Day 22,141

Evie Day 410

Good morning, and a happy first day of the work week for most of you – some folks don’t start on Monday, right? Today is 29 April 2024.

First of all, I want to take a moment to thank you. You are reading my stuff, and other than leaving comments, there isn’t much room for witty repartee. This is effectively a monologue, and folks can read it, folks can turn away, folks can leave a comment… and thankfully, I have a little piece of filtering code that block the comments from the folks trying to reach me about the extended warranty on my vehicle.

I try my best to ignore certain comments – I have to. Being neurodivergent comes with an interesting array of behavioral side effects, one of which is called rejection-sensitive dysphoria. If you go to Bing Copilot and ask for a single sentence to describe it, you’ll get a response like this: “Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is an intense emotional condition often experienced by neurodivergent individuals, characterized by extreme sensitivity and emotional pain in response to perceived rejection or criticism.”.

Here’s the thing – I wouldn’t ever tell someone with this condition to talk about it with anyone they don’t know or trust. It’s the kind of thing a bully would thrive on – seriously. Folks that have this thing ponder things way to long, wonder what they did to deserve to be treated that way, and wonder what they have to do to make it up people.

The problem is the person with this condition probably did nothing wrong. People do mean things to others out of sport. They like getting a rise out of people. It’s the same sort of bullying today that I and others experienced in middle school when they were the new kid, or a geeky kid, or had an accent, or had some other aspect of their personality that invited harassment.

Bullies think they are cool, but the reality is they are pitiful. If their lives were fulfilling, they wouldn’t need to attack others to build themselves up. Yet, here they are, saying and posting cruel things as a proxy for personal achievement.

I hope I am not one of those bullies, and I know I’m going to get targeted by folks of that ilk over something I believe in, like diversity and inclusion (yes, it has happened).

I hope I am a humble and kind person, and I want to thank the folks that keep me in check. There are times I really want to unload, but after I think about it, I pause. A while back, an old acquaintance posted what was likely the cruelest thing anyone has ever posted about me… he took it down pretty quickly. I thought for a long time about what I would like to say or what I should not say… and I later found out that the guy was going through a divorce and his entire life had become a great big pile of crap. I would guess his skin had become pretty thin at that moment, and there is no need for me to revisit that… that would be me being the bully, and I don’t want to be that guy.

There’s a song I like about remaining humble and kind. I have a sign that reads that right over to the entrance to my workspace.

Thanks for reading my post. Feel free to leave a comment.

I hope the world is treating you better than you deserve.

Peace y’all.