Good for Them. That's Not for Me: Dealing with Other People's Success

Because I am not a monster, whenever I see someone announce a recent success, I think ‘well done’. My second instinctual response is far less wholesome. It is ‘now why didn’t I get that?’. Even if I had access to similar opportunities, I feel resentful that I missed out. Your win is somehow my loss. 

It is an ugly attitude of “they’ve got nice things. Why don’t I have nice things?”. Like a child put out that they do not get a present when it’s someone else’s birthday. 

What I rarely consider in that moment is whether I even want to be doing what they are doing. I also forget that I have my own nice things.

We should remember that often we do not know what people have given up in order to get their little victory. Marathon runners have limited diets and strict bedtimes. Any touring act misses a lot of weddings. 

Nor do we consider that the achievement is a fleeting thing instead of a perpetual plus. Anyone who wins an Academy Award has spent years being rejected, ripped off, and objectified. It must feel incredible in the moment. All your hard work paid off! You are guaranteed to make international headlines the next day. 

Within a year, your name will be just an answer in a pub quiz. 

It is important to remember that Facebook and Instagram are essentially people's highlight reels (Twitter, however, is a million anxious voices chronicling their stress in real time). It is a version of someone’s life that they have consciously curated, edited, and presented. You are not getting the full picture. Married couples still have fights. You do not want to know how many takes was needed to get that lovely family photo with the kids. 

I keep all this in mind whenever I see someone else celebrating. I try to face it with an attitude best encapsulated in a simple motto. 

Good for them. That’s not for me. 

In other words, I delight in my friends and colleagues reaching a goal. I have used the Love reaction on so many statuses that I potentially rendered the word meaningless and now need a completely different one. Or I have limitless capacity for love. Either/or. 

However, I not only recognise their significant achievement, but I also accept that I may not want it for myself. YOU go climb Everest/run a marathon/join that opera company. That's not one of my #lifegoals. While you chase your dream, I will be at home, content with my lot. You go after the Oscar. I’ll do the pub quiz.

Sorry for the Quality of this Apology

THINGS WORTH APOLOGISING FOR:

*Hitting someone

*Hitting someone with a car

*Hitting someone's car

*Hitting on someone's car

*Sleeping with someone else's car even though they're in a long-term relationship with it

*Unwittingly turning what should be a list of silly things into one involving intercourse with automobiles

*Unwittingly turning into a poodle

*Unwittingly turning a poodle into a cat

*Wittingly turning a poodle into a cat

*Wittily turning a poodle into a cat

*Wittily insulting someone and not meaning it

*Wittily insulting someone's loved one and not meaning it

*Not-so-wittily insulting someone or their loved one and not meaning it


THINGS NOT WORTH APOLOGISING FOR:

Updating a blog on a regular basis as it is a hobby and not something you've been paid to do or something you've been asked to do. You do not owe anybody anything. Stop saying 'sorry' - it's not as if you called someone's a nan a nincompoop. Thank you!

Coming soon to an Internet near you: eBaby.

So apparently Amazon sell babies now.

Before you stop reading on the grounds that you think I'm keen to get a conspiracy theory going, let me reassure you that I only tried to do that once, but the whole "bananas don't exist" idea turned out to be a dead end.

Anyway, I have proof of this Amazon thing. In fact, they're pretty blatant about it. They've even started emailing people about this new venture. How do I know? Well, what follows is a genuine picture I saw whilst skimming through my inbox. The only explanation for it I can think of is that Amazon are branching out into discount kids.



Is it Buy One, Get One Free?

On second thoughts, maybe they were attempting a poor pun on the word 'delivery'. Ah. Perhaps I shouldn't have sent them that scathing letter. Oh well, you live and you learn...

I'm pretty sure it wasn't this easy for Queen Victoria.

Turns out I'm now in charge of several small islands.

All I know for sure is scientists have way too much time on their hands.

In theory, brevity is supposedly the soul of wit, but, in the case of Twitter, it sure can get mighty frustrating, especially when it means a quick bit of trivia goes by without an explanation. See, I'm partial to such factoids, but often they aren't accompanied by their sources, thus when I read something like the following from the QI elves feed, I invariably have questions:

Turkey vultures injected with enough botulinum toxin to kill 300,000 guinea pigs show no ill-effects at all.

Okay, for starters, why are these birds being botoxed? Are our feathered friends, like us, concerned about fighting the seven signs of aging, or is this simply the result of an impromptu syringe fight staged in the lab at lunch? If the former, then it's good to see that peer pressure isn't solely confined to humans. If the latter, then let's hold a minute silence for any animal brethren caught in the crossfire.

Speaking of which, the guinea pigs. Now, did the brainiacs behind this fact simply calculate the amount needed to kill one and then multiply it accordingly, or did they in fact inject three hundred thousand of the little furry things in order to see if the dosage worked out the same? Regardless, either way, somewhere there must be the ghosts of all these guineas who died in the line of science.

Well, I say 'science', but I'm not exactly sure what we can gain from this experiment besides from a bloody good idea about what won't take down a turkey vulture, and that sort of information won't be useful until the inevitable bird uprising, circa 3015. Until then, what have we got? A load of dead guinea pigs. Brilliant. Anyone need a mousepad?

All I wanted was a bus of tea.

This morning, I was wolf up by bomb's nun.

Confused? Well, according to predictive text, you shouldn't be as, naturally, some of those are the words you'd most likely be trying to spell. I mean, you're far more likely to be discussing women of the cloth over, say, your mum, right? (By which I mean mentioning your mum with greater frequency than you do nuns. I'm not implying you chat about a mother/mother superior tryst.) Seriously, rarely a text conversation between my peers and myself goes by without at least half a dozen references to nuns and their dirty habits.

As for that bomb, well, it's no wonder we're constantly on high alert from terrorists. All I wanted to do was text my friend Anna, but no, according to my phone, what I obviously intended to write was 'bomb'. You know me so well, mobile. I'm constantly asking whether explosives would like to go shopping or have a picnic on the beach, aren't I? Oh yeah, I truly like to literally play with fire, me. I'm precisely that kind of guy.

Mind you, the phone's paranoia doesn't extend to modern hazards, oh no. It also includes threats from ravenous beasts as well. 'Wolf' precedes 'woke' in its vocabulary, thus suggesting that my mobile has judged the frequency of word usage entirely on the works of the Brothers Grimm. Honestly, the notion that I would ever need to text someone about a slobbering carnivorous mutt is preposterous. The very idea is - wait, is that howling? Ah, I might just message someone to say I need picking up...

"Shaking up"?

Damn you, predictive text, damn you.