Well, that sucked.

[batskeets]

Spent all weekend feeling like crap, and bailed on all of my plans. Which, I suppose is better than spreading disease to all of your friends, but it still leaves you feeling like a lamer jerk.

Plowed through about a season's worth of Californication on Netflix. Also did some reading and some farting around on the internets, when my head stopped hurting enough to allow it. Dragged myself out to Arleta Library for a meal with Boy, because potatoes sounded good, and cooking wasn't in the cards for me. And... that's pretty much all I did.

Last Thursday night was way better than my poor excuse for a weekend. Had good times hanging at Green Dragon with matrixleap, herince_emyn, and daemonwise. I can't wait for the Halloween party.

Still feeling quasi-crappy today, but well enough to do things. Just in time to GO BACK TO WORK YAAAAAYYY

I'm also feeling quite sad today, but I imagine a lot of that is because my head still hurts. :/

EDIT: Also, enlightened77 posted this, and it is pretty much how I am trying to learn how to NOT be: Your Poker Face Won't Save You.

Comments

[xplo-eristotle.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link to that blog post, and to the interview that the blog linked to. I found them both interesting.

I note, however, that the blog author talks about faking happiness because of the fear that people will reject you if you aren't happy enough in a way that suggests that the whole phenomenon isn't real, it's just some kind of insecure delusion that we allow ourselves to suffer from. In my experience it's very real, which suggests that it's not enough just to be willing to show your true feelings.. what we need is a society capable of accepting them.

[monkeyhole.livejournal.com]

I thought the same thing as I read it, and I'm glad you brought it up. When most of us spend about 1/3 our lives in an office (or equivalent working environment), I think a large part of the solution has to be sought there. People forget that businesses are made up of people, people who are experiencing the same range of emotions and feelings that we are. It's amazing to me that we've gotten to the point where articulating those feelings is frowned upon.

[xplo-eristotle.livejournal.com]

No - businesses forget that businesses are made up of people. It's much more convenient for them to mold their employees into emotionless robots. They don't have to worry that they won't get along and lower productivity, or that they'll get along too well and lower productivity, or that they might protest the latest bullshit from management and forget their place as faceless wage slaves.

But really, it's not just a problem at the office. Visibly unhappy people tend to suffer rejection in any social environment. Heck, even neutral isn't good enough anymore; when relative strangers ask me how my day is going, and I say "okay", they have the gall to ask "just okay?" because apparently nothing less than ecstatic will do. Sorry, guy, today is not the greatest day of my life, and I'm not going to pretend it is just because you're an asshat with unreasonable expectations.

[skeets.livejournal.com]

This is absolutely true. When a co-worker asks how I'm doing, even if I say something as simple as, "eh, I didn't sleep very well last night," people don't seem to know how to respond to it. :p

There's an incredible pressure at the workplace to say you're doing well, even when you aren't. God forbid you don't feel 1000% fulfilled by your job at all times.

[xplo-eristotle.livejournal.com]

I just refuse to bow to that sort of thing.. though I'm fortunate (??) in that my workplace is so hostile and demoralizing that it would not be considered particularly unusual to audibly bitch about how tired you are, how much your day sucks, or how much you loathe your job and want to go do something else. In a better place, that sort of uncompromising honesty would probably bite me in the ass.

Interesting that you say people don't know how to respond to negativity. I think that's probably true. I wouldn't be surprised to find that a lot of people who seem happy, well-adjusted and socially adept are actually incapable of functioning outside their narrow comfort zone, or that the reason they shun negative people isn't because they find the negative people emotionally draining, but because they themselves are unwitting emotional vampires who need to be surrounded by apparently happy people. Of course, I could be way off, here.