I learned that people who aren't cheery optimists aren't just thought criminals, we're emotional criminals as well, thanks to this super useful Oprah magazine article.


This is too stupid to parse every single dumb fuck paragraph, but suffice it to say that normal behavior such as wanting emotional support from your sister or having a bad day and snapping at someone is converted into a sign of emotional depravity. If your mom makes a comment about you having to work harder for success- it's a dagger. If your sister is sad and wants support, she's a cannibal. A lady made fun of your speech? She is just like a rapist. (BTW: it's not normal to check your husbands emails. Like wtf?)

Really, I'm going to have to quote the whole damn thing:

. Dementors
The woman who publicly shamed Pamela after her speech was the most destructive kind of emotional mugger, the equivalent of a rapist: someone who gets off on causing pain. In Harry Potter's world, such beings are called dementors. They are endlessly unhappy, addicted to the sense of control they get from violating others. They don't care whom they hurt, as long as they hurt someone.

Emo-Do Defense: If someone attacks with no provocation and seems intent on inflicting maximum harm, you may be dealing with a truly disturbed person. First, eat some chocolate (any Harry Potter fan can tell you that). Then distance yourself in any way you can. This wasn't a problem for Pamela—she was easily able to avoid her attacker—but may be daunting if you've got a dementor in the family or at work. If you can't remove yourself from the relationship, at least keep your emotional distance. Don't trust a dementor with your private thoughts.

Staying away from dementors allows them to socially self-destruct—and they always do. Though onlookers may at first be too horror-stricken to come to your rescue, most people are appalled by dementors' behavior. This is why cruel conversationalists ultimately end up friendless, and—on a much larger scale—why evils like prejudice and discrimination have slowly but surely become less acceptable in almost every human society.


She just doesn't think Pamela's speech is stupid and has a rude way of expressing it- she's endlessly unhappy and addicted to control! That's a lot to read into one instance of dickish behavior. I also like the demonization of unhappiness- people aren't rude because they are rude, they are UNHAPPY- HOW AWFUL.


And of course, how this lady is encouraging people to treat their families. She encourages people to blow off their sisters who are in trouble, and ignore their mom's sensible(although oh noes pessimistic- you know that pessimism is the biggest thought crime!) advice by blowing it off as well. When these self centered happy faces get into real problems and someone blows them off, they'll whine about 'emotional mugging' but who is going to be there to support them?

The self centered emphasis on keeping in a good mood is silly. Oftentimes, life isn't about putting on a happy face. It's about connecting to others even if they are having a hard time. It's about accepting criticism, even if it's rude. It's about accepting that things may be harder than you thought. It may even involve respecting your husband's privacy. By focusing on keeping in a good mood, we can never truly grow up, and learn to work with people as they are and the world as it is.

I just get the feeling that it's not possible to have a company made completely of top performers. People's performance also shifts from day to day, week to week, year to year. We all say we want only the top people, but I wonder if it might be more effective to rely on a deep bench of people who are average instead of using up the 9s and 10s until they are 1s and 2s.

It also seems like a big waste of people to constantly fire everyone, make their lives hell....

This comment really captures something that has bothered me for a long time about 'time management' People always say "I just make time!" as if somehow all time is equal. As if a sleepy afternoon hour when you can barely string together two sentences is the same as a peak energy morning hour! I try to put the most energy using tasks at the best times, but on some days, I have no good hours of energy. I have a lot to spend my few hours of energy on, and when I am working, I tend to spend it on work rather than recreational writing.

Of course, the heart of this issue of who surmounts impossible odds to write and who doesn't, is that it doesn't really matter all that much. Sometimes people in fact are just talking. Everyone who says "Oh, I'd like to write a novel someday, when I have time" does not in fact need to be told about how if they just wrote a hundred words a day, they'd have a novel way before retirement or told about how they need to make time to write.

Maybe they just like to think of themselves as creative, a little more interesting than their lives have turned out to be. And that's OK.

We all have little fantasies of ourselves being the sort of person who likes doing things that we really don't like to do. We want to imagine ourselves as the sort of people who travel to exotic locations and have adventures or do volunteer work, but some part of us understands that bugs, heat and exhaustion do not figure into our fantasies.

And so it is with fantasies of being a writer. People don't imagine rereading their words over and over and over to edit it, or being up at 5 am writing that new chapter. And that's fine.

Advice for people who always complain that others don't heed their advice.

The thing is that the problem is not that people don't heed your advice. The problem is that you get twisted out of shape if people don't heed your advice. Advice is not a legally binding contract. If I tell someone not to buy brand name clothes, that they are all just made by the same sweatshops in China, and then they buy new name brand clothes, getting bent out of shape isn't going to help me at all. They probably heard my advice, and didn't think it worked for them. It's not a moral failing, they just like brand name clothing more than they like saving money.

And that's OK! This is not an epic battle for moral superiority! Giving advice is giving your opinion. Not everyone will agree with your opinion, and even if they do, everything is easier said than done.

This story creeps me out.

Now, I can't really excerpt it for you, but basically, a guy goes on a journey, tries to help some stranger who jumped off a bridge after this guy tied a rope around his waist, and then lets the stranger hurtle down into the water after some spiel about responsibility.

As a metaphor about not taking on too much, it doesn't work since the our audience is balancing our 'hero' losing momentum towards his goals and the horrible death of a stranger whose actions are irrational, but probably not death penalty worthy. Also, there's also the image of other people as mere baggage, mere obstacles on the way to your glorious goals. Just drop them off the bridge, and go on your merry way!

*shudder* I'm not saying drop all your goals and become codependent on a crack head. But balance is the key here. We're all interdependent on each other. We're both the man going towards his goal, and the man hanging off the bridge. Maybe we're the rope too. Seeing ourselves as all the characters gives us more compassion. Say, we're the man hanging off the bridge.

We see that our own actions have been foolish, irrational, or maybe we don't see. Anyway, we're hanging off the bridge, depending on someone else. We're scared. What if he leaves? What if we're all alone, speeding towards the water, the person we hoped that would save us, walking off smugly, after giving us a lesson in responsibility. Of course, we can't really learn this lesson, as our hearts stop when we hit the water.