a little asshole math
Or
shake the people sieve
This time of year can be extra stressful and depressing, so usually I try to put out more work to keep you all (and myself) distracted from the holiday season, but my heart’s just not in it this year…My personal life is giving me hell. That happens a lot this time of year don’t it? And it usually blindsides you, am I right? Wrong. It usually doesn’t…you can usually see personal problems coming a mile away, you just ignore the obvious. I’m not usually guilty of that, but I am human so…
This brings me to some advice I got once. It was from an old man who owned a truck stop type diner I was a fry cook at, who once upon a time was one of the pioneers of Fast Food Franchising. He in fact was a road buddy of the actual Colonel Sanders…each of them at the time making the national rounds building up their respective brands. True story. I’ve lived a strange life. If someone wanted to write my biography it would be like trying to make a 1000 piece jigssaw puzzle with 50 peices of 200 different jigsaw puzzles…what…is the math right on that?
“what they hell are you talking about? what does this have to do with the title of this blog?! are you drunk?!”
…my level of inebriation is not the issue here! I already mentioned I have been having a rough time…I’m entitled to a drink! and no, I’m not drunk, I’m just having trouble focusing.
ANYWAYS, I’m one of those guys who, while really really intelligent , sometime can’t see things that are right in front of his face. I spend about twenty minutes a day looking for my car keys. One day, as a short order cook at this fellows restaurant, it was my contention that we were out of American cheese. The head cook’s contention was that the cheese was in the f’n refriderator where he put it that very morning. he was too busy to deal with me and told the owner (his dad) to show me where the cheese was. The owner took me to there refrigerator, opened the door…paused…and then got a thoughtful look on his face and said “Douglas…remember this…not everyone who claims to be your friend, is actually your friend, even if they think they are.” I found this interesting advice but odd timing. I soon learned that he told me this because, he also did not see any cheese and was stalling. Eventually the head cook came back and grabbed the cheese, that was right in front of our faces, and made a snide remark in a sing songy fashion to the tune “as time goes by”.
despite the advice being a stall tactic…it was sound advice. Allow me to explain.
In the end being happy is pretty simple …I know how that sounds coming from me, what I mean to say is that it’s not complicated. The most important thing in your life is the people you surround yourself with. That’s all that really matters, that you surround yourself with quality people and cast off the assholes.
Once you determine someone is no good you need to send them packing. it is not your job to fix people, or be mother Teresa and take their abuse in hopes that they change on their own. now …there are certain cases where someone has earned the right to a couple of bad days, or is going through a rough patch or you know in the end they are decent and so you cut them some slack …while telling them to stop being an asshole or they can go be fucked. I’m not saying to turn your back on someone who has earned your friendship. I’m talking about right from jumpstreet, is this person quality or not.
90% of the bullshit problems in life can all be avoided by spending as little time with assholes as possible. Now there is the percentage of assholes that you can’t do much to avoid because you work with them, BUT all the rest you can just walk away from. This includes family. Being blood does not mean your life has to be filled with someone else’s drama/problems that they richly deserve and often seek out. That’s what assholes do they create their own problems, the let small problems become big problems with laziness, and magically their problems end up being your problems.
If you stay away from assholes you not only avoid all the problems that stem from their assholeness BUT that also means you, by simple process of elimination are surrounded by decent people who will help you with the remaining 10% of life’s bullshit problems. And I don’t just mean that for each asshole you eliminate there is an open spot for a decent person- the thing to remember is decent people avoid assholes…SO if you have assholes in your life, even if you are NOT an asshole, you will likely be avoided by many decent people because of the assholes you are constantly around.
You want decent people around you.
This applies to friends family AND dating. This is a segment of life were you are doomed to failure if you have assholes around. Maybe you have a jealous loser friend or some a-hole bitchy ex…having those people hanging around almost ensures whatever relationship you start will get fucked up and drown in drama. Not everything happens on purpose…ass holes in your life will get wind of small meaningless arguments and help blow them out of proportion, plant a little seed in the back of your brain that they know will grow into a suffocation tree of “why did I ruin all that over some stupid little thing?”. Why do they do this? Because they are jealous, because they like drama…the same reasons assholes do everything they do…which is why if you simply avoid them life is much better.
Also here, you really have to judge people by their character. You really need to ignore all the nervousness and not being cool or confident the first couple of times you go out with someone. Really, you are doing yourself an injustice by not giving the person a little time to get comfortable and stop being nervous and get a little balance so that his or her actual personality can come out. Everybody gets nervous and nobody (for the most part) is really acting like themselves the first couple of interactions…hey even I get insecure once in a while, it just never shows much because I’m really comfortable in my own skin and so i don’t care if look like I’m nervous…so then I don’t look nervous even though I’m nervous because I don’t care that I’m nervous. It’s a rare ability to feed off of insane circular logic that I have. What you just need to focus on what is important-is he/she a good person, is he/she kind, is he/she treating me nicely. Seriously …start with that. The world is littered with good decent lonely people, and also ironically, littered with people who are dating or married and getting treated like shit. There is no need for you to be either one of those.
Cool or not cool, nervous or not nervous, good looking or not, these are secondary elements. These are like a fancy paint job…sure it’s up there in what you want in a car but FIRST you want to know the car will run right?
It sounds like I’m talking apple pie in the sky here but it’s true. Really, just focus on being a good person and surrounding yourself with good people. Just think about allllll the dumbass drama that has occurred in your life, I’ll bet only 1% of it involved you and one other person and 99% of it involved you and one or several assholes that really didn’t need to be involved.
Look around at your life and if there is an asshole there…get rid of him/her. You don’t need to give a reason. Just cut him/her off. The end. Stop responding to phone calls, texts, e-mails…If you end up in the same place..don’t strike up a conversation, and just politely wander off. If pressed for an answer as to why they seem to have been cut off from your life…just say what I say “well….you’re an asshole”. I realize I am more comfortable with confrontation than most people so you could say something like ” I’m kinda into different things now” or “yeah I’m pretty busy”..or whatever. It doesn’t really matter because the asshole will find someone’s life to fuck up after growing impatient with the lack of options being presented for fucking up yours.
bottom line to life is this 1-don’t be an asshole 2-don’t be around assholes. simple yes?