Most of us have flaws of one sort or the other and back in the days when I was involved in  “touchy-feeley” work, the popular term was “Self Defeating Behavoir”. That was an easy one for me to identify – anger. I do realize that I am not alone in this or there wouldn’t be an entire category now of “Anger Management”. As the Country and Western song says, “I’m not as good as I’m going to be, but I’m better than I used to be.” I have actually improved to at least some degree.

My husband, bless him, copes with my flaw better than anyone and has far more practice at it than he deserves, but that’s another discussion. The other day, I was not quite on a rant about a policy that was upsetting me, although I was working up to one and he gently interceded. His comment (more or less) was, “Think for a minute. You spent a career in the Army – you went by dumber rules than this. Put it into perspective.”

Ah yes, smack me on the forehead – he was correct. This was one of those things that I had lost perspective on and it was most assuredly an irritant, but not worth the level of emotion I was expending. It’s along the same lines as the “Count to Ten” method, but I had/have a habit of zipping through the “ten count” quickly and declaring it not to work. As much as I struggle though, I will say that the one place where I do practice delay is sticking an email into draft as a precaution. I genuinely think that a lot of irate ones go out because the “Send” button is too close to the “Draft”.

Anyway, I think that I am ready at this point to calmly express my concern (see, not the word outrage) about this particular policy and we shall see what becomes of it. And this is a case where I may not have all the information that I think I have and I discover that the policy does make sense. On the other hand, if it turns out that it really is a stupid policy set forth by some over-controlling bureaucrat who has no other way to feed his or her self-esteem except through the use of petty power, well then, we will see….