There’s something wrong. I don’t know what it is. All I know is that in the course of this week, I’ve blown up at the pilots on rec.aviation.piloting for telling lies about Al Gore[1], and then had an even bigger blow up at my best friends in the world on a couple of mailing lists. I’m not just talking about you know, some amusing list that some people read once or twice a day, I’m talking about lists that basically my life revolves around. I read these lists first thing when I wake up in the morning, last thing before I go to be at night, I carry a Treo with a data plan and an imap mail reader so I can read it when I’m walking to the bathroom or at lunch, in business meetings, and during any lull in conversation or any down time at all. I hate to go more than a few minutes between my fixes. Yes, I’m obsessed. Probably in a not very healthy way.
Anyway, this list has had a number of very nasty blow ups this last year or so, with people storming off in a huff and vowing never to come back. And I’ve been worried that all these problems are going to kill these mailing lists, and that’s making me sad.
Recently, some people on these list have proposed that we invite members of another list that they are on to join us. This other list had a similar history to ours, only a bit more recent. But any “merger” has been held up by the fact that “we” don’t have a decision making process. Well, we thought we did, but it had never been tested and it was kind of broken. Plus there is the problem that any large group of people is going to have people who annoy each other, and people who actively hate each other. It is well known on “our” group that there are people on “their” group that some people on “our” group actively hate. Not sure if that’s an insurmountable problem, though. For one thing, we’re not even sure who on that group will want to join our lists. For another, most of the people who have been most vocal about this aren’t all that active on our lists. Do we pass up the possibility of new active members for the wishes of old but inactive members? Don’t know. All I know is that I was actually generally in favour of it, unless it was going to alienate active members of our lists and drive them away, or if there were certain people on their list. But the actual discussion was making us all crazy, and I was once again convinced that the arguing over the future of the lists was going to tear apart the lists even more.
Another factor is that at one time we tried a different tack – instead of us inviting them to our list, or them inviting us to their list, we’d create a new joint list. It was created, but practically nobody ever used it. There just didn’t seem to be any reason to use it – it’s like you had two parties with clumps of interesting people having interesting conversations, and somebody opening up a door to a new room between the two parties and say “look everybody, you can have conversations in this new room”, but nobody wanted to leave the conversational group they were in to go into an empty room. Another factor about this joint list – when it was first set up, it would sometimes take over half an hour before you’d get your own message back. I pointed that out to the person running the list (J), and mentioned that I’d had a similar problem with my lists until I’d switched over from Sendmail to Postfix. That problem with the joint list eventually got fixed, but there still wasn’t much traffic. And then sometime later I’d made some disparaging remark about how the joint list was a failure because almost nobody was using it. Being me, I probably said other things as well. I don’t know. But as a result of that, the person running the joint list, who is also the person running the list that we’re talking about inviting over, has got it into her head that I’m jealous of her lists, or annoyed that I wasn’t called upon to create the joint lists. And she’s repeated that accusation numerous times. I’ve had other clashes with her before other other trivialities, so there is always this little thread of mutual antagonism running in our normal friendly interactions, and I don’t know what to do about it, and I think we both see slights from the other were slights are not intended.
But that’s all background. The current situation is that in the midst of arguing and agonizing and trying to make a decision on this proposed merger, something happened that probably shouldn’t have. Something that seemed bigger to me when it happened than it did a day later. And for some reason I totally lost it. I blew up at the person who did the stupid thing, at the other list (mostly in absentia), and especially at J. I made even more of an ass of myself than usual.
The upshot of it was that the next morning, I discovered that I was actually dreading checking my email in the morning.
And the morning after that, I found myself sitting at my computer crying my eyes out, not just for what I had done, but also for the realization of what I had to do. And through streaming eyes, I did what I had to do – I apologized to everybody, especially J, and then I unsubscribed. And I vowed to stay unsubscribed until I can figure out why I got so angry, and how I can prevent having these sorts of blow ups in the future. And it’s hard, let me tell you. It’s so strange to check mail after an hour or more away from the computer, and not find any new mail. And what do I do during boring meetings, while sitting on the can, or while waiting for the latest test to reach the point where I have to interact with it?
So anyway, besides J’s theory that I am jealous of her lists, which I think is exceedingly unlikely, here are other factors that I think have something to do with it:
- I’m angry that my friends are bickering and unable to resolve this problem without people blowing up at each other (so why did I do exactly that?)
- I’m more upset than I thought about Google rejecting me
- There are problems at home I can’t talk about, and they’re weighing heavily on me
- I’m scared that I’m going to get airsick during my upcoming flight review
- Things are not going well at work right now but I don’t think the job market is any good.
I know what Vicki’s answer will be. But I don’t want therapy right now. I just want to figure out what’s wrong with me and fix it. (Yeah, I know)
[1] Pilots fall into roughly two categories: Climate change deniers, and big fat hypocrites. I’m firmly in the second camp, and that camp is the strong minority. The climate change deniers seem to believe all of the following simultaneously:
- Global climate change doesn’t exist
- Global climate change exists, but it’s due to natural cycles and outside factors
- Global climate change exists, but man made change is minimal
- Global climate change exists, is man made, but it’s China’s fault, not ours
- Global climate change exists, is man made, but who cares if it’s a few degrees warmer – I have AC in my Hummer
- Global climate change exists, it’s man made, it’s our fault, but it’s too late to do anything about it
- It’s all Al Gore’s fault, and if we demonize him enough, the problem will go away.
You know, one of the things that’s been the hardest to learn about working on the airplane (and to a lesser extent, the motorcycle) is that I can’t fix everything.
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.
> The climate change deniers seem to believe all of the following simultaneously: […]
It would be more fair and accurate to say “some” instead of “all” here.
Frank, I did say “seem to believe” not “believe”. Certainly that article about the oil sands that got me so mad was making *all* those points simultaneously.
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.
I don’t know if jealous is the word. You have four, five lists about this particular group; I have one. Does it annoy you that there’s a group you don’t belong to or have control over? Are you unhappy that you don’t have the complete set?
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.
Suffice it to say, I don’t remember things quite the way you do. I’m sure if you cared enough, you could dig through the archives, but all I remember is a couple of off hand and possibly sardonic remarks about responses taking half an hour to come back. I don’t remember any “shit fit”, nor do I remember blaming you, rather than the host, for the problem. Possibly I did, and I’ve forgotten it. Possibly you took my remarks harder than I intended them at that time. Possibly the truth is somewhere between those extremes. I don’t know, and all this time later, I’m not sure why either of us should care. We started arguing and fighting over trivialities a long time before that, and while I’m not sure why, I do now that both of us seem on a hair trigger to find offense where there is none intended.
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 think you and I share some personality traits. The following tend to make me fly off into simultaneous states of rage, self-loathing, and upset:
• 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.
You seemed to be intent on teasing it apart, in public. If you no longer want to examine it any more, that’s fine with me.
Funny your having a problem like this on a mailing list, as we’re currently dealing with a very similar issue on a forum that we run – it seems that some people have just chosen to make themselves as problematic as they could possibly be and insist on just poking and prodding people into a reaction.
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.}
Not sure what list you’re having problems with Paul, but I have never been happier since I left the Piper list. I have all the addresses I want (including yours), so I can still keep in touch with those rare individuals that I want to keep in touch with from that list. The rest of them can go to hell.