Tonight’s Reflection: Throughout most of my life, I’ve done a great job at dividing everything that I encounter into two categories: things I can do something about and things I cannot. If it’s something that I can’t do anything about, then I accept it and move on. If there is something that I can do about the outcome, I decide whether I have anything positive to offer to the situation or not. If not, I move on. If I can have a positive impact on the situation, then I attempt to take action. It’s a life model that has served me quite well. It has helped me to become the Windows network and email administrator for a Washington, DC university that was ranked eighth best university for student technology within the US when I was 24. It led to me becoming the global network monitoring and performance engineer for Discovery Channel before I was 30. It’s led to an excellent track record with the fire service. Many others follow this same philosophy and simply describe it differently: do no harm, leave things better than you found it, etc. But the real trick is in the initial assessment. If something is borderline, on which side of the fence does it fall? This conundrum is often experienced with relationships. If someone is angry with me about something, is it their fault for having unreasonable expectations or is it my fault for being an insensitive donkey? That specific situation can be incredibly hard to decipher, especially when the other person refuses to talk to you. Maybe you’re dealing with a friend that feels that you’ve wronged them, a separated parent that no longer keeps in contact, or even someone as close as a spouse or significant other. When I was going to NA meetings a long time ago, one of my friends used to repeatedly tell me that I have to take responsibility for my own sh*t and let others assume responsibility for theirs. At times, it sucks. It really does. And it hurts. But I have found it to be another solid philosophy to adopt. I’m happy to help any of my friends that tell me they have a problem and need a hand, but I quickly try to get them to set realistic expectations if they are trying to blame others. The end goals of these two tactics are simple: leave a positive impact wherever you can, let the negative leave without too much worry, and take ownership of your faults. And that brings me to… Tonight’s Update: I’m beyond frustrated. I spent nearly seven hours in the car today driving from Toronto to PA for a wedding tomorrow. I love weddings, so I should be happy. I even got to have Buffalo wings at the highest rated wing restaurant in Buffalo. I haven’t actually felt depressed in over two days. However, there was something that struck me between episodes two and three of Loveline (yes, Dr. Drew and Mike Catherwood are still hosting the show) that left me feeling really empty. It wasn’t anything specific to the show, but just thinking about everything the callers were explaining and the answers that were being given got me thinking about my own life again. Tonight’s frustration comes from the fact that I don’t have a great reason to be feeling depressed right now, yet I am. For what it’s worth, I normally don’t have a good reason for feeling depressed. If there were a legitimate reason, I would probably say that I’m upset or sad instead of depressed. (Examples: The Nats lost, so I’m upset. Aunt Sally isn’t coming for Christmas, and that makes me sad. I feel completely worthless because I have nothing to offer the world that someone else couldn’t provide; I’m depressed.) To say that I’m glad that I’m going to start the intensive therapy this coming week is an understatement, because something needs to happen. At this point, I’m even considering ECT or hypnotism if I don’t progress well through therapy. I just want to be able to not focus on the things that don’t matter anymore. I’m not trying to say that I want to ignore them completely, but I want to be able to recognize that things are not going to change and let them roll off of my back instead of trying to reason my way out of the mood that I’m feeling. In short, I want to be able to say, “Yeah. That sucks, but you can’t do anything about it so what’s next?'” Tonight’s Mindless Crap: I just gave you herpes. http://www.giantmicrobes.com/us/products/herpes.html