Google Me Furious

Greetings all,

I hope you had a delightful week.  Mine has been more problem centric in a way.  I got to experience the deep fury I usually keep chained up in the basement.  So fun times right?

As a child I had very intense emotions.  I remember being 4 or 5 and being so overcome by my feelings I'd bite my own fist.  I never did (to my recollection) bite other people, much to my parents' relief.  However, I was often alone in my room when these intense feelings would overtake me.  I also had quite a temper, although to this day my mother swears that neither I nor my siblings ever threw tantrums.  I just don't see how that could be possible, personally I think she just chose to forget those experiences.  My point is that I worked hard to cage the rage or emotional turmoil I possessed.  I am like many men afraid of the rage that we carry within us.

Now when I tell people about my rage they generally begin to giggle.  I am considered soft spoken (if you don't count the swear words), gentle, and calm.  Well I work very hard at remaining calm.  I've seen what happens when I lose my temper.  Stuff tends to break without me even touching it.  I react rather than respond when I let the red rage rule me.  In short, I don't make sound decisions from a long term strategy perspective when I operate from anger.  On the other hand, when I neuter my anger people often think they are in a consequence free zone in their interactions with me.

This week, since I had a day that I couldn't work in the studio I decided to tackle a problem I've had with my website.  For at least the past six months, whenever you google my name you'd get an error message on the search where my homepage occurs.  The link worked.  The page was operating, but it was as if it wasn't there on google.  Now Bing had me show up just fine, but nobody uses Bing.  I mean Google is not just a name it is now also a verb.  So I called my web host not once but about ten times in total to see if we could fix this (The first three calls were placed over the summer).  It turned out I knew more than the tech support people.  When I complained I got stonewalled.  They couldn't help me fix it (they blamed google), but they wouldn't refund me any money for my invisible site.  Well I lost it.  I am proud to say I ruined the day for about six people on Wednesday.  That is not quite accurate, they ruined their day by not honoring their contractual obligations to me and my insistence that they should.  I was shaking I was so angry with them.  If I could have force choked them through the phone I would have, while saying, "I find your lack of technical expertise disturbing."

So I used my words.  Now I have somehow repaired the problem on my own.  Unfortunately I had to strip my site down to the most boring minimum.  At least I appear when people search me.  Still I am unsatisfied with those folks who helped feed my rage beast.  I mean he almost broke the chains.  Anger is a sticky emotion.  We can't live without it, but finding a good way to live with it is tricky.  I've had it save my life once or twice.  I've certainly had it change my life on multiple occasions, sometimes for better and other times for worse.  The problem that I had was that there was nowhere for this energy to go.  It wasn't solving my problem it was just pointing out I was dealing with jackasses.  I felt trapped by it, as there were no solutions and I couldn't kill the jackasses.  (Not that I would actually kill them....just hurt them real bad...this is why I keep the rage beast caged).  This is why I don't have rocket launchers on my car, because let's face it I'd use them.  Most of us would.  I mean you've seen how some asshats drive.

Recently someone suggested I look into writing for Elephant Journal.  I was sort of intrigued.  I was skeptical that my more racy or explicit posts (search for the 'Healing Power of Fuck Off' as an example) would be acceptable material.  I like my voice.  I like that I can scream explicit swear words on this blog.  I am trying to remain honest with my writing.  Honesty seems to lull the rage beast into slumber.  Do I want him gone, absolutely not.  He is necessary.  I want him as an option if I or a loved is in danger, so I can scream, "RELEASE THE KRAKEN!"  Anger is a part of the spectrum of emotions if we lose him (or her) all the other emotions just get that much more muted.  Joy would be less intense and who wants to live in a faded world?  Besides that anger is great fuel for getting you out of your funk.  You just have to be very careful that you let it fuel you and not rule you.  Those brain chemicals energize us but they aren't meant for long term usage  I felt pretty bad after being angry all day.  I can only imagine what people who live in that state must feel like.

So why am I telling you this?  Well I was pissed off and wanted to vent a bit for sure, but beyond that this experience really held up a mirror to show just how much further I have to go on the emotional maturity spectrum.  Dealing with emotions particularly the stickier ones like anger or fear really determine how much we can enjoy our lives.  Emotions underpin everything.  They color how we see ourselves.  They define our relationships.  How well we navigate them governs how well we deal with our successes and challenges.  Our education system is very concerned with literacy and mathematical ability,  but we barely scratch the surface of emotional literacy.  So this week I invite you to tune into your emotions, especially those that you keep locked away.  I'm not saying you should let all your emotions out to roam the village freely, but you should at least check in to see if they have all the necessities.  If you don't do that occasionally there will be a larger mess to clean up.  Acknowledge what you feel even if it is just to yourself.  Emotions, even the darker ones give meaning and context to life.  Schopenhauer once said, "Life without pain has no meaning."  Well ladies and gentlemen I have good news, if that is true, your lives will certainly have plenty of meaning.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle