New Jobs and Horrible Bosses

I’m back!

I’ve been very quiet here because I’ve taken a monumental leap in my life.  I’ve decided to leave the only employer I’ve had since college and go work for a much larger manufacturing company.  I’ll be doing pretty much the same thing I’ve done for the past thirteen years, but the pay is much better, the opportunities are plentiful, and the working environment is much more to my liking—jeans every day, oh yeah!

Not that I didn’t like my old job.  It’s just that when you sit in an extremely quiet office all day, the silence broken only when someone calls or stops in for help, and this is a regular occurrence for thirteen years, you tend to go a little crazy.  Plus I had reached a ceiling, knowing I could really go no further both in my position and in the company in general.  And I hadn’t received much feedback, positive or negative, in several years.  Add to that an uncomfortable tension that has developed over the years due to a conflict between a favored coworker and myself (a whole other story for another time), and it became apparent to me that I needed to move on.  Fortunately a better opportunity presented itself, and I didn’t hesitate.

Obviously you never know how one might interpret the words you make public, and so I’ve been refraining from posting.  I will continue to be very neutral and moderate with my text, although I’m sure anyone who regularly reads my blog knows my political, socio-economic, and religious views already.  Still, I’d rather not paint my house neon green, if you know what I mean.

I did want to share one amusing story, however.  In college I worked in the computer department of a mail processing plant.  I was replacing a guy who was leaving to take a better opportunity, and they hired me prior to summer.  I worked full-time all summer and then was tasked with hiring and training someone else to help out when I went back to school, knowing I would only work part-time at that point.

So I hired a person who eventually became a close friend, and together we ran the computer department for two and a half more years.  This was a family owned and operated business, and most of the family members worked there—husband and wife co-owners, the wife’s sister working as the office manager, another sister working as the shop manager, and yet another sister working as the accountant.  None of them, in my opinion, worked very hard, but I was young and brash at the time, and so perhaps my viewpoint was a bit skewed.  Nonetheless, my coworker and I were literally tasked to do it all.  Not only did we have to set up mailings in the computer, but I configured and replaced computers and peripherals and set up the little network, pulled confidential files from their enormous file storage building (often required to climb rickety ladders and carts 8’ high with no mention or concern for my safety), answered all the calls, entered financial information into Quickbooks, operated bursters (huge machines that trimmed and separated forms), sorted mail, etc.  It was beyond crazy all of the tasks demanded of us.

One fine Saturday morning, my coworker and I were tasked with going in to complete a job that needed to be printed and mailed first thing Monday morning.  We arrived early—7:30 AM—and noticed that the owner’s husband’s truck was parked suspiciously behind the one building.  In other words, if someone had driven into the lot, he/she would not have seen it there unless he/she exited the vehicle and walked down the sidewalk to the office door.  My coworker and I went into the break room and punched in, and the entire place was dark save for the office area that led to the computer room—which should have been dark as well.  We proceeded through the door, opened the computer room door, and saw the owner moving quickly toward us in the dim light of a desk lamp.  He angrily asked what we were doing there, and when we informed him that the business manager told us we HAD to come in that day, he went to her office, shut the door, and we could see on the phones that he was feverishly making calls.  We could hear him shouting to whomever it was that he'd called, and then he simply left without speaking to us.

We thought it was all a bit strange, of course, but then things became--for lack of a better word--disgusting.  We had always known that one of the owner’s pastimes was viewing questionable content on the web.  This was back when dial-up was the only way to connect, and people didn’t really have any clue about temporary internet folders and clearing their browser history.  And this guy was just sick with some of the stuff he looked up.  I won’t get into specifics, but many of his searches involved the words “teen” and “animals.”  Yeah.  Disgusting.

So on this day we settle in after the owner leaves, and the first thing we notice is that the main production computer was on.  My coworker had used it last the day before, and he knew he had turned it off prior to leaving, so we figured that the owner must have been doing “research.”   So my coworker turns on the monitor, and the home page on Internet Explorer 4.0 appeared.  He nearly closed it, but then he paused, looked to me for reassurance, and then moused over the back button.  I nodded, he took a deep breath, clicked it, and sure enough was greeted with extremely graphic and objectionable material.

But that’s not the end of the story.  Oh no.  A few minutes later, after we finished laughing, I heard my coworker say, “What the heck is this?”  I looked over, and he was kicking something on the ground.  He bent down, then sat up with this disgusted look on his face that was priceless.  In one hand was the owner’s wallet.  In the other hand was the owner’s belt.  In other words, yeah, his belt had been taken off and his pants had been on the floor where, most likely in a scramble when he heard the door opening, his wallet had fallen out of his pocket.

