DREWspective

Today I’ve added a new category for my posts here on DREWspective: language. I think it’s important enough to warrant having its own category.

Language—here in the UK at least—is something that people either piss on or use as a manipulative tool. Some people either deliberately misspell words they don’t even know the meaning of, or they use words to control people. Maybe even both.

Nowhere is it more abused than in schools and educational establishments, which is unforgivable in my book as you’re dealing with kids. But you’ve also got to watch out for it at work. I’ve been in my current job for just under two months, and already I’ve heard a series of disturbing, common language themes. (You may have heard me mention it before.)

We’ll start today with one that recently cropped up, and one of my all-time most hated pet hates:

Need.

When someone tells you they need something.

When someone tells you they need you to do something.

When someone tells you that you need to do something.

When someone tells you that something needs to be done.

Some of you reading this will probably say, "do you really need to talk about this?" I rather stupidly asked about it on Yahoo! Answers once, and got a very similar answer. To those people: fuck you, I’m talking.

Wayne Dyer said in one of his audiobooks that a need is something that, if you don’t have it, will immobilise you.

I’ve certainly had times where I felt I really "needed" something: the foam shapes from the US, for example, is something I "need" to continue making the chibiModels, so until them I "can’t" continue work on them. But there you go; I put can’t in quotes, because there are other things (such as painting the heads) that I could do.

You’ve probably heard people talk about how some people feel they "need" a particular thing to be happy, to be rich, or to progress to the next level. Without this thing, they feel like they can’t change. It’s like when you have a craving for a particular food, and you can eat as much of any other kind of food as you want, but unless you have that food, you won’t be satisfied.

There are of course times when the need is genuine. The only basic needs for people are oxygen and water (in my opinion), but some people could have a few more. I’d argue that having faith in something is also a need, even if it’s having faith in not having faith.

My beef, is with people who use the word need as a controlling force. These are people who throw it around, like a sadistic master goes around whipping their slaves, or someone who feels the need to put a curse—or "lol"—in every single sentence. These people are only interested in manipulating others, and the word "need" is usually synonymous with "getting people to do" something.

There are much more relevant alternatives: is required; this must be; I would like; I want; is supposed to; and many more. There’s no excuse.

Just remember that you have a right to define for yourself what you "need"; don’t let anyone define your "needs" for you. As Brian Tracy once said, just wave one finger at them and move on.

I did a double-take when I read someone’s copy of a tabloid newspaper on the train to work.

It’s been a while since I last saw Jeremy Beadle on television, but he was truly an icon. For those who don’t know, he was famous for pulling practical jokes on people, most notably on his own TV show.

I will admit, I was probably too young to understand what was going on back in the 80s and early 90s; all I can remember were bleeps as the victims cursed in frustration. That in itself was funny shit. I also won’t pretend to know the guy personally, but he was a part of my childhood and he will be missed.

Drew Maughan salutes Jeremy Beadle. Rest in peace.

As someone who has had ongoing problems with social interaction, depression, employment, discrimination and a whole load of other stuff I can’t be bothered to name right now, I probably don’t have any right to tell people what to do, say or think.

But I do know one thing: to be happy in life, you must have connections with other people. I realised that a long time ago, and it took my recruitment agent to remind me earlier today.

Other people are crucial to any kind of happiness, from wellbeing right on up to your career. Brian Tracy said in one of his seminars: a person who is known and liked by many other people can go all the way to the Presidency, while someone who is talented, but had no friends, would end up working under someone who does.
When I look at how my life turned out, it seemed that people around me knew that from the start. They might have seen that I was an extremely talented, creative person, who could potentially change the world. We can’t have that, they decided, so they made sure I was cut off from everybody and had no reliable friends or relationships. (That does sound paranoid, but anything is possible.)

What very few people realise (or care about) is that you must have connections with the right kind of people. All too often popular culture looks down on outcasts and "loners", and insist they "get out more". But it may be that "getting out more" only puts them in contact with people who don’t serve them well.

Unless you were very sadistic, you wouldn’t suggest to a black person that they should join the [group with people who wear white pointed hoods]. So why assume that they can just form bonds with any old person?

What even less people realise is that finding a place where you can form connections with the right kind of people isn’t always straightforward. These days it’s all well and good for your typical, loudmouth, promiscuous nobody: they have pubs, night clubs and almost all kinds of social settings. There are some who don’t like that crowd.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers to how to solve the connections crisis. The solution to solving these personal problems, I’ve found, is very personal to the person going through them. I hope you find yours, if you have one.

