frustration – Live & Learn

Just another Friday night…

September 7, 2019 by Live & Learn 55 Comments

8:05 pm. I arrive at home, 15 hour day. ooooooo, how do you spell, e-n-o-u-g-h…
8:10 pm. Sitting at kitchen table. Thai takeout. Cold. Sticky rice, stucky rice.
8:15 pm. Susan fussing with remote and TV. “Bloody cable box must be broken.”
8:16 pm. DK: “No, must be the TV. It’s time for one of those new 8K T.V.s.”
8:17 pm. SK: “Are you out of your mind?”
8:17 pm. She continues fussing with remote.
8:18 pm. I’m picking at the cold rice which is slathered with Duck sauce.
8:19 pm. I google Cablevision to see if there are outages. Widespread outages since 7:49 pm.
8:20 pm. DK: “Why don’t you google it?”
8:21 pm. SK: “I’m not googling anything. You google it.”
8:22 pm. 36 years of marriage last week. I sit in silence and pick at the cold Garlic Chicken.
8:23 pm. She reboots the cable box by powering it on and off. She waits for system to reset.
8:26 pm. System resets. She curses. Still no fix. She’s now irritated, advancing to angry.
8:26 pm. She scurries over to the other room to test that TV.
8:27 pm. She’s back. She’s isolated root cause to a cable problem.
8:28 pm. She resets the entire T.V. to default settings. And waits and waits and waits.
8:39 pm. It’s back up. No fix.
8:40 pm. She runs downstairs to reset cable modem to reset the entire system.
8:45 pm. Alarms beep. Entire system reboots.
8:45 pm. I’m watching her with the remote, clutching a crucifix, whispering to herself.
8:50 pm. Entire system reset. No fix.
8:51 pm. DK: “Why don’t you google it?”
8:52 pm: SK: “I’m not googling anything.”
8:52 pm. She texts neighbor. To learn that neighbor has texted entire neighborhood.
8:53 pm. Neighbor: “Cable out in three states CT, NY, NJ.”
8:53 pm. Three states of cable addicts blitzing Cablevision 800 # and website.
8:54 pm. I’ve moved onto dessert, continue watching this show. Who needs Broadway?
8:55 pm. She googles Cablevision with her back to me. She finds number and dials. She’s on hold.
8:58 pm. After being on hold for several minutes, she learns that it’s the wrong number.
8:59 pm. She collapses onto couch, still clutching the remote.
9:00 pm. I walk upstairs, looking over my shoulder. There she is, eyes closed, slumped on the couch. And I’m the one with problems?

Image & Story: Optimum customers report widespread outages (CtPost, September 6, 2019, 9:42 PM)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Addiction, cable, frustration, Funny, Marriage, relationship, Story, tease, TV

Good Friday. Yet, not so Good.

April 19, 2019 by Live & Learn 59 Comments

I’m not proud of this. Nope.

And Peace be with you. On this Good Friday.

It’s a quiet morning, a day off, a Saturday morning pulled forward. What’s better than a long weekend?

The quiet is interrupted by ringing. And ringing.

We have a cheap home phone, with a piercing ring, one phone on each floor. Who uses a home phone anymore?

What used to be a source of such joy and anticipation in the pre-internet era, has turned into something vile.

Robocalls, a ratio of 7:1 to legitimate phone calls.

I count the rings. Most days I let it ring. And ring. I lean back in the chair, or close my eyes in bed, and count the rings. And feel my anxiety climb.

Other days, I pick up. And all the pent-up frustration of the week explodes on the Parasite on the other side of this line. I Rage against the Machine.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Anger, frustration, Inspirational, invasion, Photography, privacy, robo calls, robocalls, telephone

Lightly child, lightly

January 7, 2016 by Live & Learn 9 Comments

Under the light of eternity
things,
the daily trivia,
the daily frustrations,
fall away.
It is all a matter of getting to the center of the beam.

~ May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

Credits:

Image Source: Carolyn Cochrane
Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

Filed Under: Inspire, Lit, Photography, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: Balance, center, frustration, Inspirational, let go, light, lightly, May Sarton, petty, Photography, Psychology, Quote, Relax, Stress, Work

that hot itch of indignation

August 19, 2015 by Live & Learn 25 Comments

In this era of information overload and PC, authenticity is a beacon which cuts through the din. Here’s Sandy Wyatt with an excerpt from her wonderful post titled The Hot Itch:

The daze turned to anger before I left the parking lot. Are we in the Middle Ages, I fumed. What was next? Burning at the stake? Dousing?…I met with my meditation group later in the day and felt righteous satisfaction in their outrage as I told the story. It’s a hot itch, indignation. It gets under the skin and festers. So, as we sat together in silence, I took a step back from what I was feeling. I called up the part of me that observes my thrashing around with gentle curiosity. What happened? I saw that I’m not as tolerant as I like to believe. What does it matter anyway? I tried to look a little deeper. My ego hates to be misunderstood. It hates to be dismissed or categorized. And it really hates to be discredited. I’m proud of how hard I’ve worked to regain some functioning in the world. Proud. Ah … If I could nudge my ego aside, there might even be A Teaching Moment. Coming home from meditation with my friends, I turned up the music and sang down the highway. The ego is a stubborn little cuss. Mine can be paranoid and hysterical if the mood is right. Anything can offend it, and it defends itself with teeth and claws. But, like a mediocre poker player, it has a tell—that hot itch of indignation. When I feel that under my skin, I know it’s time to back up and look again.