My coworker was horrified.  He asked if he should just put them back.  I screamed, “Yes!”  He then got up, went out to the bathroom, came back and sprayed Lysol over EVERYTHING.  And I laughed so hard I nearly peed my pants.

And then the absolute worst happened.  The owner’s truck pulled up outside, and he came into the office area and straight into the computer room.  He still had a ticked-off look on his face, but he then sheepishly asked if we’d seen his wallet.  Can you imagine how awkward that was?  My coworker looked like he was going to say no, but he knew the owner would just come over and look anyway, so he bent down and retrieved the man’s wallet and belt, stood up, and handed them to him.

The owner looked a bit surprised to see his belt.  Like really surprised.  Like, “OK, you caught me” surprised.  He took his belt and wallet silently and simply left.  And we didn’t see him for the next two weeks.  He was in the building, but he avoided us like the plague.  And it was so painfully obvious that his wife and the business manager even asked if something had happened between us.  We just shrugged our shoulders.  Really, what were we going to say to this man’s WIFE??

Luckily I didn’t stay at that job much longer.  And my coworker was fired a couple months after I left because they accused him of screwing up a huge job.  I was called to testify at his unemployment hearing, which of course was a blast (not), and at one point the business manager stood up and screamed at me that I was a liar.  Like she literally stood up, pointed her finger across the table at me, and screamed!  It was so awful that the referee instructed her to leave the room.  The whole situation was so messed up—they had fabricated dozens of write-ups on my coworker, and these were minor things that I’d done numerous times over the years without getting into any trouble.  When it came to this massive job that my coworker had apparently screwed up, I discovered that it was actually the other computer guy they’d hired to replace me who was guilty of the transgression.  Needless to say, my coworker received unemployment, and the referee spent ten minutes chiding the owner and his crew for the "evidence" he'd presented.

And then, unbelievably, I received a call from the owner a week later begging me to come in and train the new people.  After having just lost me to new employment and firing my coworker, they had nobody who knew how to do the job.  You can’t make this stuff up!  Of course I declined.  No way was I going back there.

So I’ve had some bad bosses in my career.  I’ve only actually worked at five different places—a lumber yard the summer after high school, a college work-study job doing computer work, a grocery store in college, that mail processing plant, and the job I’m leaving now.  I won’t rank my bosses, but I can honestly say that the boss at the job I’m leaving was by far the best, and of course the owner of the mail processing plant was the worst.

Everyone has horrible bosses throughout their careers.  In the movie of the same name, I’d say all three bosses portrayed by Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell, and Jennifer Aniston combined were the equivalent of the owner of that mail processing plant.  And it wouldn’t surprise anyone to know that I haven’t spoken to him in thirteen years and probably/hopefully never will again.

But I’ll miss my boss at the job I’m leaving.  He’s a great guy.  I’ll miss a lot of people there, actually.  My coworkers, clients, vendors.  When you work somewhere for 13 years, you create lasting bonds with people.  Lots of people.  And when they announced that I was leaving, my inbox was overwhelmed with well wishes.  How touching is that?

In the past I’ve talked about how people always think the grass is always greener.  I haven’t accepted my new position for that reason.  It’s less about the color of the grass and more about the perspective with which I’m viewing it.  Or really viewing the world.  Will the grass be greener at my new workplace?  Possibly, probably, hopefully.  But is it a new place with a different dynamic with different people in a different industry.  Yes.  Sometimes you just need change to grow.  And that’s what I’m looking for now.

Sorry to write a book.  It’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to write, so that’s what you get.  I’m hoping this is the start of me posting again regularly.  If not, I think you’ll understand why.

Ever So Ungrateful

Ungrateful --adjective -- 1. Not feeling or showing gratitude.  2. Not pleasant or acceptable.

I’m not an ungrateful person, or at least I try very hard not to be.  I appreciate everything I have in life.  My lovely little family--including my mom who raised me to be a fine gentleman, my beautiful wife who I adore more than anything, and my son who is my little Mini Me--they all bring a smile to my face each and every night.  And with Baby Ben arriving soon, I feel very VERY blessed.

And the same goes for my extended family—my siblings and their spouses, my in-laws, my aunts and uncles and cousins.  I’m much closer to some than others, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate each and every one of them.  I’m very grateful for my friends who have shared some great times with me over the years, and I realize I really need to do a better job with staying in touch with them.

