It seems maybe there are different kinds of negatives. There are the people who can't say anything nice, who complain or criticize all the time almost out of habit, or because cynicism makes them feel like they come across as being smarter and cooler than everyone else. Those people I just ignore even though they probably need the most love -- it's kind of a reflex that grew out of living with a mother who was very unhappy and very critical. I just preferred not to put myself in her path when I could avoid it. When it's unavoidable, I'm just the same person I am all the time, I don't do anything in particular in response. Sometimes I make jokes.

Then there are people who are labeled as having "negative behaviors". Those are the people I work with a lot of the time. Today I'm going to a planning meeting for a little girl with autism who has outbursts where she hits, kicks and throws things at people, runs around wildly making crazy noises and periodically throws herself down on the floor -- but she doesn't do any of that with me now. When I first met her three years ago she did some of those things once in a while, but now none of that happens when I'm with her. She still does those behaviors with other staff and last year in school.  I've been puzzling over what I do with her that's different from what other people do in order to bring some suggestions to this meeting, and I still don't quite know, and the meeting is this afternoon.
I think one thing is that because she has some verbal issues (she has a great vocabulary but she communicates by echoing a lot), people tend to talk down to her and assume she isn't understanding them. I've always known how smart she is and never did that. The other thing is that I notice I constantly narrate what we're doing, where we're going next, and I give her complicated instructions (hand me the peppers and the bananas, take the basket, put it back where it belongs and then come back over here). It's kind of like curling, I direct her by sweeping a space in front of her which keeps her from going off. A lot of people are afraid of her unpredictability so they hold her hand and only take one step at a time. She likes to see the flow of things, so their carefulness is actually bringing on the thing they're afraid of.
And that fear is the other thing. Last year her teacher told me they were afraid to talk to me about how her day went in front of her because they were afraid of her reaction as she had hit, kicked and thrown things at all of them repeatedly.  I would rather not talk behind her back and I couldn't work with her if I was afraid of her. I think that makes a big difference for her, but I don't think that's something you can write into a plan.

I guess anything I do with her could also apply to those other kinds of negative behaviors with other people, the ones I avoid. It would be completely possible to create a space in front of them where they could shift, to think about who they really are under the behaviors and address that part of them, to not shut down and avoid them out of the fear that they'll contaminate me somehow. I guess I don't have the energy for it. I find chronically angry, whiney, critical behavior exhausting to be around.

Hmmm, I just realized that for some reason I've refused to say "negative people" as it was phrased in the question, only "negative behaviors". Something about labeling a whole person as a negative doesn't sit right for me. Even though I've known some people who seem to be big balls of negativity. I think that's me holding out hope for them a little bit?

When I started here I'd never participated in any kind of social network before and wasn't at all sure I wanted people to know who I was. And I'd never blogged before. I only used an icon that wasn't a pic of me, and didn't post any photos for a long time. I wasn't being sneaky so much as just shy.  I picked the name "rapunzel" not for the fairy tale but for the character in Televisionary Oracle, Rapunzel Blavatsky. I didn't use the name I use everywhere because I didn't want everyone I know to know it was me. Tinkonthebrink is a name my son came up with a long time ago and I love it. So since Jon inspired me to make a change (which never occurred to me until he did it), I'm changing my nick to what I use everywhere else. I did the Google link thing a long time ago and stopped being skittish about writing out loud, but it's been quite a process for me. Anyway, maybe I'll change my name every day now that I know I can do it...

