The unwinnable battle…

I’m actually a little ashamed of myself right now.

Just got into a bit of a… umm… contentious phone conversation. Someone was trying to convey some information to me, was doing it with what I perceived as a robust amount of attitude, and was not at all pleased when my hackles went up and asserted that I didn’t appreciate the ‘tude. She accused me of fabricating her adversarial nature (which I really don’t think I did) and implied that her department would stop fulfilling their role in the matter being discussed (which would be simply unacceptable).

And while I do think that technically I was in the right, I’m angry and ashamed at myself because this is just another example of me fighting a battle that I didn’t need to fight. Could have ignored her passive-or-not-so-much aggressivity and been the bigger man.

Instead, I ignored the better angels of my nature and got down in the dirt and the mud. Makes me feel low. Common. Like a dick.

Why do I need to be so confrontational all the time? Why am I always on the lookout for any perceived slight, no matter how small? Why can’t I be more relaxed, more level headed?

Why am I so ready to fight the world?

Hey,! Generate your own content. Stop stealing mine!

I am forced to conclude that the owners of are shady and don’t have original ideas of their own.

Hello dear nerdhut readers (both of you). I’m writing this in the hopes that I will see it pop up on the front page of a site that is reposting all my content without my permission and despite my requests for them to stop and remove all NerdHut-related posts from their site.

Someone out there has registered and are using it to repost mine (and other’s) original content. Now, we live in an age of aggregator blogs, and I would have been fine if had asked my permission to repost and had not ignored my take-down requests. But they seem to be unreceptive, so here we are.

The only real nerdhut is this one. Accept no substitutes.

In which I wallow in insecurity but you shouldn’t worry about me because, really, I’m fine.

A minor site redesign today, mostly because I was getting bored with the old one. The wordpress theme I’m using is called “Twentyten” and the new banner image comes via a Creative Comments attribute license from a flickr user named ‘BRADYDAWG.’

Renovations work at the museum continues, and is going well, for the most part. I can’t seem to shake this near-constant feeling of anxiety, though. This is not a good thing. I posted as such a few weeks ago on facebook and a college friend pointed out that “anxiety is just another word for fear. So what is it you’re afraid of?” I think he’s absolutely spot on. I throw around words like ‘anxiety’ quite a bit without thinking about what they really mean. What am I afraid of?

I’m afraid that the renovations will hit some kind of deadline-busting snag. I’m afraid some additional expense will come up that will eat up what little remains of the budget. I’m afraid that some little bureaucratic detail will rear its ugly head and delay the renovation progress. I’m intimidated by being the one in charge of the renovations project – I feel visible and exposed. In the financial state of the University, I fear that not constantly proving my worth will lead to layoff. I fear the future. When this project winds down, will it be time to job search again? I hate job searching. Chicago doesn’t feel like home. Is there a place that will? I long for it; I fear I’ll never find it. What does the future hold? No way to be sure? I fear uncertainty. Too often I find myself thinking, “What’s going to go wrong next?” I hate that guy.

So, yeah. I have anxiety.

I fear.