Sometimes it’s damn near impossible to not take the bait and simply lash out, but generally we manage to keep level heads. However, tonight both me and my wife blew up (publicly and privately in the forums) at one particular member who was just being completely childish. We had tried to deal with the matter behind the scenes and they weren’t interested in letting it go, so when they put it back into the public eye, so did we.

Personally, when push comes to shove in an online discussion I always take the tactfully way out so far as they way I come across in my response, but I won’t be afraid to express anger publicly. It’s frustrating to know that sometimes by doing so you fall into the exact trap that the trolls are setting, but other times it can put people back on their heels and make them wake up to the fact that their own actions are pissing off others and perhaps *they* need to sit back and reconsider their membership, or actions.

Good luck and hang in there. I’m just coming out of a cycle of overbearing stress and frustration myself over a few personal issues (long story as well) and I know how it can be.}

• Any hint that something I’ve done was stupid. “Mistake” isn’t the same as “stupid,” and the intimation is usually in my head.
• I have a lot of emotional investment in something and someone wants to change it.
• I am trying to prove that I Know Something, and it’s not working.
• Something is making me feel inadequate

I have several healthy ways of dealing with this:

• screaming at people
• crying
• binge eating
• shutting down, avoiding all in-person human contact, and staring at a computer screen for hours
• take long walks and listen to some music

Okay, maybe only one of those is healthy.

I think the lists you’re discussing are dying a slow death, and I think it’s been going on for a while. Not everyone is best mates with each other, although they try to pretend, and that facade is wearing off. New blood, with new topics to talk about, might help. However, it might be best to just let it go. Those that want to stay in touch will though the various other social sites we’re on.

I miss the lists sometimes, but then I remember that every time I rejoin I wind up unsubscribing because I just don’t relate to a lot of the topics that are discussed any more, or disagree hugely with the prevailing opinion but am just to weary to get into a pissing contest.

I’m not quite saying what I had intended to, so I’ll stop there. But I will say this: as someone who’s dealt with depression and a mood cycle that borders on manic-depressive for a long time, I feel compelled to agree with you that therapy isn’t always the answer. Sometimes you’ve said all that needs to be said about your mental state, and need to learn how to accepts moods for what they are and let them blow over, provided that you’re not a danger to yourself or others. Something that’s tremendously hard for me is learning that it’s okay to make mistakes, or be sad, or be angry, and not let it turn into one of “those” moods, if you know what I mean.

As for the recent stuff, can we just lump it in together as one big symptom of whatever is eating me, combined with the aforementioned hair trigger, say I’m sorry, I really didn’t intend to blow up at anybody, and let me try to work out how to stop it from happening in the future?

I don’t know. I just know there’s some kind of competitive thing going on with you that I don’t think I started, and there’s a lot of emotion behind it that I don’t think I deserve the credit for.

If you’re not jealous of my list or members, why did you “threaten” me with “stealing” my members?

I think you often have a hard time seeing something done differently from the way you’d do it and not take it personally if the other person doesn’t change her mind and do it your way. Why else would you freak out over my asking why we didn’t use a list instead of a blog to tally votes? You seemed to take it personally, or assume I was doing it to mess with the process. Things you think are settled aren’t always settled, as our friend A pointed out.

As to the technical issues with the other list: Did you really not understand that I’m not the list *system* administrator? Do you still not understand that? I’m a list administrator. I add and remove people and make settings to the already-set-up mailman system. I can’t change the software, I can’t even start a new list. I don’t have control of that. I just change settings. I have a friend who is a list system admin and does those things for me.

So when you had your shit fit on that other list years ago, you were blowing up at me for something I couldn’t change. And yes, you did make some pretty childish remarks, not just there, but on a list that was supposed to be about a third party who was sick and eventually died.

I still love you and think you’re a good guy, even though you’re acting a fright right now. I don’t know what you need, but it doesn’t look like you’ve gotten it yet. You’re doing what you were doing on the lists, only now you’re blogging it. I’m not sure that’s helping.

The upshot of it was that the next morning, I discovered that I was actually dreading checking my email in the morning.

Been there, done that. Several times. As you know.

I’ve never once actually unsubscribed, but I have taken deliberate sabbaticals (last time, I tweaked my .muttrc so it wouldn’t show me new mail in those mboxes). It did me good; not just because of the specific frictions going on, but just as a way to lever myself away from the net a little. Like you I’m paid to spend all day at a keyboard, but unlike you I have nothing like a life outside of that, which will never ever change if I don’t get away from the damn computer and do something fun, creative, and/or social.

I don’t know about you, but for me this kind of break can be downright therapeutical.

It would be more fair and accurate to say “some” instead of “all” here.

As long as I’ve owned the airplane, the engine has leaked oil. Not a lot of oil, but enough that the belly was always greasy, and nothing I did ever seemed to help. Two years ago, when I took it in for annual, the mechanic opened the cowling, and said, ‘Wow! You’ve got an oil leak here. And here. And at the oil cooler!”, and in a few hours he’d fixed them all, and the engine hasn’t leaked since. And I’d worked on it for years and never made any progress.

Working through things yourself is fine, but eventually it makes sense to bring in a second set of eyes to look at the problem and see if there’s something you’re missing.