I’m grateful for my employer too, who allows me to put food on the table for my family and gives me meaningful and mostly challenging work to do.  My coworkers are great as well, thanking others for help, showing appreciation where it is due, etc.  Some teams aren’t quite like that, with spiteful people that cause tension and drama, but there is little to none of that in my workplace, and I’m very thankful for that.

But…there’s always a “but”, isn’t there?…some people are, unfortunately, not very grateful for what they have in life.  Take, for instance, the guy from Nuts For You at the Hartslog Festival in Alexandria a couple weekends ago, who as we were walking along browsing the vendors, loudly stated to a coworker, “Stay here so that none of these retards walk into this fire.”  Apparently they had a pot or something on the street where they were roasting nuts, and he had removed the pot but hadn’t doused the flames and hot coals.  People were everywhere, and my three-old-son and I nearly stumbled into his open fire just as he was so eloquently calling us retards.  His fire was literally four inches off the pavement on bricks, and while I noticed that SOMETHING was there and walked around it to avoid it, I didn’t know that it was a FREAKING FIRE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET!  Why not put cones up to block it?  Or have someone stand there BEFORE you remove the pot?  And the fact that he indirectly called me a retard ignited a fire within me.  If we lived in a less-civil society, I’m fairly certain that dude would have met my wrath, and nobody wants a large man expertly trained in martial arts delivering some wrath.  But alas I just walked away, choosing instead to deride him here, in my blog.

But man, what a bozo that guy was.  Calling your potential customers retards?  I’m sure the higher-ups at Nuts for You would just love to hear about that!  And I have a feeling this guy probably loves Ann Coulter and sees nothing wrong with her recent use of the same derogatory term either.  I'm trying my hardest not to bring politics into this post, but ANYONE who uses such a nasty word should have absolutely no influence on anyone else's opinions, especially in a "civilized" society like the U.S., and yet Ann Coulter still has millions of fans.  THAT is disgusting.

Moving on, I was on Twitter yesterday, doing a search of "Altoona" trying to determine which Halloween and Trick or Treat activities might be fun to participate in this week/weekend.  We had already been planning to go to the Safe Trick or Treat night at PSU Altoona last night (which involved entirely too much standing in line), and we were also planning to walk around the neighborhood this evening with some friends.  But I was curious to see if anything else was happening--maybe a haunted house or something local that could be fun, even just for my wife and me tomorrow night perhaps.  But as I was surfing through a few dozen tweets, I ran across this nice little gem:

This person is apparently young herself, a senior in high school from her bio, and so perhaps I can blame her crude remark on immaturity.  That doesn’t do much to lessen the sting of her comment though.  You know, when I was a kid, I couldn’t wait for Trick or Treat.  I loved the idea that I could just walk around and get free candy.  In hindsight I probably should have laid off of eating so much of it, but it was a feel-good time of the year.  And aside from one insensitive jerk who wouldn’t give me and my group of friends candy because we were too old (I think I was 12 at the time), I can’t ever remember any bad experiences from Trick or Treat night.

But wow, Keelie, you must really hate your job to be posting something like this.  It didn't take much searching of your profile to discover that you work at Orange Julius at the Logan Valley Mall, which I'd pretty much already guessed because the LVM was the only place handing out candy this evening, trying to promote a safe environment for children to enjoy some fun without wandering through traffic.  But honestly, Keelie, if I had taken my son to the mall tonight and saw you with your candy, I’d have gone straight to your supervisor with a print-out of your tweet.  Because you REALLY don’t deserve that job, even if it is just making orange smoothies.  YOU are ungrateful.

I don’t think that all people are ungrateful.  I do think it’s a growing trend though.  If you are unhappy about something in life, it’s easy to think that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.  People are always complaining about their jobs or friends or family or injustices or politics (and I’m one of them!).  I think we all have to just take a step back from time to time and realize that our lives could be so much worse.  We could be broke, or homeless, or targeted for death because of our race or religious views.

While we are thinking the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, we need to realize that a person is standing on the opposite side of OUR yard looking at our grass, and it’s very green compared to the dirt patch they live on.  You know, because THAT’S where the “dirtballs” live.  Right, Keelie?

Be Yourself, Man!

