Not My Problems

It’s easy for me to get caught up in the outrage. There’s so much to go around. Twitter is evil. Maps are bad. AT&T is evil. Windows 8 is a disaster. Apple is evil.

It’s time for a deep breath. In reality, none of these things are my problems. They have not impacted me directly one bit. I haven’t seen a Twitter ad or promoted tweet. My Twitter apps still work exactly the same. I still use Navigon for navigation. AT&T charges too much so I switched carriers. If I have to, I’m sure I will be able to use Windows 8. I like my Apple hardware. It’s very easy to get pulled down into the writhing and flailing fervor behind every perceived problem. Some things are actually bad but finding real people that have experienced them can be difficult.1

Listen, nothing is perfect and everything is broken. But we live in a fascinating time just like our grandparents did and our grandchildren will. I’m trying hard to appreciate that reality. It’s easy to find flaws and it’s lazy to focus exclusively on them.2 There’s always going to be something great around the corner and it will probably be flawed. It will probably disappoint someone. The sky is never going to fall.

I’m a cynic but I try to be positive.3 There’s a difference between being a cynic and being a dick. One is happily surprised at a positive outcome and one is grudgingly disappointed.

Anyway, I’m deleting more feeds from my feed reader today to focus more on the sites I really like.

You probably shouldn’t care what I think.

  1. Please hold on to your notifications. If these things directly impact you, then enjoy your indignation you are entitled to it. You are still a minority in the world. ↩︎

  2. It can be valuable to report about problems. I want to know if something is flawed, but it’s lazy to focus on the flaws in absence of the benefits. ↩︎

  3. I actually self-identify as a “realist” but that’s probably untrue. Maybe Anarchist? Is Entropist a thing? That sounds good. I’m an Entropist. ↩︎