Lesson learned

This year, I have learned a valuable lesson. It's not something I didn't know before. I suppose what's different now is that this year I discovered a way to monitor and enforce adherence to it.

I refer to this lesson as the "Don't be like Doug" lesson. Doug is a boy who was in my program. He's a raging assbag too. Doug managed to piss off pretty much EVERYONE who dealt with him. Frequently, this was a one trial learning event. Some people, like me, took a little longer to learn he is seriously a dick. In my case, it was far from passive observation which served as the basis of my eventual conclusion. It was a direct conversation about principles and personal value systems. I blogged about it last year. It was a creepy experience, talking to a sociopath.

Doug seemed to just do exactly the wrong thing, said something in exactly the wrong way to piss people off. He came across as imperious to a ridiculous degree and as promoting an unfounded sense of self-righteous self appointed authority. He was not shy about telling people they were doing thing "wrong".

So what's the lesson? The lesson is that I can be a little like that too. I know I am not at Doug level, I also know I'm just a nicer person with a more realistic sense of, oh, whaddyacallit, interpersonal relativity. But this year I learned to stop and ask myself "What would Doug do?" E.g., would Doug write to the owner of a student government list he was on to suggest to the owner that he should spend more time on content and on checking his grammar and spelling than on trying to sound cute? Would Doug feel a compulsion to tell this guy that the cute is contrived and stale while the lack of attention to grammar and spelling in a business related email on a list which is mandatory for senators (yeah, color me a big dork) irritates the shit out of him? Probably. And so I stop.

This isn't to say I won't address the issue. I fully plan to ask the moron who is writing this shit to grow the hell up or take cleverness lessons. However, I'm not going to go all Doug on his ass.

This is, I believe, a sign of development.

And it's about fucking time since...

I'm 35!!!!!!