It's All About the Benjamins

What’s wrong with our economy?  Check this out…

So part of the non-IT, business side of my job is to conduct wage/salary surveys.  I’m not going to get into a lot of detail on that, but let me say that I’m as close as you’d find to an expert on how much people in certain industries make in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.  And so as I was compiling a report today using some of the data from the latest survey (conducted between April and July of 2012), I ran across a stunning fact:

CEO’s and upper management are more likely to be given a bonus than the non-management workers—the difference is three-quarters vs. less than two-thirds—and the average value of the CEO’s bonus, AS A PERCENT OF SALARY, is four to five times that of the average worker.

Maybe it’s not so stunning, because we all know that CEOs and executives make a ton of money, but let’s just think about this for a minute and do a little math.  We have Bob, a CEO, who is making $200,000/year as a base salary.  We have Fred, a production line worker, who is making $25,000/year as a base salary.  When it comes bonus time, Bob is more likely to be given (or to grant himself) a bonus over Fred.  And, if Bob and Fred do both receive bonuses, Bob is getting a much larger one AS A PERCENT OF HIS SALARY than Fred is.  So, for example, say Fred is given a 4% bonus.  That means that Fred will get $1000.  Not bad, considering that Fred only makes $25,000/year.  Maybe he’ll be able to take his kids to the beach for a weekend.  Or maybe put a little dent in his credit card debt or mortgage, which hopefully is not underwater.  Bob, on the other hand, is getting four point five times that AS A PERCENT OF HIS SALARY.  Why do I keep capitalizing that?  Because Bob is not getting 4.5 times $1000.  Bob is getting 4.5 times 4%, or 18%, times his salary of $200,000/year.  In other words, Bob is getting $36,000 AS A BONUS.  That’s more than Fred makes in a whole year—almost a year and a half even!

Corporate taxes are at the lowest point since the 70's, and certain political folks in Washington (namely the GOP) think they should be lower to spur on the economy.  After all, trickle-down economics is the way to create more jobs, right?  Put more money into the pockets of the wealthy, and they will, in turn, give more money to the lower classes.  Right?

Not when the executives are taking it in huge bonuses...and then stashing it away in off-shore accounts and paying only 13.9% of their $20 million income in taxes, when all the rest of us are paying 15% or 25%.

What's wrong with our economy?  There's your answer.

Why Do People Hate Leann Rimes??

So I'm sitting here during my lunch break, and I'm thinking about how last night was a typical evening in the Strohman household.  We arrived home from work/daycare, and I immediately went outside and fired up the grill to cook some hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner.  My wife made the hamburger patties, and we bought some Chicago-style hot dogs that we wanted to try.  Thunder rumbled in the distance, but the skies overhead were mostly clear, and so I cooked outside and my wife and I put together a nice little dinner.  I can’t say I liked the Chicago-style dogs all that much, but I did pick one of the first jalapenos from my little garden, sliced it up, and put it on my burger, and boy was that tasty.  And spicy!  Yum!

As we were chowing down, the topic of wormholes and black holes came up, and so I went on ad nauseam about what they are, the science behind them, the implications if they do/do not exist, etc.  My wife always has trouble understanding space-time, and so I think she walked away from it with a clearer picture and maybe even perhaps a better view of what it’s like to live with my brain (hahaha), as I’m always thinking about weird crap like time travel, alternate dimensions, mind control, etc.

After that I rummaged around for my art supplies and began working on the cover of my latest finished novel, Terminal Restraint.  I went back to my bedroom in search of some peace and quiet while drawing, but it didn’t take long for Adam Bomb to come rushing in, wreaking nuclear havoc on my plans.  I actually got him to draw alongside me for maybe, oh, 30 seconds, but then he wanted to climb on me.  Yeah, it’s a little difficult to sketch when a three year old is using you as a jungle gym.  After tossing him off of me and grumbling at him for about fifteen minutes, he switched tactics, instead wanting me to don his Spider-man mask and Hulk hands—I guess I was Spider-Hulk—and fight him.  He’s been on this kick about wearing his Captain America or Spider-man pajamas as soon as he gets home, and his Uncle Anthony bought him a Spider-man ski-mask and gloves to complete his ensemble, and so he was all decked out and ready to go.  Suffice it to say, I didn’t get much drawing done, although I have the overall concept down and started working on shading and coloring.

How does Leann Rimes tie into all of this?  I'm getting there...

From there I played some games of SongPop on my phone with my wife.  I absolutely detest that game.  It probably wouldn’t be so bad if I played it on my tablet, which I think I’ll try tonight, but my fat fingers are always pressing the wrong choices on my phone, and in the few weeks we’ve been playing it, my wife has just obliterated me.  I think, at least at the time of this post, she’s winning 34 to 17.  Apparently she’s really good against everyone else she plays, so if you are up for a challenge, request to play her.  She’s even beating me in genres that I absolutely know more about than she does, i.e., metal, industrial, and punk.  Even TV show theme songs!  Grrr…

I wrapped up the evening watching A.J. Burnett of the Pittsburgh Pirates try to pitch a no-hitter.  My wife wanted me to turn off the TV so that we could go to bed, and so I had to explain the importance of a no-hitter to her.  Of course, AJ gave up one measly run to a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning after the umpire failed to recognize two previous close pitches as strikes.  The Buccos still won though!  Let’s Go Bucs!  Anyway, I turned it off as soon as the game was over and fell asleep within minutes.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Who cares, right?  Well, I do have a point to my madness.

Yesterday I was reading an article about Leann Rimes, who I admittedly know very little about.  I do know she is a country singer, I think she was rather young when she first met stardom, and I might have heard that she maybe had an affair with some guy that was on CSI: Miami and, I think, possibly married him?  Other than that, I couldn’t name one of her songs or even come remotely close to guessing her work on SongPop.  Grrr…hate that game.  But anyway, in this article they were describing her tweets regarding some emergency dental issues she was having.  She supposedly had to have an emergency root canal done, it was extremely painful, and she posted all about it on Twitter.  I read the article, read her tweets, thought to myself “so what??”, and then I read the comments underneath...

Man, people freakin' HATE Leann Rimes!

I realize that most of the vitriol you read in Internet comments are typically entered by spiteful, loathsome people, but some of these were extreme—saying she should have all of her teeth knocked out by a flying brick and other such hateful verbiage.  I don’t know what Leann Rimes did to these people, and I don’t know why people feel so inclined to post such negative comments, but I feel sorry for the poor woman!  And it also got me thinking…

Why do we care so much about other people, so much so that we will spend five minutes reading their tweets or blogs about their daily lives...wait, err...let me rephrase that.  Why do we care so much about celebrities?  Why are we so fascinated with every aspect of their lives?  TMZ.com has become huge, and People magazine has been around since the 70’s and is still going strong.  Twitter has become a huge stomping ground for celebs, and they all have hundreds of thousands of followers.  Why?

I’m a regular on Twitter and I have to admit that I follow close to a hundred celebrities (not Leann Rimes though).  I do always get a kick out of how normal some of them are.  Take Wil Wheaton, for example, who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation and has a recurring role as himself on The Big Bang Theory.  That guy tweets about his love for video games, brewing his own beer, etc., and he just seems so...normal (albeit this is coming from me, a geek).  Others like DJ Pauly D and Simon Pegg and Kal Penn are just the same.

I just find it amusing that we are so interested in everyone else’s life.  Chalk it up to plain curiosity, or perhaps it’s the competitive nature in humans, and we just want to see how everyone else is living to see if we—or they—are “normal”.  Call it whatever you want, but wouldn’t we be happier if we focused more on our own lives rather than what everyone else is doing?  I’m not trying to drive away my readers, but I just think sometimes we concern ourselves too much with the thoughts/actions/feelings/gardens/facial hair of others.  I love sitting and talking with people, listening to their little anecdotes and life stories, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.  When people sit at a computer, read tweets or news concerning said tweets from a celebrity, and then write hateful statements in the comments, well, that’s a problem.  Am I right?  I mean, if that's what you consider a productive use of your time, I really think you need to get a life.  Go to a library or a church function or join a running group or something and meet some new people.  Take up a new hobby like sketching or playing with your kids or playing SongPop or whatever.

Who is with me on this???

Don't Make Me Mad!

Last night, after a nice and relaxing forty-five minutes at the park walking and playing in the little playground there, I went home and did some self-reflecting.  It wasn’t easy, considering my son’s energy must not have been fully expended by that point as he was jumping on the bed and hitting me with pillows.  But as I sat there, mindlessly watching Celebrity Apprentice that I’d recorded on the DVR and fending off multiple polyester-filled missiles, my thoughts turned to that of self-assessment.

I realized that I really couldn’t be happier.  Sure I could always use more money, a bigger house, and a better wardrobe.  I’d love to get an in-ground swimming pool.  Heck, I’d love to just quit my job and spend hours and hours every day with my son, relaying to him the abundance of mostly useless knowledge I have stored up in my noggin.  He’ll be three in a couple of weeks, and sometimes I feel like I’ve missed a lot of opportunities with him being in daycare all day long.  Then again, there are some dads out there that travel for work, only seeing their kids a couple of nights a week, and those guys miss out on a lot more than I do.

