I’ve always been an impatient person, especially when it comes to trying to learning something new or getting something to work. When I was a child, I regularly burst into tears of frustration or became agitated if I couldn’t solve a math problem (even though my father used to teach college level algebra, the math genes seem to have bypassed me), solve a difficult puzzle, or get a battery operated toy to work.
I still get frustrated with myself in jobs that have a high learning curve, if I don’t pick up things as fast as I think I should. Maybe it’s because I set unrealistic standards of perfection for myself, or maybe my BPD lack of emotional regulation makes it hard for me to cope with very much frustration. Or maybe I’m just dumb with some things.
Many of us who blog know Opinionated Man is busy setting up his new self-hosted website and documenting every frustration, mishap, challenge and success–no matter how small–as he moves along in his new journey. I give the man props for undertaking this risk, because to me, it seems like a huge risk, even though (for him at least) it’s a risk worth all the toil and tears. It’s great to own your own home, but owning your own home means you have to do all the maintenance and repairs yourself (or contract them out), even if you do get to tear down walls, install Roman fountains in the living room, build a sarcophagus in the bathroom, and paint the exterior orange and purple. Personally, I think Opinionated Man has the patience of Job. Every day I read his running commentary on the transition to self hosting and I can do nothing but gawk in amazement as if he’s from another galaxy.
I for one don’t know how he does it. Self-hosting seems incredibly difficult to me, especially after the things he’s been describing! On top of that, I’d be gnawing my cuticles down to bloody stumps of bone and flesh over the anxiety of possibly losing everything I’ve worked so hard on–or completely f’ing it up beyond repair. My low frustration tolerance couldn’t handle that! I’d be going nuts! I think if it were me, they’d be carting me off to the loony bin about now.
So for the foreseeable future, until and if I have no other choice, I’m going to keep “renting” my domain from WordPress and let them take care of all the maintenance, even if it means I can’t tear down walls or change the color of my boring white walls.
Decisions. The average person now makes more decisions in a day than most did in weeks, months, even years. Decisions can engulf us. Haunt us. Overwhelm us. Interrupt us. Even stalk us in our dreams, ummm, a Nightmare on Choice Street? Choices are great, but too many can make it difficult, or almost impossible to make and trust decisions. Then comes the morning after, littered with “Did I make the right choice?”, “What did I do?”, “Can I return this?”, “What was I thinking?”.
Lucky Otters Haven 