Early last week I had a revelation. I realized I had a problem. When I am home alone working around the house I can lose my temper. I get frustrated that my body won't do what I use to be able to do. Working over my head is the most frustrating for me. When I can't do what I want to or do things poorly because of my limitations I occasionally I lose my temper. Then I loudly yell out all kinds of "colorful" language.
The revelation came when I was working alone during the day. I had one of my fits and then quietly sat in my chair in the living room. In comes my oldest (7) beagle, Tucker. He slowly, apprehensively walked over to me with his head down and tail between his legs, my heart sank. Feeling sorry for myself turned to feeling sorry for Tucker. My rage had upset him, I felt terrible. Tucker is a rescue dog, he has put up with enough, too much stupidity in his life. He came to me for one of our daily hugs. It's not good enough to console him, I need to stop upsetting him.
I thought long and hard about this over the next few days. I realized when I am on a baseball field with the little guys In over 20 years I have never lost my temper, I don't even get mad, never, not even once. No matter what happens and believe me when I tell you I have seen some crazy stuff from other coaches, parents and spectators, even umpires. Nothing can upset me because I have to remain calm so that the players feel safe and remain calm.
I came up with an anger management technique. That I put to the test last weekend.
The sun from the large glass windows in my front door was glaring on my TV. I did not want to put a curtain on the door. It's some kind of cut glass and my wife loves it. The light it casts is a very pretty light on the hardwood floor, but not welcome on my TV. I decided to move my entertainment center. I knew it was going to be a big job, for me. It meant taking down much of my drop celling in the utility room in the basement under the living room and rerouting ethernet and coaxial cables. I thought "this will be fun working over my head". Perfect time to put my new plan in action.
When I pulled down the drop celling I saw it was much worse then I thought. To make matters much worse the cable/satellite installers that had been there previously over the years had left a tangled spaghetti mess of wires and cables. When I moved in there where 2 satellite dishes mounted in the backyard in addition to comcast cable wires. so that meant it was at least 3 prior installers.
The guy that installed my cable used some of the existing wire, add some and only made the mess even worse. Even though the old coaxial was sub-par and the one going to my master cable box/DVR and router was frayed! There were also way too many splitters and unions. No wonder I had some problems with the OnDemand service. We were also having problems when we had high demand for bandwidth. My kids/grandsons have nearly every device know to man.
The installer accomplished his goal, get in and out as quick as possible. His job looked great, everything that was visible was new top of the line cable. Below the surface it was atrocious! My blood was beginning to boil. The two things that upset me most; lazy and or stupid, this was both!
I had a roll of ethernet cable and terminal ends, but not enough coaxial cable. Now I had to go to home depot, Once I start a job I don't like having to go get parts. Going out wears my already low energy level down. I returned with the parts disconnected everything and proceeded to pull out nearly a dozen splitters and unions, hundreds of feet of wires and cable. I even pulled out a 36' RCA cable! I'm not exaggerating, I filled a 20 gal trash bag with the mess.
The only way to do this right was to start over. It took me nearly 4 hours to do a job that I estimated would be no more than an hour. The good news is our service works fantastic, our internet is faster than and more stable than ever and best of all, I did not have one of my fits!
I'm getting to the point, thanks for sticking with me. My new anger management technique is this; I imagine myself on a baseball field. When that fails to work instead of using "colorful" language in an angry tone, I sing "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet", It works!
My goal now is to expand the use of my new technique to all things. Not only lazy and stupid cable installers, but politicians and anybody or anything else that upsets me.
After a hard look at myself I realized getting angry, being mean spirited and using colorful language makes me nothing more than a cry baby "female dog". May God, my beagles and anyone else I have upset, please forgive me.