TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

More New Rules

When I first posted some New Rules back in April, little did I know that drama would find other ways to creep into my life.   After living through several different vignettes over the past week, I feel obligated to add some more new Rules for living that may be of benefit to you in how you live your life or at least help you understand how things work for me.

When I originally re-booted TimWoolery.Net - I posted some pretty clear thoughts about the intent of this space and it's bled over into how I communicate with people online.  I'm not vulgar or crass but I am direct and people tend to perceive that intensity as abrasive.  For me, it isn't so much about being abrasive as it is about being efficient: I'd rather figure out that we're not going to be friends before I invest a lot of time into you.  There's nothing worse than spending months or years with someone, only to have them go "You know...I never really liked you in the first place."

That may be a great movie-moment but it's bad for the guy who thought that things were working out well.  I like to avoid those types of unhappy outcomes and so therefore I'm more upfront about my opinions because it saves us both a lot of time that way.  So, to that end, let me provide a few new rules for your use and hopefully these make sense:

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• My trash is my trash and your trash is yours - Feelings are important.  I write here because I want to understand better how I feel and why I think the way that I do.  But there is a limit to how much weight my feelings and my opinions have over the rest of my life.  Over the years it has been explained to me that my opinions and how I feel are mine to manage.  I happen to agree with that sentiment ... Nobody else is more in charge of me than me.  But by the same rationale, I expect you to be in charge of your opinions, thoughts and feelings.  There is no one more in charge of you than you.
  • Going further - when you (or you by proxy - people like to bring me other people's problems to fix) start expecting me to consider your feelings ahead of the group or ahead of my own - that's when the Merry-go-round breaks down.
  • It might be more fun to bring out specific examples of what I'm talking about but let's just leave it at this.  I'm in charge of me and I expect you to be in charge of you - if you want more than that, then you need to contributing value to this relationship in some other way.
• Obnoxious != Funny :: Opinionated != Insightful - I'm glad you care about your iPhone, I really do.  I just wish that much mental and emotional energy extended to other aspects of your life.  Since you skipped over that point in the seminar, let me say this:  Expecting me to be happy only with the chit-chat of life is unreasonable.   As long as you're going to wax poetic about the crap you buy, I would expect some equal time devoted to the journey that you are on.  Believe it or not, I'm interested in you as a person - not as a consumer.  It's depressing to think that there is nothing more to you than your recent snowboarding trip.

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What's funny about social network is the amount of things you learn about people and how 'human' they are.  Most of the time, people don't seem to be thinking on any level deeper than the average mammal: where do they sleep, when do they get to have sex, when is the next meal.  They might as well be a single-cell organism because their needs are the same.  Or maybe there's more to them and they don't know how to say it - I can't tell.  I really hope that there is more to the story.

The more you put out there, the more chances it gives you to get information on how your life is going.  If I strike up a random conversation with someone in a checkout line - I'll need to A) consider how a stranger is going to feel with this information or viewpoint imposed upon them and B) be grown-up enough to expect that the information will be received in a way that I did not intend and, AND that is my problem, not theirs.  It's funny how many people feel entitled to be understood in a way that they meant to be taken.  Life does not work that way.

May these new rules bring joy and insight to your life - please remember that this is only me and my opinion.  Feel free to write some rules of your own.