One Last Predicament

Hey there, all...

If I can survive the next eight hours, I'll have Christmas Eve and Christmas off. Hurrah for me. :)

Work shouldn't be so bad today...just lots of shelving books, and after that, checking e-mail and answering it before being off for two days. Compared to what the last two months have been like, it should be downright peachy.

My ChapStick tried to liberate itself from my pants pocket yesterday. Somehow it managed to get the danged cap off in there and then tries to ooze through the cheap cotton fibers. Don't worry! Me and my pants are OK...we vanquished the foul thing but now I'm down a ChapStick. Grrr. My lips are far too big to be chapped!

I'll spend the next few days drinking tea, putting up rope lights (hopefully Joey will let me borrow his power drill), being creative in some way, shape or form, and enjoying the company of my adopted family.

Christmas presents gotten so far!

Fairy dust and soap from Chris B. Critter!
A football blanket from stickypawz! Yay!
A sentimental rock from Silver Raccoon!
Halls and Kleenex from aubrin
Zen Master Raven and "New Favorite" by Alison Krauss + Union Station from Reah Kitty!
The security deposit for the apartment from Joey!

Awesome. :) Thanks, everyone, for the holiday thoughts and wishes. :)

Listen II

Hey there, all...

Isn't it funny how people always seem to be thinking of the same things sometimes?

Smug people piss me the fuck off. It's always been one of my buttons, and one of the best, surefire ways to raise my quick-shot Leonine temper is to think that you're better than other people. Whether you are or not is beside the point. Belittling other people or unnecessary exultation of self is a special kind of blasphemy that I hate just a bit more than anything else. So, I've always thought it best to put as much distance between myself and Smug Person A as possible, because aggravation is not something I'm very interested in these days.

One of the reasons smug people are so unbearable is they always assume things that either a) make them look good or b) make you look bad. If I ask someone, say, if they're going to WalMart when there's six inches of snow on the ground, they'll automatically assume I'm one of the 'cattle' freaking out to get milk and bread and start in about how I should have taken care of such things sooner. It doesn't occur to them that there might be other reasons, like wanting to blow my $100 Christmas bonus for holiday presents that I can actually afford to buy now. So, immediately, I'm put on the defensive because they've assumed I'm a dumb sheep. This leads me to *another* pet peeve: people who attack me for trying to be nice to them.

This has happened more times than I care to count. Someone is hurting, and I want to offer a friendly shoulder, a helping hand, whatever what-have-you. 9 times out of 10, said person reminds me of a state of mind that I've had (or still have occassionally) and I feel a sort of empathy for that person. Out of that empathy comes a desire to help. Because I'm not what this person is looking for (in the furry community, that usually means art and/or popularity) I'm either ignored or outright rejected and their bitching continues. Of course, actually I'm pretty hurt that this happened, but this hurt leads to anger at the individual for simply being a dumbass.

Everyone wants to be listened to...but more than that, they just want to be acknowledged and afforded basic respect. Smug people and constant complainers deny people this want, where I personally believe that's one of the first things you should give someone...at least, until they do something that voids that respect and possibly acknowledgement. There are very few people that I disrespect, and just about all of them are smug, egotistical or self-absorbed in some way, shape or form.

I'm trying to get to a place where I can 'see through' this kind of person. I feel I have a pretty good grasp on what drives most behaviors in a lot of people, but this is just one of those things that I don't understand. Most people hurt other people not out of a kind of malicious drive or desire, but because they're too tangled up in their own negative thinking to know any better. People who feel they can intentionally hurt other people, for whatever reason, I mean *really* hurt someone, casually but pointedly, are beyond me.

I know my limitations. I know where I'm flawed, and I know what kind of things I do well, what I strive for. I've become a lot more secure about who I am even over the past few months, and I'm developing all the time. For someone to tell me that they know me better than I know myself, what I can and cannot do, what kind of person I am, what kind of person I'm *not*...to me, they're no better than the fundamentalists most of them like to rail against so much.

It's very hard, but actually *listening* to people, listening to the meaning behind what they say and do is one of the most worthwhile things people can do. People on either end of the esteem spectrum reject that ability to their own detriment.