DREWspective

I remember Art Berg (deceased), one of my favourite NSA speakers, saying that most things we fear never come to pass. In recent times, that statement gave me a sense of hope.

The only problem is, sometimes they do.

One of my biggest fears while I was growing up, was falling hopelessly in love with a girl, only for her to run off with some other guy (or several other guys) and rip me to shreds internally.
I haven’t told anyone that before, and I wouldn’t have mentioned it if it hadn’t happened. There was the big thing last year about my world collapsing because of someone whom I thought I was having my first relationship with, but there have been countless other girls who I really wanted to get with, but they chose to date someone brighter, lighter and a whole lot whiter.

That worst fear came true without me having to think about it, even though it was probably in the back of my mind some place. Now that it has happened I’ve grown more cynical, but at the same time there are things I’ve been forced to accept. (Won’t go into those here.)

Most recently, I had to face a very intimidating fear. I wanted to leave my current job (still do), primarily because of the work environment; I felt strongly that it was counter-productive, not just with the job but with my self-esteem and personal development.

I’d been putting it off for months. I’ve only been at this job for seven months, and it would have been the third in a string of short permanent roles since university. Even more threatening was the possible reaction of the boss, who makes a habit of talking over people and throwing their weight around. They talked down to a good friend of mine: someone who left the company after four years. Imagine the bollocking I’d get for just seven months.

But I finally brought it up, and they had a very hard time accepting it as an answer. I did it three times in total, each time thinking about the situation.

And my reward for facing my fear? Verbal abuse. I had my personal life thrown in my face, being rudely talked over, before being left alone and shattered in the room, while the boss congratulated themselves or something.

Have you ever had that? When you’re "encouraged" to open up to people, or told you should be doing something, yet you get attacked when you do? Real healthy, isn’t it? Funnily enough, the only thing that does is make people not want to open up.

So I’m still at the job, and not for the first time in my life I feel trapped. It makes me think about my ultimate worst fear… I’m not going to say what it is.

You know, just as well nobody reads (or at least, comments) on my weblog entries; this one’s going to be very personal.

I guess you could call me lucky or fortunate, because I’m the type of person who - despite being overweight and out of energy a lot - hasn’t had to stay in a hospital overnight, or for an extended period. I’ve only been in hospital twice that I know of, both for minor surgery.

But I’ve thought about it just now, and I thought about how most people who go to hospital are visited by loved ones, friends and other people they know, all hoping they make some sort of recovery or improvement.

As a patient, I’ve never had that experience of being looked after by caring people. Though I’ve had that kind of treatment, it’s extremely rare compared to my siblings.

The hospital experience kind of ties in with social life, where a "normal" person has friends they can rely on and makes sure they’re okay, providing necessary support when they need it.

This is an area where self-worth and self-esteem come into play, because you have to have it in order to gain that level of support. However, I don’t believe you can have self-esteem or self-worth unless you have it; you’d otherwise be bitter.

I usually tell people that - growing up - I never had a single person in my corner when it mattered.  Nobody came to my defence in a dispute; nobody listened to me until it was too late; nobody was there to provide a shoulder to cry on. Recent years proved that people were more willing than ever to take sides against me, or at least point out just how much of a shit they couldn’t give.  In hindsight, all I was doing was crying out for someone to give a shit.

I’ve said the same thing about shyness and depression: that self-esteem - otherwise, caring about yourself - is a two-way process.  You have to want to do it, but you also have to find people willing to support you with the process for it to be successful. As ER Haas once pointed out, "you can’t go it alone!"

More to come on this subject.

I wanted to share this quote, posted by a YouTube user named DigBreamer:

Deep, eh?

The truth is that failure is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, failure is one of the most important things we can have, as people who are constantly developing.

Yet, the act of failing is stigmatised beyond proportion. You only have to look at television, movies or even the outside world to see how we - as people - have turned the idea of failure into something humiliating and negative.

One thing I particularly dislike is on game shows, where the winning person/team goes on to win even more prizes, while the "losers" go home with less, or in some cases nothing at all.
And how about these so-called "reality shows", where - even if everybody performs exceptionally well - anyone who doesn’t win is branded a loser. As much as I love Hell’s Kitchen USA, I get irritated by the idea that the losing team in a challenge has to have a "punishment".

