Just some random thoughts. It was a while since I did a post on anything other than books.
I have been part of many Facebook or WhatsApp groups and I have noticed a common trend these days. People are rude. They comment very rudely if they do not agree with you. Are people more rude on the Internet, than they would be in real life? Just because you are not talking to a person face to face, people take the liberty of talking rudely as if they are slapping the other person. I am not sure if these people have the courage to answer rudely in real life if this discussion was happening offline. Bullying in comments sections in Facebook groups or in WhatsApp groups or on twitter just because you can is so wrong. Why not treat a discussion the same way you would if you were talking offline? This is one of the reasons why I have decided to not participate in any discussions online. I do not want to disagree with anyone or post my opinions on any controversial subject online. Thankfully, blogs have not been affected and I do not see rude people commenting on my posts disagreeing with me. So until that happens, I will put my thoughts on my blog and not elsewhere on the Internet.
I feel there is no right or wrong way of parenting. What works for a sensitive child may not work for a stubborn child. What works for my kid is talking to him softly, requesting him to do something and making him understand why I want him to do something. Ordering or threatening him will make him even more stubborn. Recently, I enrolled my son to a new daycare and the lady there started threatening him to make him stop crying. As you can guess, it got worse to the point that he started crying as soon as he woke up refusing to go to the daycare. I finally had to remove him and put him in a new daycare. This new daycare owner is very soft spoken and nice because of which my son loves her. He likes going to this new place. Some people think that being hard on kids is great and that disciplining kids is more important than showing love. I completely disagree. I do not agree with giving timeouts or yelling at children or even beating them, no matter how impatient you are or how bad your day has been. Even if the kid is being stubborn, you should still control yourself. You should understand that it is okay to lose an argument or fight with the kid. I prefer talking to them in a calm manner or better give timeouts for yourselves if you are out of patience. They are after all humans and have feelings.
Women managers act like they are school headmistress or teacher trying to discipline kids for some reason. This is one of the reasons for not liking any woman who is in a powerful role. I think they just cannot handle it (that’s my observation. And yes, I am a feminist and I am all for equal rights before you kick me). Since there are hardly any women who make it to higher roles in an organization, they probably think they are great or something. Women managers don’t help women employees. In fact, they make sure they screw the women who report to them. I have had great male managers but never had a good woman manager so far. Let me know if your experience has been different from mine.
This generation is seeing a lot of divorces. I know 6 couples (my friends) who got divorced recently (in last few years). News about one of these couples shocked me as they looked really happy together. We never saw them fight in public and I couldn’t believe that they had issues with one another to the point of getting a divorce.
I want to change my career drastically as I am not enjoying what I am doing. My interests in life are completely misaligned with my career. I want to switch domain badly. Have you done anything of this sort? I am not sure how easy it is to change your career after working in a domain for a long time. Is getting back to college the best way to do that? I am not sure. I am not sure what I want to do in life. I think I now know what crisis in life looks like.
I have decided that I am not going to force my son to study or to get good marks as I feel there is no relation between doing well in school and in your career. I see people who hardly worked hard in school doing much better career wise, compared to those who slogged in school. Also the career path that he chooses is again left to him. I think I will let him choose something that he has an interest in, rather than pushing him into a career just because everyone else is.
Life has been too stressful from last few months. I am planning to relax this month and take it easy. Will be back soon with another post.
Bookish Muggle 
Love this post, cause it’s so honest. Yes, I agree with you that people often, well, suck online. Possibly because they are passive-aggressive and would never be able to say it face to face. Possibly because their faces are not showing and they feel like nobody knows who they really are, so they can throw out all their shit out there. Facebook spats especially suck, and that’s why I pretty much only use my Facebook login for Messenger, as a way of talking to my friends when I need it. I barely even follow my newsfeed. It’s just not worth it.
As for your kid, I absolutely agree. I’m also one of those sensitive people, even after I’ve grown up. It’s why I gave up working in an office – it was destroying my sanity. I’m freelance now, working from home, and it’s such a change, it’s so much better. Half my illnesses either disappeared or got much better. All because of the environment.
