How not to gather

[smokingboot]

I was woken by an image in my head, of a woman who looked just like my mother, but broader built, thicker set. She was in her 40s/50s maybe and was wearing a wedding suit, pencil skirt with an off-the-shoulder jacket, and in her upswept hair was some kind of glittering headpiece/comb with the veil swirling out behind. She was laughing, very joyful. The image stayed a couple of seconds and disappeared. It felt like a glimpse into one of the otherworlds, those moments where timelines split and fan out, a place where she didn't didn't marry the wrongest of men and didn't develop severe mental illness, a world where she could be healthy and happy, perhaps a world in which I never existed at all.

Then I was awake proper and heard the whistler outside. It was a thoroughly inocuous tune and stopped quickly, but there's no way to make whistling in the dark anything other than sinister. Folklore the world over declares it to be a bad idea; doing it is said to attract, er, interest, and responding to it is said to be thoroughly dangerous. I toyed with the idea of whistling back, just to be mischievous, but I decided against it. After all, if I whistled back at it, it might whistle back at me, we might end up whistling at each other until daybreak and and at the very least I would have gathered myself a nutter who knows where I live. I might end up trapped in one of the old stories. Also, I would wake Russ up.

I have already gathered myself a something.

And rather than go into it too deeply, I shall vent. Just a moment's ungraciousness and I shall be done. What I should say to a certain person is this:

'Come now, no need to leave the group, you're not being rejected. No-one is slighting your writing, it's just a case of tone. You are awesome at this [insert example] and that [insert another example] and the work you did on [insert successful task] was wonderful. Please don't feel unappreciated, no-one intends that at all.'

As opposed to what I want to say which is:

'Oh get up, you ridiculous manbaby.'

There now, better.

Comments

[bleodswean]

A whistler....I'm glad you didn't respond in kind.

What is it in the human psyche wherein the criticism / approval dynamic so often becomes crippling emotionally, mentally, and physically? Should we be doing something different whilst educating children? What purpose does this revolt serve, as far as the reptilian brain goes? Deep deep roots on this and yet it's interesting because it is never well received and other similar traits get quickly pulled out because of the negative reception. Very frustrating when we encounter this - in others and ourselves!

[smokingboot]

I'm terrible with whatever feels like rejection, and I don't know why that is. It should teach us but instead, we just hurt.

Given my own aspects of primadonna, I've tried not to be brusque with this person, we are just pushed for time and his sensitivity is, shall we say, highly localised. He goes into the document, does a massive amount of strikethrough on someone else's work, and then starts writing away as if his stream-of-consciousness trumps everything around it. There was no thought in his head about how others might feel to see their efforts discarded for his freestyle. Why does their sensitivity matter less than his? He's tuffenuff to give it out...

But for all that, I genuinely believe he feels awful, and there's no need. His work's good, it's not always suitable, that's all. I've sent a message to him that I hope will help.