I’m glad for that signal, and I’m glad I know what to do with it.

Thanks, Ego-Girl. Keep raging.

~ Sandy Sue Wyatt, The Hot Itch

Drawing: Olena Kassian

Filed Under: Art, Inspire, Quotes Tagged With: acceptance, Anger, Art, Ego, frustration, indication, Inspirational, offended, Psychology, Quotes, Sandy Wyatt, tolerant

Squirrels. Cardinals. Bumble Bees. And Me.

June 25, 2015 by Live & Learn 26 Comments

It’s difficult to understand how an innocuous glance out the window could start a cascade of nonsense. But, it did. And it does.

It’s Tuesday. I’m home on a late evening conference call. I see him through the window in the backyard. He’s chubby-cheeked, hanging upside down, and clutching the iron cover of the bird feeder.

My call continued. And so did Chubby-Cheeks. The bird feeder is swinging from the pole. He’s shaking the cr*p out of it. And gorging on prime seed intended for goldfinches. Had I been outside and not two floors up, I would have run the S.O.B. down.

My call continued. I watched him. And wondered how this creature could manage to raise my ire. This man, a college educated adult, 210 pounds (and counting) vs. a foot-long squirrel weighing a pound or two. There he was. Blissfully feeding. And I’m clenching a pencil between my teeth, tasting graphite on my tongue.

The call ended. I ran down the stairs and out the door to find that he had vanished. Squirrel 483. DK: O.

Fast forward to Wednesday morning. I’m heading out the door to walk to the train station.

There he was to my right. Staring at me from the base of the evergreen tree in the front yard. Beady eyes. His under carriage dragging on the grass, belly bursting from the bird seed. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Grow, Inspire, Life, Lit, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: Anger, bird feeder, Birds, Deborah Ford, frustration, Funny, Inspirational, Photography, Psychology, Quotes, squirrels, Story

Riding Metro-North S/N. With Crawford.

May 1, 2015 by Live & Learn 24 Comments

Miracles.
The Show plays same time daily. Pre-dawn in a tight band around 4:30 am.
Zeke‘s bred to hunt birds. His Dad, to wake free of alarms.
I peek out from under the covers, and voila.
6 hours of intermittent shut-eye, and the florescent digits blaze 4:38 am.
The red spark plugs ignite the engine.
I calculate the odds of catching the 5:01 am.
22 minutes to shower, shave, dress, cover 1/4 mile and buy ticket.
Too tight. Next train: 5:40 am.

* * *

I make the 5:40.

I finish skimming the morning e-papers.

I move to Matthew Crawford’s new book: The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. After an engaging introduction, I catch myself jumping words, then sentences and whole paragraphs. I’m skipping a torrent of multi-syllabic words. I’m not understanding much of it — it’s washing over me like dirty runoff. I’m hoping something sticks. Nothing does. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: commute, feels good, frustration, Grow, growth, Learn, mastery, Matthew Crawford, Nietzsche, Photography, Quotes, Story

I don’t like Neighbor.

November 12, 2014 by Live & Learn 24 Comments

I was rattled.
My Fingers are on the keyboard.

“N-e-i-h-b-o-r”
Then…
“N-i-e-h-b-o-r”
Autocorrect is humming in the background but finding nothing.
Where the H*ll are you?
Red dots underscore the word and shout: “WRONG“!
I push back from my desk. I stop. I inhale.

You used to be an Automaton. Letters used to spill out, from head to fingers to screen. Letters all beautifully lined up in single file, in correct order. It’s ok. You’re just tired. You didn’t get much sleep. You’re alright. It will be ok.

I go at it again.
“N-i-e-b-o-r”
Red dots return.
No sign of Autocorrect.
My pulse quickens.
The cursor flashes at the end of the Word. Bing. Bing. Bing. Bing. Bing.
Red dots underscore word. Red dots. Blood platelets. Stop the bleeding.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: autocorrect, Blog, Blogging, frustration, Funny, Photography, remember, spell, Spelling, Story, Think, words, write

T.G.I.F.: It has been a long week

June 20, 2014 by Live & Learn 29 Comments

Source: Headlikeanorange (Young black-tailed prairie dog)

Filed Under: Business, Grow, Nature, Photography, Quotes Tagged With: fatigue, Friday, frustration, Funny, gif, laugh, long week, Photography, prairie dog, Quotes, T.G.I.F., TGIF, Tired, Work

Set fire to your old self

December 18, 2012 by Live & Learn 38 Comments

“You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch.

Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy.

You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like. [Read more…]