Which brings me to the other point. Yes, go for it! Go for your career change! I’ve done it twice (well, not quite twice, I’ll explain), and both times it put me in a better place, and I’m happy it did. I was lucky, I will admit, but if change is ripe, you must follow. No sense in being unhappy. The first time I changed, I had graduated electronics engineering and worked in it for three years, realized it’s absolutely not for me. I didn’t go back to school though – I just randomly asked people where I could go, maybe they have work for me. And they did. And I transfered to a low-paid advertising agency job (that started out as a free internship, really), which was my ticket to a new career. Worked two years in that agency, learned a lot… Realized I don’t want to work in an office. Went freelance – best decision ever. Both in terms of pay and environment. So yes, go for it! Please go for it! You will cry buckets of tears first, probably, you pay will be shit, probably – but if you find the right stuff (like I accidentally did), in a few years you’ll find yourself in a better place, you’ll feel like you’re doing something so much more interesting, and you will probably be paid so much more. It’s definitely worth the risk of change! My best wishes to you as well, good luck and be brave 🙂 don’t give up.
I’m sharing your post tomorrow! On my Sunday post 🙂 I hope you don’t mind.
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Agree with you. Just because of the anonymity, people think they can get away by saying anything to anybody online I guess. I once commented on something that my cousin posted and his friends (who are strangers to me) started arguing with me in the comments. I finally had to delete my comment completely to stop random strangers from attacking me. I now stopped commenting even on posts in my newsfeed. I use it to simply browse for news.
I am a very sensitive person too and having a hard time coping up with the office politics. I am seriously considering quitting my job and changing my domain. It is really difficult to deal with jerks on a daily basis. Thank you so much for telling me about your career change experience. It gives me lot of hope. I think I will just take a plunge and switch my domain. I am not really enjoying what I am doing and I cannot imagine continuing in this type of job for 30+ more years.
Sure, you can share my post. Thank you for considering my post worthy of sharing. 🙂
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I’m glad I could give you hope! Go for it, it’s better to do it now than later. I hope you figure out a clearer direction so you can choose your path 🙂
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Thank you Evelina. 🙂
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I know something about changing careers. It’s difficult. But it’s a lot of fun 🙂 Just relax a bit when you feel stressed, you’ll feel better after some time 🙂
Destination Infinity
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I think I will just blindly go ahead and change my career. Thinking a lot about it isn’t going to help I guess 🙂 Thanks DI.
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I think people find it easier to be rude online because there is a barrier between them and the other person. I don’t agree with it and I think people need to relate to others online as they would in real life.
In terms of management, I actually think it’s more the personality of the person. I have mostly always had crappy managers because I think the position attracts a certain personality. My last team leader though was awesome and she was a woman; however, she was ejected out of the position by those above her and I do think it’s the personalities that think they are entitled.
Regarding parenting, given what I see at work, I think there is a place for time out and consequences. Not physical punishments or yelling but rather consequences that provide children with boundaries. The fact is, kids grow up to be adults in a world that is not necessarily going to always accommodate for them and therefore need to learn to adapt and become resilient.
Change in career sounds exciting and scary! I had a bit of a crisis the last two years. However, I think mine was more job related. Lots of people these days change careers and while it will be hard, it will be worth it if you are not happy.
I’ve lost faith in relationships and marriage; honestly I’m beginning to think it’s all a sham. People put up appearances for the heck of it and thanks to social media, we think everyone is hunky dory!
Nice to see a random post from you with so many thoughts 🙂
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Agree with you Sanch. One needs to understand that by commenting rudely, they might be hurting a person since we are not all bots as soon as we login. We still have feeling and emotions and can get hurt.
Yeah I guess it is the position and the privileges that they get in that position which makes a person lack empathy. Probably depends on the person and not really on the gender of the person.
I think once the kids are old enough to understand right and wrong, time outs will probably work. Learning to adapt and becoming resilient makes sense. Not everyone is going to be okay with their tantrums as they grow up.
I am just not happy – not sure if it is because of the job or career. I will try to see if I can change either of them,
I agree with you about social media and the way people present a perfect life picture to everyone. One of these couples would post so many pictures on Facebook and I really thought their life was perfect (even better than mine) and that they were very happy together. It was all a sham I guess.
Thanks Sanch for dropping by.
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I’ve noticed the same thing, and I think it has a great deal to do with anonymity and agency. On Facebook and Twitter, you can have an anonymous presence (or think you do), and there’s little agency whereas with a blog, while you might be anonymous, commenting rudely opens people up to do the same in your space. You mostly only see it from the trolls who only come on to be rude, but since having a blog means others could do the same to you, bloggers tend to be much more civil. I think there’s also a correlation between people who’d blog and those who wouldn’t be rude, though this is obviously just a hypothesis.
