to seeing where this journey will take me, and I think it will be more successful than the previous attempt.

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Review of January 2025

Posted on February 5, 2025 by admin

I wish I could say that the first month of this year went well for me. Unfortunately, January started well and became more painful with each passing week. Here’s how it happened.

I was in a pretty good place overall at the start of the month. Financially, things were decent thanks to some lucrative December gigs. I generally felt good emotionally and physically. This got me looking forward to this year and believing that I had finally gotten out of the rough water that nearly drowned me so many times last year.

Things quickly went downhill after that promising start. The first issue was health problems early in January. In addition to making me feel bad, this also prevented me from making nearly as much money as I’d hoped I would. Some more car trouble around the same time as the health issues further worsened my financial situation. That triple punch shook me and made me feel worried about what might happen next.

By far the most painful event in January was losing my grandparent’s house after it was sold. While the closing date was originally going to be on January 31st, it got moved up to January 29th. My final visit was January 27th. That was my saddest day so far this year. I cried more and felt more tired from the tears and all the emotions around that situation than I had in a long time. While I wasn’t there when the closing happened two days later, I still felt sad as it passed from my family into another family. I hope the new owner will love it, treasure it, and get as much value out of it as my grandparents and all of our close family members did over the years.

The day after the closing was my last chance to see Banks the jaguar at my local zoo before he got sent to live and (if all goes well) reproduce in Texas to increase the jaguar population. While I got there in time to see Harry, who is Banks’s dad, I arrived too late to see Banks. I don’t know if Banks was regularly brought in earlier each day than other jaguars or if he was brought in early on his final day to prepare for his move. Either way, I felt devastated at missing my last chance to say goodbye, wish him well, watch his antics, and tell him I love him. That pain plus the pain of losing my grandparent’s house the day before essentially ruined that day for me.

On top of all of this, several animals whose profiles I follow on social media died. One of them died during the final visit to my grandparent’s house and another died the following week. The fact that they were dogs hurt even worse since dogs are my favorite animals and their deaths always affect me more negatively than the deaths of any other animals, especially when they’re dogs that I’ve enjoyed following for quite some time.

All of that made my last week of January incredibly painful emotionally, and it made January my most painful month in recent memory. After all of those hits, I felt a lot more sad, scared, and nervous for the future than I felt late last year or early this year. Any one of those painful occurrences alone would have been difficult enough. The combination gave me the sensation of drowning and made me fear that this year would be just as bad as last year.

Fortunately, I was able to do some work on my car with a family member as well as on my own. That seems to have gotten it running much more smoothly without breaking the bank. I’ve also started using higher quality gas after years of unknowingly using low quality fuel. I’m hoping that that along with regular maintenance will further improve my car’s health and performance. Speaking of health, although my own health is still below where it usually is, there have been enough health improvements to give me a huge sense of relief and make it easier to handle the other, more painful situations. Those improvements have given me some hope that things will continue looking up.

Even with the improvements that happened toward the end of January, I’m still dreading how the rest of the year will go after such a difficult first month. I’m hoping that January will be the most painful, difficult month of this year and that the rest will be much easier and more enjoyable. Some lingering health issues from last month, remaining concerns about my car and financial situation, an extremely unpleasant interaction on the third day of this month, and having to get through all of those without my dog Sawyer while knowing that he will have been dead for three years this April have me fearing that this year will continue to suck. I hope that that fear is mistaken, and I’ll keep doing what I can to make it that way.

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Good Things to Do Online

Posted on January 29, 2025 by admin

Last week, I talked about why it’s best to avoid fighting online. This week, I want to bring up some useful things to do online instead. Here are my suggestions.

