{"id":443,"date":"2012-06-22T10:18:30","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T18:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=443"},"modified":"2012-06-22T10:18:30","modified_gmt":"2012-06-22T18:18:30","slug":"i-am-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/22\/i-am-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a quick personality test for you: go read this article, “Apparently This Matters: Paging Dr. Mario<\/a>,”\u00a0and then answer the following question.<\/p>\n

Does this article<\/p>\n

A) make you mad because people get paid to write drivel like this and you\u00a0<\/em>could do that so why isn\u2019t someone paying you<\/em>…
\nB) make you happy because people get paid to write drivel like this and since you<\/em> could do that maybe someone will pay you<\/em> to do it someday.<\/p>\n

Personally I would answer A, and I am really trying very hard to convert to B. I am<\/em>. I want to stop being such a bitter, cynical grumpy old man. It\u2019s not even a matter of \u201cnot taking things so seriously.\u201d Trust me, I don\u2019t take anything seriously. But I want to stop being so darn snarky.<\/p>\n

(And for the record, it is<\/em> snarky, and not sardonic. Only very attractive women can pull off sardonic. The rest of us are merely snarky, and if we\u2019re not careful, we might even be snidey<\/em>).<\/p>\n

A few years ago I pledged that I would stop making people feel bad for liking things. And it\u2019s been going fairly well, except that I\u2019ve been shifting my judgment from \u201cyou\u2019re stupid\u201d to \u201cthat\u2019s stupid.\u201d And it is such a worthless evaluation. At worst it comes across as condescending, at best, patronizing. \u201cThat thing you like, I think it\u2019s stupid. But it\u2019s okay that you like it! I like really stupid things too!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sorry, to those of you who\u2019ve had to hear me say that. Not cool.<\/p>\n

Who am I to judge? Well, I can<\/em> judge, you know. I got credentials. I have taste (I married into having taste, anyway) and an education and enough lifetime experience that when I think something\u2019s dumb, it\u2019s not just a knee-jerk reaction.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the point. Just because I think something is stupid, doesn\u2019t mean it is, and even if it is stupid, what benefit comes from my evaluating it as such? Whatever injury I feel is being done to me by experiencing the stupidity is only made worse by my complaining about it. It takes less energy to change the channel, put down the book, click on the a different web page. Way way way<\/em> less energy. I\u2019m the one\u2019s who stupid.<\/p>\n

Seriously: it takes one to know one. The truth is, Jarrett Bellini had an experience and shared it and that he gets paid and I don\u2019t is irrelevant. Entirely pointless. If I get upset, that\u2019s on me, not him, is a reflection of me, not of him. I\u2019m the one who\u2019s stupid.<\/p>\n

Which is not to say I should just be all hippie-dippie lovey-dovey about everything. I should have standards, and set expectations for high quality. But getting upset doesn\u2019t make anything better at all, so why bother<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Instead, I should try to take inspiration from things. I should use my well-earned powers of judgment to find what is<\/em> useful and good\u2014and if I don\u2019t find anything, then at least I got the benefit of exercising my abilities.<\/p>\n

Or, at the very<\/em> least, I got an excuse to write my own drivel and post it too. And yes, I am available for paid writing positions, if anyone\u2019s, wondering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a quick personality test for you: go read this article, “Apparently This Matters: Paging Dr. Mario,”\u00a0and then answer the following question. Does this article A) make you mad because people get paid to write drivel like this and you\u00a0could do that so why isn\u2019t someone paying you… B) make you happy because people get … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “I Am Stupid”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-79","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}