Failure on any level is seen as a fault or a weakness by society. If you’re at a club and someone doesn’t find you attractive, in their eyes you’ve "failed" to meet their expectations. If you turn up at an event as anything less than happy, people around you think you’ve "failed" to share everybody’s mood.

Apparently we like to hear about other people’s failures in the media (in the UK, anyway), because we don’t like the fact that some people have succeeded and we haven’t reached their level.

As a growing prodigy, there have been many times in my life where I’ve been laughed at, ridiculed and made an example of just because I did something wrong, or made a mistake. Unforgivable things have been done to me just because I didn’t get things right first time, or all the time. I’m sure you’ve been through similar circumstances, because at some point everybody gets laughed at.

Even more prominent in today’s world is the idea that you have to succeed first time, or you’re a failure and you’ll never succeed.
This is a horrible belief. As many famous and accomplished people would attest, we hear an awful lot about their successes and achievements, but not nearly as much about their failures. For example, Babe Ruth struck out almost twice as many times as he made home runs. Michael Jordan missed several game-winning points. Walt Disney failed to meet anyone’s approval for his Disneyworld idea around 100 times. But these facts aren’t widely talked about. This gives us the false impression that success came to them in an instant, with little to no hard work.

Ultimately we have to remember that failure is an important part of life, no matter how everyone else reacts. Failure - when learned from - can help make you stronger and wiser. Without failure, we can never learn from or appreciate anything.

And there’s no need to worry about failing either, even though it’s incredibly scary and you’re frightened of the reaction you’ll get. As I’ve experienced time and time again, being afraid of failure (or what happens if you fail) only makes you more prone to failing.

It’s not easy to accept that something didn’t go the way you’d planned, and even less so when people are laughing at you and pointing fingers. Take heart, though, that every one of these so-called failures is a stepping stone. Keep trying, and you’ll eventually reach your goal.

Just now, at work, I received a "bug" (read: feature request) to add those "are you sure" dialogue boxes to a script.

(If you’re unaware, at the place I’m currently working everything is a "bug". You might work in such a company.)

The prompts would come up when moving and removing items from a category, and it got me thinking;

When are these prompts necessary?

For example, one thing I do straight away on a fresh installation of Windows (after getting the prompt) is to disable the prompt for deleting items to the Recycle Bin. If you delete files one at a time, or in different locations, seeing messages come up frequently can annoy you. When I say delete, I mean delete damnit!

However, there is always a prompt for when I want to delete items permanently; a very critical move, and where I want to be absolutely sure I haven’t made a mistake.

Often, it can feel condescending to be asked if you’re sure you want to close a program or save a file. One good example is in Word, Excel, Photoshop or Illustrator, when you’ve saved a file before printing it - and then get asked if you want to save it again if you close it.

There are some programs that allow you to disable certain prompts, but in my opinion not enough.

I say, when a dialogue box is necessary is mostly up to the user; sometimes they’d just like to get on with things and take responsibility for their actions, while others want to - or have to - be hand held. Either way, there will be those critical occasions where a prompt is necessary.

I’d spent this Easter under the grip of "man flu".

Maybe it was because I’ve been working too hard on too many different things, or that I didn’t pull through with the things I was supposed to give up for Lent, but eventually I was convinced I deserved it. Right now, I’m managing a nasty chesty cough.

Something happened on Good Friday that I’d never expected. The fraud department of my bank called me up about a series of suspicious payments made using my innocent debit card.

I’d noticed there was something awry, when I’d tried to buy some aquarium supplies from my trusty pet store. I knew I had money in the bank, but the payment wouldn’t go through. Luckily I have a backup card with another account, so I’m able to survive.

It turns out that someone had tried to gamble using my card details. I couldn’t think of a single person who could have gotten hold of them outside of home… except for the guy in the US who sold me the polystyrene shapes.

Anyway, because whoever it was had "gained authorisation", my debit card was "blocked" on the spot.

While I really appreciate them notifying me (and luckily nothing left my account), the think that irks me is that the bank called on a Good Friday, knowing that there was another Bank Holiday looming, and that I’d have to wait around five working days for a replacement card.

If I didn’t have a backup card, I’d be in very deep shit right about now.