There are 212 posts on this blog (and 218 in my other snack reviews blog). I can say with confidence that there are no angry posts on the snack blog since food, unless it is being hucked at my face by an angry mob, doesn't really angry up my blood. On this blog, any time I complain with a bit of fire in the blood, I tag the post as "whining". There are three such posts tagged on this blog and even those three are more like a very low simmer on the blood boiling scale.
The "There's no rule, but..." post garnered a bit of attention, and one of the commenters labeled me as "angry" because of it. The truth is that I'm not an angry person, but I'm also not a robot that drifts through the day providing programmed responses to stimuli without any sort of emotional response. When dumb things happen, or when I've had an especially hard time of it and something unpredictable and frustrating happens, I get mad, and I may drift into hyperbole or fail to express myself in an optimal fashion. This doesn't make me an angry person. This makes me human.
The truth is that I used to be pretty angry because my life has generally been a hard one and I live with pain on a daily basis (which is an emotional burden you can't imagine until you've lived with it day-in and day-out), but I've labored long and hard to control my temper and to mellow with age. And, honestly, I've done very well as my husband can attest to. For me, letting loose and actually having a proper rant is a rare and brief period of letting myself go in the interest of blood pressure control and free expression. The absurdity of someone reading that one post and reaching the conclusion that I'm angry, hate Japan and should leave should be apparent to anyone. They can more reasonably decide if I'm an angry person after they've read all 211 other posts on this blog and the more than 500 posts on my former blog. Even then, the picture of my character wouldn't be a true one, but it'd be a lot closer than judging me on one post.
The truth is that most people don't blog about indifferent experiences unless they are doing a diary-style blog, something which is rarer these days because of other outlets like FaceBook and Twitter which afford people with a chance to note experiences in their daily lives as they occur. Most people blog about something they have some sort of emotional reaction to whether it be happiness, anger, or curiosity. Mostly, I blog about curious experiences because that's what I think about most of the time. I'm actually happier far, far more often than I'm angry (by a country mile), but I'm pretty sure no one wants to hear about how the angels sing, the sun shines beautifully, and life is a wondrous cloud of love every time my husband comes home from work and once again shines the light of his soul directly onto mine (this happens on a daily basis, folks, I'm utterly smitten as my long-suffering sister can attest to). Hey, but if there is a demand, I'll start posting about that.
I also have a lot of gratifying conversations with my Japanese students on an almost daily basis, but I can only share snippets with people on occasion due to time constraints and a concern for protecting the privacy of the students. Also, honestly, how interesting would it be if I posted, "had a nice chat with a lovely student today" five times a week every week. Let me just say it now and then everyone can assume that is the case unless I say otherwise.
So, for the record, angry rants are angry. That's kind of the point of them. They don't define me, but if you choose to believe they do, then perhaps you shouldn't be reading this blog because I'm not going to pull any punches in responding to any commenter who judges me based on such limited contact with me.
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5 comments:
Hey I can attest that Orchid is not angry.
In fact I've read all your posts from 3 blogs and can say that with confidence. :)
Anyways like some super smart person said before, ;) if we can't whinge on our own blog, where can we whinge?
Very silly. I imagine you to be a calm and rational Virgo, but that's beside the point. Anger is a normal human emotion. It's quite natural to get angry and frustrated from time to time, especially when you're in unusual circumstances (which, despite 20 years in Japan, you still are).
Plenty of us suffer from anger and frustration in our own countries, Especially, I fear, myself!
You do not need to justify you feelings to some commenting idiot, I was not angry either..in fact the rants were really directed at one toxic person.. but we don't have to justify this.
The commenter was just taking a "poke" at you and could not dish up anything else but to label you "angry"
Thanks to all for the supportive comments. I appreciate it.
One of the things about blogging is that people often do take potshots at you. Mainly, they do this because they're bored and need to find something to do with their time and willful misunderstanding and intentional myopia serve them well in finding something to wad up their boxer shorts over.
I've had so many experiences with people who put up straw men, reach extreme conclusions, and twist my words, that it's nearly put me off of blogging on more than one occasion. However, I can say after starting this blog, that I wasn't even phased by the latest handful of losers. I must be growing a thicker skin, or at least not caring so much.
Hi Orchid. This is Emsk btw - I seem to have logged in to my gmail and for sake of ease I won't log out and in again.
You may have heard the story about the American family who turned up on an advertising billboard for an Italian food importer/store in the Czech Republic:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8094420.stm
The mother in question seems to have taken it all in her stride, remarking on her blog that it was sheer coincidence that an old school friend who was living in Prague and just happened to have driven past the store itself recognised her and emailed a photo of the billboard to her. Meanwhile the store owner had no idea that this was a photo lifted from a blog!
In a way it's very funny and she wrote about it on her blog. What wasn't so funny were the number of numpties who, hiding behind anonymity, took pot-shots about the family's looks. Mean and uncalled for - and cowardly.
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