Good for you! While I think timeouts could be beneficial for children to help them calm down, I have no patience for people who mock and bully little ones especially adults. Was just talking about this with my friend who has an 8 year old. I read an article about the exact same thing this morning. Children do not have the emotional experience to regulate their feelings so things that would seem trivial to us are huge to them, and belittling them for feeling something shows you have no empathy and don’t understand child psychology. I was and am still hypersensitive and I was bullied unmercifully and told to “grow a thicker skin.” 🙄 Now that I’m an adult I know that’s bullshit. You don’t blame the victim for their abuse. It’s the abuser who needs to change. You did the right thing for your son and he’ll know that he can rely on you to care about his feelings.
As for women managers I’ve had good and bad ones. At my current job they’ve all been women and they’ve been wonderful. I do think many women feel jaded due to systematic misogyny/sexism, and try to make up for it by being harsh and aggressive as they think men would be so they’re not seen as too soft, but this is erroneous. Men can bee asses and mimicking their stereotypical behavior for the sake of mimicking it is a terrible management strategy.
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What you said makes sense. If one comments rudely on a blog, people will most likely stop following them. That maybe the reason for the existence of politeness on blogging platforms. Also, like you said less anonymity as compared to twitter or facebook where you can have multiple accounts and one account can be just for trolling. Bloggers are in general nicer I guess.
Oh yeah even trivial things like not able to find a toy is a major contributor for stress for my son. He gets so upset just because he misplaced a car. I can imagine how he must be feeling when his mother drops him off at a stranger’s place. Must have been so stressful for the poor soul. Even I am hypersensitive and I get bullied a lot because of that. People always blame me for being sensitive in a world where there is no place for folks like us.
That’s nice to hear that your experience with women managers has been different. Gives me some hope as my manager kinda tortured me, even though she is a woman. Yes, mimicking men and not helping fellow women employees is a horrible strategy.
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I’m hypersensitive, too. Didn’t even know that was a legitimate term until very recently. I was always called “too sensitive,” as if it were something I could control. I hate the gaslighting that ong with that label, and everyone I’e spoken to who fits that mold has a very similar story. It sucks that they prevailing notion is that *you* should change when its quite impossible to not be super sensitive. You can possibly learn not to show it or to avoid situations that trigger you, and I’m sure there may be people who can “grow a thicker skin” ugh, HATE that phrase, but for the most part, if you’re hurt by something, you’re hurt by something. If someone cuts you they can’t blame you for bleeding.
Unfortunately, internalized misogyny is a thing and some female bosses will be harder on female employees. It’s pretty awful. My first boss wasn’t mean to me, but she constantly expressed that she “didn’t like other women,” which is a very loaded phrase. I hope you can figure out what to do about your manager. Can you go to HR or something like that? I’ve had to do that twice…both times for women bosses.
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Agree with you on the parenting thing. Yes people are more rude on the internet. 😃 You are doing right by staying away.
I am in the same boat as you to change my work. Just want to find something more meaningful. Writing code is great but not doing it anymore for me. Keep me posted on what you do here. Maybe I can change too.
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And hope you have better days ahead.
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Thanks Dil. For now, I went with a team change. Hopefully things will improve.
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I seriously feel this office politics is not for me. I want to work in a non-competitive environment and do something more interesting, compared to the routine work like a robot. I am still trying to figure out what I want to do. Will update you as soon as I make some decision.
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I completely agree. Cyber bullying is a real, and ever-present thing on social media. Thankfully our blogs haven’t been subject to the hatred and the venom so far.
As far as parenting styles go, I feel there is no right or wrong method. Though physical and verbal abuse of the child are a strict no-no for me. Outside of that, every child responds to different things, so sometimes I don’t understand why people get all worked up over what others are doing with their kids.
Oh and about your question regarding career change, I guess it depends on how drastic of a change you are looking at? I switched from Finance to Marketing (pretty drastic), because I had chosen Finance for all the wrong reasons, and I did not want to spend the rest of my life living a mistake.
Going back to school has been on my mind, but before I did that, I applied to several places, to see if I could garner some experience – just to know if I really did enjoy the field (which I do). Oh and I was also willing to start from (relative) scratch, and take a pay cut. School is still not ruled out. I just have to see how it fits in with my other priorities.
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True, I am happy at least blogs have not been facing bullies as of now. Hope it stays that way.
That is true, every kid is different and comparing kids is a bad idea.
Makes sense actually. I do not want to waste the next 30+ years of my life working in this exact same field actually. I think I will take the plunge and switch my career. Thanks for telling me about your experience. That’s a good idea actually – instead of going back to school, getting experience in that area makes sense. I will give that a try.
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