But yeah, I’m a pretty happy guy.  I don’t have many problems.  I mean, yeah, I could always be in better shape.  We are planning a trip to the beach this summer, and a couple of my trip companions are concerned about their beach bodies.  I think I’m personally less concerned with my body image as I am with my overall health.  As far as my physique goes, my son says I look like the Hulk.  I laugh, thinking I probably look more like the Blob.  Hopefully my skin doesn’t have a greenish tint to it that I’m not aware of.  And I hope he doesn’t dwell on the rare times I get angry.  Everyone gets upset every once in a while, some more often than others, but I try to limit it as much as possible around him.  I don’t want him growing up in an environment where yelling is normal and accepted.  I try to laugh and be humorous with him as much as possible.  I’m also a pretty mellow guy by nature, so that helps.

Some people aren’t, though.  A couple of months ago, during the early evening hours, I just happened to look out the window and saw some guy pull over on the side of the road right across from my house.  He got out, walked around to the other side of his car, dragged a six-year-old kid out of the back seat, and began “paddling” him senselessly.  The kid was screaming and crying, and the guy tossed him back in, then came back to the other side and did the same with what appeared to be a four-year-old.  At that point I was up, down the hallway, and was standing outside my front door with my arms crossed, glaring at him.  He glanced over at me with a fury-filled, beat-red (as opposed to beet-red) face, said absolutely nothing, got in the car and sped off down the road as if nothing had happened.  I can’t say it was child abuse, as he did only smack them on their behinds, but there was something in his demeanor and the viciousness of the paddling that made me think that wasn’t the first or last of his temper.

I guess some people just aren’t meant to have children.  Perhaps conception was an accident, or maybe they were just careless.  Maybe a sixteen-year-old female, on the advice of her thirty-two-year-old mother, told her boyfriend she was taking birth control but wasn’t, hoping to get pregnant so that she could force him and his family to pay child support, just as her mother had done before her.  Or maybe they really did want kids, but their own upbringing was so screwed up that they don’t know how to raise them.  Or maybe a parent just snapped, just one blue-moon moment where that guy just couldn’t take it any longer, but instead of working through his anger calmly on his own, he unfortunately decided to take it out on his kids.  Who knows?

Some people turn their anger inward on themselves.  They wallow in their misery, hoping for a pity party from anyone who will listen to them.  Some of these cases may be legitimate illnesses such as depression or bipolar disorder, but many just seem to live their lives crying “why me?” while the world passes them by.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve read Facebook posts or Tweets by people complaining about their lives or their problems.  I feel so sorry for those people—not because they have love-life issues or that they are crazy busy while suffering from a migraine.  I pity them because they use social media to air their problems, because they don’t seem to have anyone else in their lives to talk to, and because they refuse to focus and see all the positive things in their lives rather than dwelling on the negative.

I’m sure those same people would look at me and say, “Well, you don’t know me, Ryan.  You don’t know what I have to deal with.”  But that’s the unequivocal and grandiose problem and answer right there.  Why are you comparing yourself to me?  Why do you think the grass is greener in my lawn?  Yeah, I did use Scott’s TurfBuilder, but I did it because I had a huge dandelion problem—not to play Keeping Up with the Joneses.  Yeah, possibly I make more money than you, but there are a lot of people out there that make a lot more money than me.  Yeah, maybe I don’t have your health problems, but I’ve had my fair share of them—including a broken skull, ruptured appendix, etc.  We could go back and forth all day, and what would it accomplish?  Would you be any happier?  Probably not. 

Take a serious look at your life and ask yourself what you have to be thankful for.  I’m certain you’ll find more than you realize.  And when you do, embrace it.  Cherish it.  Open the curtains and the windows and breathe in a nice big breath of fresh air.  Go for a walk or even a run if you are physically able.  I think you’ll find, if you do that, that your life really isn’t all that bad.  And if you really do have a serious issue in your life that you are dealing with or need to deal with, perhaps that newfound positive vibe will help you tackle it.  Because I can assure you, the “woe is me” attitude won’t.

And remember, being angry at the world doesn't solve anything either.  Not only does it raise your blood pressure and put you at risk for serious health issues (like getting your butt kicked), but it wastes your time and energy that could be better spent enjoying life or improving yourself.  Besides, you look pretty silly with that angry face.  Right?  Yeah, who are you kidding?