Life in progress

It’s For Your Own Good! A Rant

37 Comments

What are you striving for? Is it within your reach? Yes? Then go for it. You want to lose weight? Stop eating cupcakes. You want to write a novel? Get off Facebook and Twitter and spend more time writing. You want a better job? Make more of an effort to get one than bitching about the one you have.

Is what you want not within your reach? Then stop spending so much energy wanting it. You want to be taller? Too bad. You want to live on a yacht the size of an apartment building but you’re on welfare because you’re too lazy to work? Give it up. You want to be younger? Ain’t gonna happen.

I’m so tired of listening to people complain, who aren’t able to either live up to or define their limitations.

How did we end up being a society of whiners? Is it Facebook and that tempting sweet spot–the box asking us, “What’s on your mind?”–that taunts us to write whatever we’re thinking and share it with the world? Is it the message, “You can be anything you want to be,” that’s expanded people’s heads so that they barely fit on their pillows? “Dream big!” they say.

“Wake up!” I say.

Enjoy the life you are cut out for. Know your limitations! You’ll be much happier.

End rant.

Unknown's avatar

Author: Linda G. Hill

There's a writer in here, clawing her way out.

37 thoughts on “It’s For Your Own Good! A Rant

  1. willowdot21's avatar

    Yes strive for all you need, I love the yellow roses!!

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  2. John W. Howell's avatar

    I never get the point of the “poor me” type blogs. Call me jaded, but life has to be more than trying to suck up sympathy from others.

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    • Linda G. Hill's avatar

      I can understand people looking for support for things that are beyond their control. It’s great to know you’re not alone in the world when you’re hurting. It’s the ones who can but refuse to do something about their woes who grate on my tooth enamel.

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  3. Susan Irene Fox's avatar

    Love, love, love this post. I lived with a whiner for about three years (about 15 years ago) – what an energy suck! Sorry to be so blunt, but it’s true. He had grand ideas but never DID anything about them. As you said, very draining.

    Also agree with Jenni that expectations or negative comments of others can be soul destroying if you listen to them. If you have a dream and you know it’s achievable, go for it. I’ve learned to surround myself with encouragers and those who will tell me the truth in a loving way. I leave those who pull me down by the wayside, keeping my energy and integrity intact.

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  4. navigator1965's avatar

    Total World Domination 2014?

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  5. Linda G. Hill's avatar

    Haha! That’s a perfect example of knowing your limitations and doing something about what you lack 😀

    It’s true, some people aren’t happy unless they’re miserable… and there’s nothing you can do but let them be happy in their own way. Listening to it is sooo draining though.

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  6. joey's avatar

    I have two complainers in my life, and they drive me crazy. It has taken years to figure out they don’t want you to give them easy fixes to the woes, they just want to complain. I’m so over it.
    PS: I will eat the cupcakes, and you won’t hear me complain about my weight. But I will on occasion wish to be taller, not that I’ll whine about it. I just pop out the step stool and grab the ladle! lol 🙂

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  7. mpreeti's avatar

    Great Post Linda. Woohoo, just reminded me of my brother shaking me up by the neck a coupla months back when I was going through a rant 😀

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  8. Jenni's avatar

    yay hoot whistle more hooting… I’ve always said use what you have to get what you want and learn to enjoy the process not peer miserably at what you lack – learn to love what you have.

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  9. Bruce Goodman's avatar

    So, why don’t you stop going on and on about nothing, and write properly about something? All these questions and surveys you’re doing appear to me as an attempt to get “likes”. For God’s sake Linda, please stop the crap and write something.

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    • Jenni's avatar

      what if a person wants this – is one persons contentment with their life wrong – the expectation of others has destroyed more souls and dreams on this earth. The yardstick is not universal and what you deem success is not the benchmark. If someone wants to write a book or be a dancer and yet does not practice in their craft then as far as I am concerned they lose the right to bitch about not succeeding in it. However other peoples wishes for a person based on their views of the talents and capabilities mean jack shit since they aren’t that person.

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    • Linda G. Hill's avatar

      Part of what you say is right – this post was pointed at myself as well as anyone else out there. I’m seriously editing for the first time in my life and I do work at it when you’re not looking.

      What you see here is my attempt to keep writing – something I don’t have the leisure to do at length at the moment, what with all the editing, housework, care of my kids, my mother, and all the running around I do because I’m the only one with a driver’s license. What you see here is my connection to humanity outside of two handicapped kids and an octogenarian who is slowly losing her mind.

      Crap? Perhaps. I do wish I had the time and energy to write 600-800 words a day and put the effort into polishing it until it shines. But my limitations are such that this is the best I can do right now.

      I don’t write here for “likes,” despite appearances. I write here to keep myself actively writing, communicating and sane. And I do my best not to complain about it.

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  10. Brenda Davis Harsham's avatar

    Dang, so no cupcakes, but I can have truffles, right? 🙂

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  11. KG's avatar

    I do ‘wish’ to be a little taller 😉
    I guess only when we start living in the dream we lose (or just like in the movie Inception we enter a state of limbo 😉 ) , we need to use the dream as the seed for our real life and may be we might have some chance of achieving them. But that is for people who dream 🙂

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    • Linda G. Hill's avatar

      Okay… either I’m really tired or that read like it came straight out of “Inception.” haha. Yeah, I’m probably exhausted.

      Thing is, it’s okay to dream… I dream about winning a million bucks occasionally. But I don’t expect it, and I certainly don’t whine about not winning – I don’t buy tickets after all. 😉

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  12. Paul Davis's avatar

    Ah, but Linda, what I desire is in a frozen castle far to the north, surrounded by elk and bear. Alas, to be so scorned. 😉

    It’s because we reward victimization so everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon. Too many kids who go “mom, I hurt.” And then they get a cookie, an XboxOne (I would say a PS4, but I don’t hear enough whiny 10 year olds for that), an iPhone, and then they still complain that the iPhone was white instead of pink. And people get behind their complaint that it wasn’t pink. Do they come in pink? Ahem…end rant. I hope you’re living up to your own expectations 🙂 I definitely need to do better to live up to mine.

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