Every once in a while, for no apparent reason, I have very strange dreams.

Now I know that everybody has at least one, and they spend a good amount of time trying to figure out what they mean. But ain’t nobody’s weird dreams weirder than mine.

I’ve already written about a strange-ass dream I had a while ago, but here’s another.

I dreamt that, sometime in the early hours of this morning, I’d received an angry Facebook message from that girl I’d been miserable over. The message was quite long, basically saying "get over it".

Nothing unusual there, except the notice about the message came in the form of some kind of astral, subconscious warning, that woke me up. Something told me there was a message for me on Facebook, and that it would be from this person.

Just out of curiosity, I switched on my laptop and checked Facebook out through sleepy eyes. It was about 5am, an hour before my alarm would go off and signal the start of an arduous 13 hour day.

Sure enough, there was a message on Facebook. But it was from someone else, and the message was nothing of the sort.

There is probably a good explanation for what happened. My conclusion is that a lot of repressed emotions came flooding out, trying to bring closure to an upsetting event.
This is a very good reason, and why I am an advocate, for why people should be free to express themselves and let things out; not keep them bottled inside, as popular culture would prefer.

I’ve had two permanent jobs in two years, all of which lasted for less than 12 months. That’s when I decided to move into freelancing, but unfortunately it didn’t work out. So now I’m back to the predictable grind, which—in this position, anyway—I’m beginning to hate.

I tell you this because there’s a reason why I’ve left the other two jobs. I realise now that it’s had nothing to do with money: one of them was a well-paid job, which was relatively easy to get to in the mornings. The other one wasn’t either.

No, the primary reason for me leaving both jobs, and why I might leave this one, was blame culture.

Some of you may know what I mean by blame culture, but I’ll explain further. My definition of blame culture is where you’re in any size group of people, and you find they use excessive negative language for just about anything. These people never seem to be satisfied; actually, whenever something good happens, they act as if they’re entitled to it. But give them a problem, or something they don’t like, and they’ll talk your ass off about it.

People call me negative, and I freely admit I have moments where everything that comes out of my mouth is negatively charged. That comes with the way I’ve been treated by people, who are just as negative if not more so. But there’s a difference.

Despite my negative nature, I prefer spending time focusing on solutions and methods. I don’t like beating myself up over mistakes I’ve made, whether it’s being late or messing something up on a web site I’m working on. Fuck belly-aching; let’s see if we can learn from the problem and prevent these things from happening again.
But I end up beating myself up anyway, because most people I’ve worked with are firmly entrenched in blame culture (at least, on the job): they spend time focusing on problems and fault-finding. They’re not happy unless they’ve assigned or passed blame on someone else.

Now you’ll find out just what the heck this has to do with anything.

A couple of weeks ago, I was brought up on a few "mistakes" I’d made since starting my current job: trivial things such as being late on occasion. Under normal circumstances, you’d probably agree that this would be a one-to-one conversation, wouldn’t you?
Well imagine my horror when I found myself "locked" in a narrow room, mostly taken up by a large table, with three people.

(This was particularly bad because, when I was at university, I received a barrage of criticism while being trapped in an "interrogation room", with a large heavy table and two senior staff members standing directly between me and the door. I don’t appreciate being trapped.)

While I was arguably being criticised for the heck of it, I was a little dizzy from reliving that moment at university. But it was the discovery of a disturbing trend within the office, that I’m very sure is being replicated in many other companies: the trend of withholding praise and dishing out criticism (hence the title). How many of us have worked in a company where that was the norm?

I’ve calculated that for every positive comment I’ve been given at this job, I’ve had roughly nine times as much criticism, nit-picking and blame assigning - possibly more.

I have made a number of mistakes on the job, ranging from coding issues to almost bringing down a site, which were mostly to do with a lack of information and people unwilling to help. But boy do they love to talk about it when it happens. They bring at least one other person to crowd you; they ridicule your comments and methods (even if subtly); they talk your ears off for several minutes.

The only thing that results is in me being afraid to make any more mistakes, and consequently becoming more mistake-prone.

I want to keep this post short because it’s been long enough already.  I will end by saying, it’s likely I won’t be there much longer at this rate.