Chronic disappointment

naming my mood

I am genuinely a grumpy person. I will walk around saying gems like, “I hate people, places, and things.” I am not a curmodgeon though, I’m actually quite receptive to changes, conversation, and generosity. So what am I?

I am disappointed. Chronically. Perpetually. Repeatedly.

How is this possible you ask? Are her standards high? Is she snobby? Particular?

Y’all. No.

My bar is so low. Let’s discuss.

I was a sensitive child. I walked around bleeding empathy and not understanding how people could be mean to each other. I was shocked repeatedly by cruelty. I remember childhood taunting on the school bus, always the monkey in “monkey in the middle” trying to get my hat back on snowy winter days. My bra was frozen solid at a teenage sleepover because the fellow girls thought I’d be the first one to fall asleep (I wasn’t). Then also I was poorer than my classmates and a wild, curly-haired left-handed avid reader. Perhaps you were similar if you read my writing? So perhaps you know the weird looks you get when you’re 12 and you speak like a 30-year old?

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I come by the grumpiness honestly. Since I was young, humanity has been offending my sensibilities. It took me a long time to figure out that it wasn’t because I was nerdy or nice. I simply respect other people, and I’m annoyed when others don’t do the same.

I respect people’s time. I respect their background, whatever journey brought them to my door. I respect your feelings even if I don’t agree. I respect individualism, a desire to be unique. I respect that being totally unique is impossible, patterns simply recreating within nature no matter how hard we try. I respect different cities and their differences. I respect nature, and I want to keep it beautiful. This respect is simply there. It comes easily to me. I occasionally have to remind myself to respect really difficult people, but it isn’t that hard to reset.

And so, imagine my shock. SHOCK!, that other people simply don’t have any respect for other people. Or you have to earn it. Or you are beneath the level of respect they will give. They think it is right to stiff a waiter's tip, fine to yell at customer service, okay to not respond to an email even though their job is to respond to the email.

Anyway, my grumpiness is usually theoretical, a quiet mood sometimes punctuating by yelling at my family for some random offense (why are their socks on the floor AGAIN). However I’ve noticed that since ending my full-time job, I have more time to go places and get things done. This exposes me to the world at large. Unfortunately.

When you are paid to do a job, you are insulated from everyone. And maybe you garner some respect by virtue of being or looking successful. And you get paid, obviously. When you are living the semi-financially-independent-which-is-definitely-nice lifestyle, the side effect is that you are endlessly adulting for which there is no reward. You are paying taxes. You are switching banks. You are talking to the lawyer. You are going to the hardware store. You are trying to get your teenager to give you a firm plan for the day. You are trying to get Amazon to tell you why they took down your book. You are emailing your book distributor to find out why the invoice says you owe $6000 when that’s not even possible given the number of books they have on hand. You are emailing them again to explain why $1000 couldn’t even be the correct number. You are mystifying people with your knowledge of their business which they appear to not have. You are sending reminder emails when no one responds. You are pinging your child again because they stopped replying to you even though you know they are on their phone 24/7. And so on… (Editor’s Note: A comment below made me realize that it sounds like I never did these things when I worked which isn’t true; I also did them (or put them off). There’s something about it all being a higher percent of what I do each day that feels different, like an undiluted version of world exposure. I’ll mull this section over, but just clarifying!)

Yo, I think my bar is INSANELY low. I just need people to do the bare minimum when they are doing the thing they are supposed to be doing. For example:

• Driving: In the US at least, please stick to the lane you are supposed to be in, don’t do u-turns in the middle of the road, start/stop when appropriate, and stick generally within the speed limits.

• Walking: Um, walk? Like keep walking and don’t suddenly stop in the middle of the sidewalk. Have some minimal awareness if someone is behind you or in front of you.

• Talking: Start talking and then stop sometimes. Listen and respond to what that person is saying. Now talk again. Listen. Respond. Repeat. No, no, don’t stop listening. Keep listening. OK, maybe stop talking now.

• Garbage: If you made it, keep it until you reach a garbage can. Put it in. Extra points for remembering where recycling and compost go.

• Government-ing: I don’t need you to agree with me on all positions, I just need you to balance the position and protection of the nation with the interests of the citizens, not just a few or yourself.

See what I’m talking about? AM I A PICKY PERSON? This seems like baseline human behavior to me. Like rock bottom. AM I INSANE?

There’s a whole trope that perimenopausal women get cranky and irritable, and it’s those crazy hormones taking them on an emotional roller coaster. Also people say elderly people are depressed because of their bodies falling apart, mental changes, and loneliness. All of that may be true, but I’m starting to think that it’s also because people are annoying and we get tired. Pure and simple. We get tired of being nice, we get tired of expecting more and receiving so little, we are afraid of becoming “Karens” if we ask for too much so we ask for nothing and get grumpy.

I don’t have a fix for this, not a simple one anyway. Blech to gratitude journals, and I don’t want to meditate away my expectations. But I am working on feeling the feels. Just feel the annoyance and move on, don’t bottle it up, and don’t make it bigger than it is. Don’t start grumbling about kids these days when I pick up another empty potato chip bag off of my coffee table. Instead observe the bag. Find the kid. Make him clean it up. Move on. People ARE annoying. So what? Send the reminder email and move on until you find a kindred spirit. Grump with them.

Until next week.