Thursday, August 30, 2007

Reflective Magnification

Cranky toddlers make me cranky. Perhaps I should say cranky toddler makes me cranky. Since I have only one.

I'm working on this character flaw. And it's a really weird one. I seem to have some kind of problem about overdone behavior. And what I do in the face of it, is engage in overdone behavior. Oh, it feels all justified and right and not overdone when I'm doing it. But after examining it carefully later, I can see it.

Someone deletes a forum thread that I started, and I think they were overreacting. Then I overreact and post a new thread about how much I detested the deletion.

My wife gets a little irritated with a cranky toddler who ought to be going to sleep and isn't, and I get all upset that she's upset. A short time later when she's stopped being upset, and the boy is sound asleep, I'm still out of kilter.

Some coward posts nasty comments to my technical blog (he or she posted anonymously) and I feel I have to use all the wits at my disposal to defend myself and make the person look foolish. Mission probably accomplished (gratuitously insulting people generally makes one look foolish all by itself). But why the heat? Why the overreaction? Have I now been the foolish one by insulting back, though more sophisticatedly? Even if it wasn't gratuitous?

I have some real thinking to do about this. I've seen it a lot lately. I don't think it's because I'm really doing it more, but that I'm seeing it more.

I know I have some real hot buttons around fairness and basic "niceness." And yes I know that's a really blah way to put it, but I haven't really come up with a better way. The fact is, I like to be nice. I like people to be nice. When I feel people aren't being nice, I behave not nicely. The problem is, that isn't nice. What it is is hypocritical.

I've got to stop reflecting what's hurled at me, reflecting and magnifying it.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

My Kind of Humor

I admit that I like clever phrases and sayings. And I like the kind of humor that makes a person think in order to understand the joke. So today I invented the following (hopefully) humorous saying:

    A creature's liquid output is chronologically linked with its liquid input
Translation: I drank a lot of water at work today. Laugh.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Difficult Time Ahead

There is a difficult time ahead for my family. It's going to be hard on me. And it will be harder on my wife. But it will be even harder on my almost-16-month-old son, because he's going to be having open heart surgery to replace his aortic valve next month.

I'm not so much worried about the actual procedure. My son is in God's hands and I trust Him, no matter what happens. Even if my son were to die I will still trust Him. The suspense on the day of the surgery, the fear of a visit from a gowned hospital employee whose face appears just a little too grave... those are things I feel equipped to handle.

What bothers me is that my son will not understand why he is in pain, and it's going to hurt. He is so active and energetic, and he'll not only have his chest cut open but will be poked full of holes for various tubes and wires. The breathing tube hurts and is really unpleasant. It hurts to cough. He hates sleeping on his back and that's where we're going to have to try to keep him. The list goes on and on.

What happens to a child's trust in the world, in his parents, when he goes through that kind of trauma? I wish I could spare him all the pain. But my wife and I will definitely be there with him to comfort him and do our best to be the present, loving parents he needs.

I wish that instead of taking seven work days off for his surgery, we could take the same eleven days (including weekends) to go to Disney World or the Grand Canyon or have some other fun vacation.

Friday, August 24, 2007

It's a Start, Anyway

Does anyone actually read personal blogs? Are there legions of internet surfers just waiting out there, eager to read the random thoughts and personal details of some person they've never met and will never meet? And now I've made their day: yet another blog, began in optimism with plans for much interesting and rich writing, full of comments from others, quoted and linked to all over the internet.

But will it ever be more than a single "here's my new blog!" post, as so many of the blogs here are? Only time will tell.

It's a start, anyway.