I love 30 day trials - it's a nice chunk of time to decide how I feel about something and I can do anything for 30 days. A while back I decided to answer all the QaR's for 30 days, even the ones that don't inspire me, just as a form of practice. It was interesting that sometimes the ones I initially found uninspiring gave me the best perspectives and new ideas...hmmm, maybe sometime I'll do 30 days of just the ones I don't care for?
Usually I don't read any responses if I'm going to post one myself, but once in a while I accidentally read someone's because it shows up in my notifications. And sometimes someone else's response gets me going and then I have to post something when maybe I wouldn't have otherwise.
The questions are a nice nudge out of my habitual directions and into different territory, kind of like mental orienteering: here you are, now find your way out. Here's a compass, a water bottle and a bucketfull of words. Good luck.
Right now I'm doing the hundred pushups thing that Emma turned me onto, although it'll take longer than 30 days. And I'm just finishing up a 30 day elimination diet and did a challenge midway through which made it very apparent that wheat and I are not best friends. That was really really useful information, you have no idea. I've been playing around with this workout routine which I think fits nicely with the hundred pushups, and I think I might turn it into a 30 day trial with an every day commitment. My plan is to become a superhero. Possibly not in 30 days, but eventually. One thing I love about this book and routine is that it mostly only uses your body, no equipment or props. So you always have everything you need with you.

So most days Krissy and I each draw a card and the high card is assigned to "baby ma'am" for the day and the low card to "baby minion". This does not apply during working hours, but when we're not at work Baby Ma'am can ask for anything at all and Baby Minion fulfills those requests and tries to do extra nice stuff too. We used to do this a couple of years ago, then it kind of faded off, and now we've reinstituted the baby ma'am plan. I highly recommend it, it's quite a lot of fun.

Well, today was day 2 of the hundred pushups - it's 3 days a week and I started on Friday, doing Monday-Wednesday-Friday. So today (how pathetic is this?) I did a total of 17 pushups, traditional style but with my hands up about 10 inches off the floor to make it easier - or more accurately, to make it possible. I only do 60 second rests between reps because other research I've done says that's the optimum for building muscle, not 90secs or longer as the site suggests.

I'm Baby Ma'am today. I wonder if I could get Krissy to do my pushups for me...

This is a nice little overview/analysis of Across the Universe, which is one of my all time favorite movies. There's a lot of cool little tidbits of information that I didn't know, but if you haven't seen the film yet, there are spoilers, so be forewarned. (And see the film right away, because you've missed a great movie.)

Alright, and I've been obsessing over this listing of cognitive biases and thinking that the entire list is a fairly complete description of how humans interact in the world. I love that there's a bias called "the lake wobegone effect".

And I think this is a really great idea, and something I'd never heard of - "slugging".  Of course, I currently live in a city too small for HOV lanes. I mean, we barely have real roads, and they apparently lost interest before they got to useful signage here.  When I lived in socal a cab driver in LA told me that you can't drive in the HOV lane unless you're going at least 100mph (and he was at the time, with me in the cab). Anyway, this seems like a very clever, useful plan.

This is a very convoluted tag. Bridget tagged me in a comment somewhere, but the questions she answered are different from the ones that Tara answered, which are the ones I happened to copy and paste so here they are. Everyone else please go tag yourselves if you're inclined, kind of masturbatory tagging here...


I AM...a very curious person, in both senses of the statement:  I'm always curious about things and I'm very odd.

I THINK...about patterns and how things fit together quite a lot. I think this is why I love puzzle games so much. There's a new Portal game coming sometime soon-ish, and I'm soooo excited!

I KNOW...a weird amount of trivia. Krissy and I love to watch Cash Cab and I know tons of the answers to these really obscure questions, which takes up the brain space that I would otherwise use to remember where I've left my car keys or my phone.

I HAVE...very vivid and memorable dreams at night. I wake up and type out a dream almost every night. Lately I've had a lot of dreams in which I'm asleep and dreaming, which is very confusing.

I WISH...all the time and have these superstitious things associated with wishing - tapping on something, wearing lucky clothing and jewelry, all kinds of craziness. Even I think it's crazy, but I still do it.

I HATE...waste, lack of care, inconsideration. I hate seeing resources or life being squandered, not even for enjoyment but just tossed aside.

I FEAR..humans when they become twisted and angry and destructive. I'm not afraid of other animals, although I'm sensible of their natural aggression and capabilities, but human animals can become mean spirited and frightened and hurtful in epic measure.

