Anger Management

In the last 24 hours I've had two incidents of my anger getting the better of me.  One of those led to actions that could have been dangerous and left me shaking with adrenaline.  This has left me reflective of what the root cause is and how I can control my anger rather than the other way around.

I've had anger issues since I was in high school.  They led me to put a hole in the door of my bedroom with a 10 lb. dumbbell one day when my internet went out in the middle of playing an online game.  I think I might have been in the middle of a PvP duel at the time so I'm guessing the root cause there was embarrassment.

The first incident in the latest 24 hours was a form of road rage.  I tend to have a bit of anger/frustration on a normal day of driving, leading me to verbally expound on the poor driving of others on the road.  Generally that's where it ends but earlier when a driver was honking their horn at me when I was waiting to turn into a specific lane while driving in unfamiliar territory it sent me over the edge. 

I know part of the frustration was having to drive in an unfamiliar area and not being able to find what I was looking for.  I would much rather have waited to get back home and then find what we were looking for.  Farrah had her heart set on getting it there though, so I went through the ordeal in spite of my misgivings, which ultimately led to the dangerous road rage incident.

The other incident involved Farrah complaining that a fruit fly had landed on a piece of her lunch meat.  This is a common complaint from her and usually ends with large quantities of food being wasted.  I think there are a couple of causes here - financial strain combined with the fact that I was wanting to get something to eat myself.  I had skipped lunch without realizing it and was more hungry than usual.  Of the two I think the second factor might actually have been the real catalyst.

I have been thinking a lot lately about how my perceptions of other people and event are filtered through a negative filter.  I tend to assume that other people are thinking/planning something negative when I have no evidence at all that is the case.  Worse, I tend to build the negative assumption up in my mind if it doesn't get quickly dispelled.  It becomes a sort of negative loop that puts me in a negative emotional state, like anger, which reinforces the negative filter.  I have been trying to replace the negative filter with a positive one but have discovered that it is a deeply engrained part of who I am. 

It's sneaky too.  Usually it disguises itself as something positive or as an opinion that I already take for granted.  Or as an opinion which many others share, such as the idea that "People are stupid" (Actually, this one's pretty hard to dispel.  Ok, ok, it's probably not objective to categorize people this way). 

I've been thinking I need to have the correct philosophy/belief system to help combat this but as usual I'm at a bit of a stalemate here.  I have a general idea of what I want my life to be like but that image is constantly put under pressure by the vicissitudes of life and other outside pressures.  In the end, all I can do is try to be aware of the anger before it gets built up and learn how to diffuse it.  I guess that's a start.

Vacation Eve

Tonight is vacation eve and I'm as excited as if it were Christmas Eve.  Maybe even more excited.

There are so many things to look forward to - the road trip down (it's a long drive but it's part of the fun for me), camping at the beach, "Board Meetings" with my dad in the warm Florida sun, and most of all - Sea World!

This will be our first time doing some of the extra (expensive) amenities.  I hope they will be worth the money and make the trip extra special.  I hope the kids are blown away and will be talking about the trip for a long time to come. 

It will be nice undertaking a vacation while financially secure.  When Becky and I went to New Orleans we had enough money to do plenty of fun things but even then we aren't as secure as we are now.  We've come such a long way from when we went to Florida two years ago on a shoe-string budget that left my white-knuckling it all the way there and all the way back.  I'm surprised we even made it there and back that year, to be honest. 

I just hope that nothing goes wrong last minute.  It seems almost too good to be true where we're at right now and I live with this perpetual fear that it will sudden slip away from my grasp.  But I know worrying won't do any good, so I'll just relax and enjoy this moment while I can so I have no regrets later in life.

New Habits

New habits are hard to stick with.  At first, when your desire to be something new is at its peak, it is easy to do the things you know you ought to do.  But once the novelty fades, and it fades quickly, it gets harder.

I did myself no favors by getting a new game to play.  It's one that fits my mood and I've always found games to be a great source of self exploration.  But I can get obsessed with it to the point that I neglect doing the things I know I need to do if I want to leave the kind of legacy I want to leave on this earth. 

The good news is that today I recognized that I needed to stop - and did it.  Now I can focus on other, more important tasks (like sticking to my journaling).  More importantly, I've taken a step towards a habit of maintaining balance.

Legacies

With Granny's passing the thing I've thought about the most is her legacy.  I will miss her, of course, that goes without saying.  But more important to me is how I honor the life that she lived.  What was she trying to accomplish during the 92+ years of her life?  In the darkest moments of the Great Depression and World War 2, what did she see as being the future if she could just make it through? 

Her religion was an important part of her life.  Delicious meals never commenced without at least saying Grace, and preferably reading a Bible verse and contemplating on its meaning.  I can't say I've never been religious but it has been a long time, in spite of her influence.  Would she be disappointed?  Am I missing out on a lesson she spent her whole life trying to convey?  Am I a bad person if I don't learn it?  For her the questions would go even deeper than that.  For her the question would be - will I go to Hell if I don't  change my ways?

I also think about what she was most proud of me for - my family.  I remember a couple of years ago when my dad and I drove her home from a birthday party.  I had been telling her about how I had taken the family to Disney world.  She told me that she was proud of all the things that we had done as a family and how I had raised a family in so short amount of time (I was only about 29 at the time).  That was what stuck out to her more than anything I had done (or not done) career-wise.  But it's something that I feel like I really haven't been so good at - not as good as I could be. 

So what will my legacy be?  What kind of world will I fight for?  What will be the focus of my efforts?  And will it live up to Granny's legacy?  That is what I have to sort out.  There are no easy answers for me but I think they are vitally important.