{i love & hate you all[

On understanding people. Or at least trying to

Posted by Christopher Jones
April - 30 - 2008

Two Rules for Life

So here’s the deal. It should help you relate to me, assuming you even care to.

Rule 1: I don’t know anything you don’t tell me.

I know, insanity. But mind reading is a pain in the butt, and I’m not real fond of using up all that energy. So let’s just start assuming that if you didn’t tell me a given thing, then I don’t know it. I don’t know how you feel. I don’t know what you think. I don’t know that you had a hard day at work, though honestly I probably do know that, because that’s the type of short term, superficial shit that people talk about. But your long term thoughts and overall plans and opinions of things? Of people? Of our friends? Of me? I have no idea. None. Did you tell me? No? Then I don’t know.

Oh, but you hinted at it? Seriously? Yeah, I don’t care. Screw subtle. No one outside of spy games likes subtle. We’re all good at subtle because we don’t like arguing and we don’t like rejection. So instead we are subtle until we are confident that we are in like minded company. But… everyone is subtle. So no one knows anything. We think we do. We assume we all know what each other thinks. But we don’t. Not really. I used to be like everyone else. I assumed I knew what you thought. What you felt about any given thing. But I don’t really. I might get it right. I could guess and I bet I would be correct most of the time. But do I know? Again, did you tell me? No? Then no, why is this hard?

This also goes for things that you don’t think. Unless you tell me that you don’t think a thing, or tell me that you do think the opposite, I don’t know what you think. Don’t assume silence is an answer. Silence is NEVER an answer. It’s nonsense is what it is. All silence tells anyone is that you may or may not be thinking a certain thing. Which I know is crazy. Maybe it never crossed your mind, so how would you know to comment on it? You wouldn’t, and that’s fine. But today, let me tell all of you out there…

If you didn’t say it to me, I don’t know.

… that’s it for now. I’m working on being more blunt. We’ll see how it works. I’m not doing well, but I’m trying.

I know I only gave one rule, but in the middle of my rant, I forgot where I was going with rule 2, so that can wait for another day. ;)

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Posted by Christopher Jones
April - 20 - 2008

Catching up

As you have seen, I haven’t posted lately, and I am sorry about that. Life got retardedly busy in a hurry. Not that being busy is a decent excuse for anything. So let me take a moment to catch you up with the events of the month.

At work, the higher ups decided to shut down an office we had in Indiana, so all their work is now coming to my team. That is all fine and dandy, except that they had an incredible backlog that we have now inherited. I am all about accepting a challenge though, so no worries.

I have a talk to give at a conference next Saturday on effective web communication that I need to prepare sometime. I suspect one of the notes will be that they should post to their site more often than I do.

I helped some friends do some work today… and let me tell you how much I hate cast iron stoves. They are the heaviest things on God’s green earth. I’m fairly certain that my back will hate me tomorrow. It’s already not speaking to me now.

I did make a post this morning, as you probably saw. It’s one I have been meaning to make for a month or three, but never really found time to get it out. Maybe I’ll turn it into a series about things I learned growing up.

I also played with Omnigraffle this morning to create a wireframe for a side project I am doing. If you own a mac, you should own Omnigraffle. It is happy.

I also decided that being busy is no real reason not to go after what you want. If I look back over the past decade of my life, there was never a time of more than a couple of months where I was not involved in some random thing that ate up all of my time. And you know what, I will always have something eating up all of my time. That’s the nature of how I am, of how my friends are. We all have a ton of things we want done, so we are always doing something. If there is free time, we, or someone else, fills it. Now there are sometimes when you simply really and truly do not have time (Jen, this is your life as of now). But for the most part, we just need to pick one of the things on our wishlist and go do it. Push other shit to the side or whatever it is you can do. I could ramble on this one for quite awhile, but the point is simply this. Figure out what you want, and do it.

Today, I even found time to comment on an old post of mine. I am honestly not sure the proper protocol for commenting on one of your own old posts. And, to be quite honest about it, I really don’t care that much. I thought the comment needed to be put out there, so I did. And that’s that.

Stuff and Junk
Posted by Christopher Jones
April - 20 - 2008

On Being Raised Old School

As some of you know, my parents were divorced when I was little. So most of my childhood years were spent with my mother and me living with or near my grandparents (her parents, if that wasn’t assumed). The point being that my primary male influence was my grandfather, meaning that I learned how to be an adult from someone who had done it more than most. I could create an entire blog about what I learned from him, but today that is not the point. Today I just want to point out one, as I’m not sure how common it is and I am sure from people’s actions/comments that they do not understand where I am coming from.

A few months ago, I honestly forget when, some of us were talking about our mindsets about finances and money in general. One of my friends said that when she was growing up, the impression was given that finances would work themselves out once you were married. Like finances might be a mess while single, but that things were supposed to be better once you got married. Since we are close to the same age, she asked if that mindset was present when I grew up. You know, I honestly don’t remember what I said. Since I don’t know, let me answer here.

I have to say that the answer is pretty much that I agree with the mindset, but from the completely opposite way of thinking. In her past, from the impression I got, the idea was that you don’t need to worry too much about finances because once you get married, things will be better. I, too, gained the impression that once you got married, the wife shouldn’t have to worry about finances. What this meant was that a man has no real business pursuing a serious relationship unless his finances are straight. Why should he bring a woman into a difficult situation? I was raised to believe that the man should be able to support his family, and if he couldn’t do so yet, then he shouldn’t attempt to start a family yet.

So that’s the why for those people wondering why I never seemed to care about dating, or why women that others thought I should pursue weren’t. It’s all about respect. At the time, I wasn’t making any decent money, so the idea of starting a serious relationship was just never in the cards. I’m not saying it is a good or bad way of thinking, just that it is how I grew up.

——–
Just FYI, I’m really not looking to debate the merits of this mindset. I don’t particularly care about your stories of how you got married with you were 17 and broke and it worked out just fine or waited until you were 45 and financially secure and still got divorced or whatever. :p

~ Christopher]

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