Cracking Into Passive-Aggressiveness

One commonality that comes to mind when I think of the difficult people issues I've had in my life is coping with passive-aggressive behavior. I won't go into my specifics but everyone has friends, family, coworkers, and other people in their life that exhibit consistent passive-aggressive tendencies. There they always seem to be, balancing out our varied social ecosystem. If one person "cures" their own passive anger, does another pop up to take their place? It sometimes seems so. Don't you much prefer dealing with those people, love them or hate them, who just explode in your face, tell you how it is, and then move on. No? Am I painting an overly simplistic and one-sided picture? Do you want to avoid discussing this?

So what to do? First and foremost is to learn to recognize the behavior. One should be mindful not to engage in this sort of behavior yourself (we all have our moments), always treat people with respect, and realize that there are often situations where people feel they cannot be open about their opinions, maybe at work for example. What you can do in that case is vow not to contribute to situations where people feel they cannot be open.

How to Identify Passive Aggressive Behavior

What is a passive-aggressive friendship and how to deal with it?

Eliminating Passive Aggressiveness

Defusing the Passive-Aggressive

After years of troubles I can now smell passive-agressiveness from a mile away, and it's sometimes hard to resist having sport with such folks. Sometimes you can have a little fun with it, but remember the rule about treating people with respect. Be generous in giving people slack when it doesn't cost you anything to do so (and sometimes even if it does). Realize that for most people their reactions are unconscious and many people, present company included, simply have trouble sorting through and communicating their feelings much of the time.

I ran into a hilarious book of notes from angry people (click right). Where I work I've seen angry notes about "smelly ethnic food" and "dirty vegetables in the refrigerator!" from passive-aggressive people that were hilarious. I didn't think to take pictures of them, but will start doing so in the future. The following article is also a fun read:

Guide to Passive-Aggressive Note Writing

Happy coping!

Skydiving Squirrels

I practically rolled in the floor laughing in the theater when I first saw this trailer for Ice Age 3.

From Contracts to Clouds

I managed to close out April this year without too much mishap: fingers, toes, sanity, and soul intact. My firstborn survived her last prom and is on track to graduate highschool, nextborn learning to drive safely in blessed defiance of his ADHD. Me: founded a corporation, steadily making new connections, friends, laying down new dreamlines for this year and beyond.

Mobile phone contracts: I dropped my previous carrier completely at the end of the month. Agreeing to a new contract somehow always feels like making a pact with the devil (in my case a very customer-oriented representative named Karen from Verizon). Appropriately the transaction even happened to coincide with Walpurgisnacht. Luckily my family comes from very hearty stock: our souls eventually regenerate just like our livers. Thank God for that.

Do you believe that there's always something interesting and positive to learn from every interaction? Fifteen minutes of surfing and reading, mind skipping like a stone across the surface of the Web, and I managed to learn something and have material for a short article.

   Contracts → Walpurgisnacht → Goethe's Faust → The Brocken → ...


Brocken Spectres/Bows and Glories are a mysterious and colorful type of outdoor optical illusion that few people have witnessed. These spectacular oddities appear when location, light, luck, atmospheric conditions, angles, and the observer collide in proper proportion. Where? They appear on mountainsides, from airplanes, ships, in fogs, mists, even in the spray of waterfalls. Records exist in mythology, literature, and modern photography. The first account of the Spectre proports a startled climber falling from the Brocken to his death--but don't let that influence you to stay at home. You'll be luckier. I promise.

As someone who has been hiking mountains lately, often in a mixture of weather conditions, I'm hopeful of eventually encountering more of Nature's unique special effects--maybe even snapping a few good pictures. If you've ever wanted to be larger than life (spectre), bath in a sphere of colorful light (bow), or witness a real halo (glory), get out there and head to higher ground.

Don't want to go to the trouble of venturing to places where you can observe such curious and elusive atmospheric effects as Brocken Bows/Spectres and Glories? You could simply appreciate clouds. The important thing is to get outdoors, open your eyes, explore, and enjoy.

Clarifying Values

It's self-help time. Oh yes! What are your values? Ever listed them? Haven't in a long time? It's time!

Your values: getting to the center of what drives you, makes you tick. Big picture stuff. Values are literally those things you most value. The quick instructions on how to do this are to just sit down and determine those few things (usually ten or less)--Courage, Love, God, Health, whatever--that are most important to you. If you spend adequate time thinking about it and being honest with yourself, you should gain more insight about your purpose and how your priorities and goals should all line up.

I sat down and worked through my values again recently the hard way: pencil, paper, and several days of note scribbling. I also went back and reviewed the values I had listed a few years ago and was happy to see that I had grown a bit since then. That's another great thing about reassessing yourself every few years: I realized my growth had been predominantly in thinking more positively and in bigger picture terms, not taking things too seriously, and learning to enjoy life more.

I've nine values which may be too many (who's to say?), so next year or whenever I sit down to do this again, I may distill them down a bit further. The list definitely doesn't have to be perfect. The point is to just do the exercise, think about it, and apply any insights you have to your life.

A quicker way to determine your values is to try the Values Game. It's online and only takes a couple of minutes. It's also good for getting an idea of values you may not have considered (there's a list of over 30 there). If someone has a better link than this one, please send it to me.

Another helpful resource is a blog called Zen Habits. It contains all sorts of information on how to make life improvements in very practical and down-to-earth ways.

Solo Hike to Frozen Head

Dramatic Pause

So, what's going on with me lately? Life. Nonlinearities. Beginnings. Good things. Semi-regular updates to this blog will resume soon.

A Good Year

This year has brought great things for me: positive changes, some new friends (love my old friends!--you know who you are), opportunities, better health, momentum on some business ideas I've been cultivating, a slow reawakening of spirit, a fresh outlook on life in general. All the while I'm getting to know my children better, and have met a new person who is special to me. I'm still seeking a new balance point, but that just seems like a natural process to me now. Life is good.

Let's see: I stopped watching television (gained back quite a bit of time and active thought), successfully pursued being healthier, increased my "outdoor" activities (includes caving), let go of many of things, started focusing more on what matters. For physical fitness the P90X program worked wonderfully for me, and although I'm only newly acquainted with yoga, I feel confident in recommending it to everyone for general health.

I've also been working at simplifying my life. I realized that what I'll care about most later in life are the things I did, the moments I experienced, and the people I shared my time with. Material things we possess are stage props for the most part, necessities, securities and assets at best. Most all material things fade in the background in terms of priorities in life. Less is more. Time is precious. Quality can be obtained from simple things. Simple can be extraordinary.

Thin Glass

A new friend inspired me to write a short poem or two lately (thank you!). I jotted down Thin Glass quickly after listening to my son's description of a new video game that sold over $500 million in the week it was released, topping pretty much anything ever in terms of sales and demand.

Tipping Point

Balance, tipping, change, struggle, rebalance: through this we are all confronted with opportunities to grow and learn. Relationships grow too, or necessarily end. It's rarely an easy equation to be drawn through, but we are inevitably left with an increased balance of possibilities. To the optimist this is a blessing, and a wide open field for better things.