I MISS...so many people I've loved and still love who have kind of disappeared off my radar. I moved a lot for a big part of my life and I'm not very good about keeping up with people once I don't see them all the time, but I still love and miss them.

I HEAR..a soundtrack in my head almost all the time. Sometimes I actually play music that seems like the soundtrack for this moment or for what I want this moment to become. I used to go to sleep listening to the soundtrack to the first Harry Potter movie because I thought it would bring more magic into my dreams just by association. I don't know if it worked, my dreams are pretty crazy wild anyway.

I CRAVE...uni. Sea urchin sushi, mmmmm, there's nothing better. I also crave this salty Himalayan goji berry chocolate bar that Farland turned me onto after Dawn turned her onto it. It's amazing stuff.

I SEARCH FOR...everything, constantly. In the physical world, this is partly because I have the world's worst sense of direction. I have an inverted bump of direction and sometimes figure out where to go by thinking about what seems like the right direction to me and then going the opposite way. This usually works.

I WONDER..always and about everything. Curiosity and wonder are probably my signature strengths but also are the qualities that make me more than a little odd.

I REGRET...every time I ever said or did something unkind. I'm good with words and good with thinking on my feet and I can be very cutting and witty and a little evil. I always feel bad later, even if the other person "deserves it", but I'm the person who says the thing that other people later say "I wish I'd thought to say that". (Be careful what you wish for.)

I LOVE...being here in a body, having my wonderful family and friends, hearing music, dancing, playing, singing loud in my car or when I'm at home alone, drumming, painting, photography, yoga, sex, food, funny clothes, shoes that are cute AND comfortable (addicted to earth shoes!), playing games, reading, working with Little Bit...I love information too, I used to joke that I wanted to know everything, weigh nothing and live forever. It was only a sort-of kind of joke.

I BELIEVE IN  ..everything and nothing. If belief is on the table, then everything is equal, faeries, elves, elementals, the easter bunny, god, goddess, lucky underwear...all equally improbable, unprovable, unknowable. I'm much better at observation than belief.

I SING...really loudly in the car by myself. I can sing more or less on pitch but I don't have a great voice, I have the voice of someone who doesn't really sing. I can sing harmonies though.

I LOSE...things all the time. I'm not organized unless it's required for a job. I like a kind of organic mess of things that naturally find their places but I do sometmes get frustrated when I can't find a particular thing I want.

I ALWAYS...have another question. I can't imagine ever running out of them.

I AM SCARED...of other people sometimes, not much of anything else except sensible fears like not leaping off of cliffs unless I know the water's deep, not petting venomous snakes, that kind of thing.

I AM HAPPY...yes. I love love love being here, in this body, in this life, having these experiences, yes. Yes yes yes.

I've never really thought in terms of a career. That sounds very big and important. I think in terms of life and work, jobs, getting paid, doing something I like, doing something that needs to be done. Some work doesn't come with a paycheck, some work doesn't come with enough of a paycheck, some work I can't believe someone pays me for when I would do it for free -- that's the best. When I was in college I was the only art major taking all the premed courses, but I quickly decided with help from friends who were in med school and doing internships and residencies that I would never ever fit into that system. And now so many of the people I know who did that brave, dedicated thing have somehow lost their souls, resigned themselves to convention and insurance companies and being compliant little doctor-drones, because being any other way is an uphill climb all the way. That makes me very sad and I wish our health care system was more inspiring than it is. But I still prolly wouldn't want to play doctor.
I love working with Little Bit (my client with autism who I get paid to work with 5 days a week) but it's made me a little lazy about seeking out other jobs. I used to layer my jobs, a little of this and a little of that, because I was always afraid the bottom might drop out of one of them. Now I just have this one paid thing I do. But it still isn't a "career", it's a job. I learn a lot on jobs. And I learn something every single day with this person, but at the same time, I could push myself harder. I've thought about how much I like to cook and how I could get up early and go work in a diner cooking breakfast on a grill because I love that, love the rhythm and interaction and the need to be fast and organized like playing a game and getting paid for it, but then there's the unpaid part of my work life, the small zoo we have here, the plants that get watered every day in this drought, the tending and minding and caring for, and I just settle into that and do some more pushups because, 100 pushups, that's a job, I swear. Why won't someone pay me to do 100 pushups? It's way more work than spending time with Little Bit...
In my ideal imaginary universe I would get paid to do art projects and to write words into thin air. I hear some people do get paid for that kind of thing. But that might just be an urban legend.

