Love and Hate

I really do try to live my life in a positive way. I don't hate anyone. I don't put anyone down. I don't ridicule or demean. For the last two months I have been in an exchange online with a group of people who enjoy hate and negativity. I tried looking at it as a joke. I tried playing along. I tried arguing against it. I tried fighting back. All that has happened is the number of people on their side has grown and I have become sick and emotionally worn out. I can't do it anymore and I am so upset that it has turned out this way.

Richard, my apologies to you. I wish we had never met. I wish you had asked them to stop in the beginning. I wish you had been the gentleman you seemed to be. I wish you saw the unfairness in which you are judging me. Now, I am going to try to forget all about you.

Eric. I don't know what to think of you. I like you, but I don't know what is really happening between us. When we met, I was so taken with you. Then you pulled away and said you wanted to be friends. Now you want to be together again, but you won't say that we are dating. I think you are here for the sex and having said you don't want a relationship it gives you the out to end it at any time and not commit. So I am going to keep dating and if I find someone who treats me better, I am going to take the more comfortable relationship that might have a future.

I have a terrible cold and I pulled a muscle in my back. But I can see the effects of my workouts. I am beginning to see myself as sexy again. Like the picture...

Happy Birthday to me!!!!

Thank you, Kelly for the great card! And thank you Bailey for asking her to make it. I would also like to thank the stripper for giving up his thong for Rusty to model for our pleasure.

Tonight, eating at Georgia Brown's with Scott. I can't wait!

Moving on and moving up

Things are going very well these days.

My company has been accepted into the GMU Mentorship/Protege Program. Plus we are partnering with a larger small ITSEC company to go after some larger contracts. It's very good news for my partner and I.

After talking to Allison and the input from the rest of my friends, I have told Eric that I am OK with being friends. So now he has offered to take me out to my favorite restaurant for my birthday, which is very sweet of him. I also have a coffee date tonight with someone new as well as another date over the weekend.

My exercise program is paying off. I have lost another pound and it looks like I will be down 10 pounds by my birthday, which was my goal. I bought myself a heart rate monitor and used it today for the first time. My personal trainer wants me to do 45 minutes at my target heart rate 5 times a week and this makes it so easy.

The flying monkeys seem to mostly be off my back other then a few posts here and there and I am over it. At this point it is just background noise. I want to thank the folks who have been supportive and interested in knowing the truth.

I wish Richard and I could talk and try to get back to being friends, but I just don't see that happening. He would have to take some responsibility for what happened on the boards and I just don't see him having that much character. But hey, if he wants to be friends with a bunch of crazy, rude, emotionally ugly girls, that's his problem. I hope he knows that karma will not be a positive factor in his life though.

Certification and Accreditation Professional

Yep! I have another certification under my belt!

Woooohooooo!

Thicker Skin

Apparently that is what I need.

Just a summary, things on the MotleyFool board went downhill when my contacting Richard lead to them saying I was stalking him and that I am nuts and a lot of other terrible things. I don't know how it got that bad. There are some very mean people on that site and I guess I just tend to think that most people are like me. I can't imagine making someone's life difficult for no reason.

Since I was bullied as a little girl, I took the stance that I should defend myself and that if I showed them that I wouldn't let them push me around that they would stop. Well apparently cyber and the real world are the opposite in that respect, because it only made it worse.

The only thing I can do now is not say anything at all until it all passes over.

Tact Filters

Excellent post from the internet:

I came up with this idea several years ago in a conversation with a friend at MIT, who was regularly finding herself upset by other people who worked in in her lab. The analogy worked so well in helping her to understand her co-workers that I decided to write it up and put it on the web. I've gotten quite a few email messages since then from other people who have also found it helpful.

All people have a "tact filter", which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most "normal people" have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoing direction. Thus whatever normal people say gets the appropriate amount of tact applied to it before they say it. This is because when they were growing up, their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all!"

"Nerds," on the other hand, have their tact filter positioned to apply tact in the incoming direction. Thus, whatever anyone says to them gets the appropriate amount of tact added when they hear it. This is because when nerds were growing up, they continually got picked on, and their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, "They're just saying those mean things because they're jealous. They don't really mean it."

When normal people talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they say, and no one's feelings get hurt. When nerds talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear, and no one's feelings get hurt. However, when normal people talk to nerds, the nerds often get frustrated because the normal people seem to be dodging the real issues and not saying what they really mean. Worse yet, when nerds talk to normal people, the normal people's feelings often get hurt because the nerds don't apply tact, assuming the normal person will take their blunt statements and apply whatever tact is necessary.

So, nerds need to understand that normal people have to apply tact to everything they say; they become really uncomfortable if they can't do this. Normal people need to understand that despite the fact that nerds are usually tactless, things they say are almost never meant personally and shouldn't be taken that way. Both types of people need to be extra patient when dealing with someone whose tact filter is backwards relative to their own.

Copyright © 1996 by Jeff Bigler. Permission is granted to redistribute this text in its entirety, provided that this copyright notice and either the URL for the page (http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html) or a link to it is included. All other rights reserved.