On Complaining
I hate when I fall prey to my own pet peeves: complaining and saying something sucks. There are certain things I feel are safe to say “sucks.” Global Warming sucks. The US occupation of Iraq sucks. President Bush most definitely sucks. These are things that are either universally known to suck, or are too far removed from me to worry about actually hurting someone’s feelings.
On the other hand, I am currently in a line of work that has me solving problems constantly and learning new things frequently. Learning something new, figuring out something complex is often difficult. Moving from ignorance to awareness is not easy on the brain. And therefore it is frequently frustrating. Especially right before I figure it out. Sometimes I deal with this by complaining, though I try not to do so out loud (much).
I’ve seen Stephanie witness this in me time and time again. When she sees me frustrated with a problem, she’ll say “I give you 10 minutes.” That’s her way of saying, “you’re frustrated now, but in 10 minutes or less you’re going to have a big smile on your face.”
This is my way of saying that Dates and Java don’t suck. What sucks is me not yet/quite understanding Dates and Java—but more specifically, how a particular API I’m sending a Date object to treats that date. And at the end of the day, when I still haven’t figured it out, sometimes my frustration gets the better of me.
