This is sort of a follow-up to my On Steve Jobs post.
I write this with myself as the audience, after getting slapped with fish by life for the past 10 days.
No one cares.
You’ve been raised in child-centric America, from 1990 to the present. You’re behaviorally Millennial; you don’t remember a time before computers, minivans, or helicopter parents. You’ve always felt entitled to speak your mind, in whatever the situation.
When affronted, you’re either aggressive or passive aggressive. Unlike your Gen-X forebears, you can’t take critique as the standard ‘Wah-Wah’ din of parents, superiors, or peers. No. You feel the need to respond. And those same people better listen to you, dammit, because you’re _________ (insert your name here, Snowflake). You’ll either run your mouth off or go to some form of social media to complain and find surcease.
Ibid: “No one cares.”
They really don’t. They may patronize you and listen to your little ideas, or your silly complaints, but they’ll adopt the same attitude they would with their 4 Year Old, “How nicely you speak! You know some big-boy words. Yes, that’s just awful. Now run along and play while the adults do the real work.”
Consider not holding that against them.
The word we need to use here is entitlement. You feel entitled for someone to listen to you. For Heaven’s sake, disabuse yourself of that notion. Whether actively or passively, they don’t need you. Their need or want of you ends with the day, the meeting, the project, or whatever. It’s transactional.
When you cease producing, they’ll try and do humane things: Retrain you, relegate you, finally releasing you in a broad swathe of “right-sizing.” That day will come; employment for life is over.
So, that being said: This melancholic fretting has to end. Today. You’ve stared change in the face for two weeks now and you need to decide if it gets the better of you. (By the way, not deciding is a decision, Buttercup.) Your wife and family deserve better. Your colleagues at work depend on you and they deserve better.
So, please stop sucking. Internalize that ‘No one cares’ and turn towards some things and people that do, okay?
- God loves you. To use more modern language, you are a sinful pile of scat and Christ loves you anyway.
- Your family loves you. All you kids are crazy about you. Your wife loves you, often in spite of yourself.
- You’re blessed to have a job. Yes, it’s going through massive transition and people are walking around 50% triggered (except you, you’re running at 95% triggered)
/rant