Thomas Moore says in The Reechantment of Everyday LIfe, that maybe when we're depressed, that's a good time to build a shrine, an altar to Saturn, to all things slow and sad and gloomy. I like that idea, and the idea of not running screaming from the low points. I think the desperation to escape from all sadness is an enormous source of deeper sadness, increased frustration, chronic dissatisfaction. Maybe that's an easier point of view for me than most because I do tend to default to happy, or maybe that point of view is part of the reason that I default to happy. Chicken and egg kind of thing, and I can't know the answer, since I've been me for as far back as I can remember, but I'm sure those two things are connected.

I have one other quirk that I think keeps me on a little bit of an even keel, which is this sort of distance that's also just part of me, always a little bit being an observer. There's even a part of me that's sitting back and observing me. That distance becomes bigger and almost meditative under stress, so interesting an experience that for years I sought out the highest stress work I could find. I worked in a cardiac transplant CCU, in ER's, in high risk labor and delivery, in the busiest restaurants, on scenic construction for theatre where we were always understaffed and behind schedule and I had to call on skills I didn't even know I had, almost any job where I walked in and it looked like at least half the people were about to lose it.  A lot of the time I would have several of these kinds of jobs at once.

When I read the four noble truths of Buddhism, I had one of those instant recognition experiences. I never chose to be disciplined enough to follow the fourth one, that is, to follow Buddhist teachings specifically, but those first three - oh, exactly!
Yes, life is suffering, just by nature. Everyone you love will die, you will die, this planet will eventually die too. We're all temps and if we aren't just kidding ourselves then we have to have that profound loss in our consciousness every moment. I've noticed that a lot of people want to misunderstand this one. It doesn't mean that life, this experience, isn't wonderful and precious, but just that that's exactly what makes it so bittersweet.

Which leads to the second one, the "arising of suffering" coming from attachment - to people, pets, things, life, to all the things that will ultimately be lost.  Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search For Meaning, says about the people freed from the concentration camps  "A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely."
- because there is always another level of desire.

And then the third, that there is an ending to suffering through detachment, which if you are a Buddhist comes through meditating and following the teachings. If you're me, I don't know where it comes from, probably some defense mechanism in place from infancy if not before, one of those broken places that healed stronger.

I don't seek out the adrenaline-rush situations anymore, but I'm still liking the idea of Thomas Moore's shrines.

I think all the parts of me are me. I surprise myself pretty often, but it's all me. If it's possible to behave "out of character", then who we think we are is just a construct we've made up. I'll take the messy, surprising bits too.

All at once, everything has slowed down. It's been one of those months, and then last Wednesday Little Bit went back to school and I'm going to part time and now there's more breathing space. Then yesterday, finally, it rained. We've had this drought going on, dry and hot and the things that should be green are brown and sad and then yesterday the rain started, and it kept raining, and it's raining still. In the middle of the night last night I woke up and heard a transformer go out, a big pop and then a bigger boom and then silence, total silence for as far as I could hear. It took five hours for them to fix it and all that time everything was silent except the sound of an occassional middle of the night car on the wet roads. I couldn't sleep, the quiet was too overwhelming, and the rain. Already this morning everything looks greener and saturated with wet color.
The prediction is for even more rain, rain all week, and for space in my life and time and breath and muddy pawprints in my kitchen where the dogs tramp through. And I can feel autumn coming from far away and getting closer by the day, my favorite time of year except for all the others.

Today is Krissy's birthday and we're having a birthday weekend that lasts until Tuesday morning. I am so very glad this person was born! Happy happy joy joy...