PopcornJackTerry

I didn’t pick the first song in today’s soundtrack because it is 78 and beautiful here and not those two things everywhere else. (I know better than intentionally pissing off my audience.) I like the message that JB got when he wrote this song.

As I was writing the title, I almost put 1941 as the year. Shows you how much I paid attention to history. In a previous blog I wrote about how my major bar rule was no politics, no religion. My blog from this past Wednesday, which had a heavy religious bent to it, had two people comment on it, the most I’ve had since my blog about the politics behind the channel widening vote down here. Moral of the story? Politics and religion get people to talk. Hmmmm.

So Jesus walks into a voting booth….

Just kidding. I promised a blog about determination and I’m determined to write it, but not today. Today I’m writing about something else. If I have learned nothing else about writing (and I have many friends who will tell you I’ve learned nothing at all) it is that when the muse is kicking ass and taking names, you get right up next to her and START WRITING!! I’m finding myself unable to focus on anything but this, so here it comes.

A problem I have a lot of issue with these days is saying “The problem is…” as if that is the only problem I’m struggling with. That if I were to solve that one problem, it would be the equivalent of turning a magic key in the lock of the universe and everything would fall into place perfectly. Don’t get me wrong. That’s kind of what I’m looking for out of this world, but I know that ain’t gonna happen. Furthermore I know I have more than just one problem, so I usually catch myself when I say “The problem is” and switch it to “One of the problems is.” That being said?

The problem with being passive aggressive is that it is about as effective, and yet as popular, as a prevent defense during a two minute drill. The best you can get out of being passive aggressive is a collection of people saying “Jeeze he’s at it again.” It comes across as whiny and needy and it is not, not now, not ever, not never in the past and not at anytime in the future, going to make anyone suddenly address all of your needs. It is not charming, it is not endearing, it is nothing more than petty, immature and annoying. I know all of this and yet I have become the master of it. I have become King Shit of the turd mountain that is passive aggressive behavior.

This isn’t a new revelation to me; what is new is how I found myself thinking about it today. Traditional passive aggressive behavior involves a person acting in a certain way to induce a response from another person that can best be described as some version of “Is everything okay?” It’s a call for attention without actually saying “Look at me.” What I was thinking about today is just how far I’ll go for that attention.

I’ll go to great length not to get hurt. This is no surprise. It is a personal life manifestation of what has become my professional life credo: if I don’t finish something, it can’t be rejected. In other words, there can be no final answer if I don’t ask the final question. I don’t want to be told no, because that will mean I have failed at what I’ve been doing and force me to rethink how I am living my life and what my goals and aspirations are. If I know the answer is going to be no and I’m not ready to hear it, I’ll find a thousand ways to put off asking the question while still making sure I’m not ignored.

But then all of that energy has to go somewhere. All of what I should be pro-actively addressing isn’t going away, and neither is what is in that drives it, so it comes out sideways, creating more issues than it is solving. Which makes me realize something, the something that kept my mind whirring until I sat up and started writing this.

(As a perfect example of passive aggressive behavior, listen to this song.)

Maybe hearing no is what I need.

Maybe it’s not going to be the way I want it to be. Maybe it is painfully obvious and I’m just refusing to acknowledge that because I don’t want the pain, even if getting through the pain and moving on is the best thing for me. Maybe I don’t want to admit I’ve made a mistake. Maybe I can’t handle right now accepting that I’ve screwed something else up. Maybe all these things are true. Or maybe I’m wrong about all of that.

The problem is, I’ll never know until I stop being passive aggressive and start being truthful.

The Stones say we don’t always get what we want but sometimes we get lucky enough to get what we need. (And yet there is no Stones on today’s soundtrack.) Fatalists will tell you everything we get is what we need and deserve and we just need to figure out what it means and why it’s happening to us. I’m certainly no fatalist but I do have a belief that everything happens for a reason. Ninety percent of that time the reason is wrong place/wrong time but it’s still a reason. The important part of all of that, though, is that nothing we want to happen will happen if we don’t make it happen on our own.

I can cross my fingers and wish on stars and crack wishbones all I want. If I really want what I want I need to go and get it. I need to not allude to it but ask for it. I need to own myself and all I am worth, walk to the front of the line of orphans with my bowl in my hand and say “Please sir, may I have some more?”

And just like Twist, I need to be ready for the answer to be no. But if I can learn to accept that answer, it will make me stronger for the next time, when the answer might be yes.

Last Song. This has kind of become my theme song. And yet if you listen, you can see that as inspirational as it is, it’s also awfully passive aggressive as well. (But on a clear day, when they happen, I can see a very long way.)