  1. Starve the trolls instead of feeding them. Some people intentionally interact with online trolls in the hopes that doing so will prevent them from bothering (or even scamming) unsuspecting and more vulnerable folks. The problem with this is that engaging trolls doesn’t prevent them from going after multiple people at once. Some have multiple electronic devices going simultaneously across many different online profiles for that very purpose. Additionally, like all other kinds of fighting, engaging with them just fuels their egos and makes them continue their path of destruction, which increases the chances that someone will get hurt. If someone’s primary motive for trolling is to get attention, then depriving them of that attention is the best way to get them to stop.
  2. If you must respond, respond with tactical empathy. You might be wondering what “tactical empathy” is. In his phenomenal book Never Split the Difference, former hostage negotiator Chris Voss defines it as “understanding the feelings and mindset of another in the moment and also hearing what is behind those feelings so you increase your influence in all the moments that follow.” Curiosity is an essential component of tactical empathy, and it can be expressed with an open-ended question (“What makes you feel this way?”), with a label (“It sounds like/looks like/seems like you feel (insert emotion(s) here).”), or with mirroring (repeating a few key words that the other person just said). These will help keep a conversation civil or deescalate it if it has already gotten hostile and will also likely give you more information about where somebody is coming from. All of those are much more useful than butting heads and screaming into the void.
  3. Use the internet for meaningful connections. Most folks used the various social media platforms that debuted in the early to mid 2000s to reconnect and keep in touch with family members, friends, schoolmates, etc. This is my approach with social media. At this point, I usually make three posts a day (a funny post, a sincere post, and a picture of my dog Sawyer), and I avoid negativity wherever I can. Social media provides a wonderful opportunity for everyone to share life with each other instead of engaging in hostility or anything else that makes the world worse.
  4. Pursue useful or just plain fun activities online. There is a wealth of information online that can help you improve life for yourself and those close to you. There are also countless fun activities online, from games to recipes to party activities and all other kinds of enjoyable content. Whether productive, enjoyable, or both, any of those are better options than using the internet to fight.

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The Danger of Online Fighting

Posted on January 22, 2025 by admin

While I used to get into at least online fight a day, I’ve gotten pretty good over the last few years at steering clear of them. Unfortunately, that seems to be the exception as there are still plenty of online fights. I even see some folks I know getting into them whereas I never saw them do anything like that before. My post about fighting covers most of what I have to say about this, although I do have some additional thoughts to share that focus more on online fights. Here we go.

  1. They’re more tempting than real-life fights. Real-life fights come with many more risks and limitations than online fights. With online fights, you get to fight with people that you’ll never meet in person, pause anytime and come back later, post links to things that seem to support your side, take time to craft the perfect point before replying, and say harsh things without the risk of immediate violence or having to face someone you’ve just insulted as you would offline. If you have a lot to do on any given day, you might not have the time or the energy to fight someone in person. However, even busy folks usually find time to engage in one or more online bouts and seem to think that they’re doing something vitally important by trying to force their opinions onto somebody else (which, as with other kinds of fights, fails to change hearts and minds as everyone reacts defensively and says a lot about what they think without ever stopping to consider what someone else is saying). This easy access and host of egoic payoffs make it much harder to resist online fights than real-life fights.
  2. Dehumanization is much easier online. Another reason that it’s easier to act cruelly toward someone else online than in person is because it’s easy to forget that you’re interacting with another human on the other side of the screen (excluding, of course the times in which you’re dealing with a bot rather than a human). Communicating only through text prevents everyone involved from hearing and seeing how everyone else is communicating, which makes it much harder to figure out if a particular line was meant as a joke, an insult, a clarifying question, or something else. In addition to reminding everyone in an interaction that they are all humans, talking face-to-face with someone is much more likely to bring up meaningful, humanizing things about each other. These can include foods that they enjoy, beloved animal friends (such as my late dog Sawyer), fond memories from early life, and other tidbits that can improve the bond between everyone and make hostility less likely. All of that is much less likely online, hence the hostility of so many online fights.
  3. Ruining lives is much easier in online fights. Fighting in real life has resulted in countless ruined lives, whether through war, loss of a job or business, family estrangement, friendships ending, etc. Online fights have the potential to cause even more harm. Things stick around much longer online than in person, whether or not they’re true. It’s common in any kind of fight for participants to make awful accusations toward each other. If an awful accusation is believed and shared widely enough, it can result in the total destruction of someone’s reputation, leading to their getting fired, losing support of family members and close friends, financial ruin, and other huge issues that can ruin their life. Jon Ronson’s book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed contains many examples of this very thing. Thus, while real-life fights can result in lasting harm to one or more participants, this is even more likely with internet fights.
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