Next Day Follow Up - Ah, I see that (once again) I have been a confusing person by being vague. Here's what I was thinking when I wrote the closing section of my journal yesterday.

1. I heard people talking at various events recently. Their opinions of other people were not my opinions.
2. I thought about what I heard people saying. I thought about how I was uncomfortable overhearing things.
3. I thought about whether this says anything about me: That my opinions were not their opinions.
4. I idly wondered if that meant I should change. I mostly concluded I didn't really want to change that much.

Now, a dear friend used to ask me why I would never say anything harsh about my ex-husband. Well, you see, I'm a STRONG believer in the power of the spoken word. What you say outloud has POWER -- in both a literal and probably even meta-physical manner. There's a pattern for this belief in several major world religions and in several philosophies, some new-age type techniques, and a variety of manners to approaching life.

What you SAY matters. You'll catch me in my superstition insisting that you "knock on wood" if you say something outloud that "could jinx" something. If I don't want it to rain on a Saturday at an event, you'll NEVER catch me talking about rain outloud. I *think* about it, and then I *SAY* things outloud like, "This is beautiful clear weather! I love this clear weather!" And then, think what you like, but that's how I approach my superstition about jinxing or saying things without knocking on wood, etc.

Now apply this concept to people. The harshest word you usually hear me use to describe someone is a "goober." Most of the time, I only mean the word in a light-heared playful manner without bad connotations, along the lines of, "Aww, I'm being a goober! hey, don't be a goober! Did you see that silly goober?"

However occasionally, "goober" is a stand in word for "unspoken volumes of harsh things I don't dare say outloud because I am not in the habit of cursing people outloud with these unspoken volumes of dislike, distaste, and frustration." If you hear me get real quiet about a situation and say, "Um, well, he's a bit of a goober" and then I say nothing further but I've pursed my lips together in determination, that's likely the NON-playful version of the word "goober."

And then occasionally, in trusted places, I actually speak my mind on harsh details. But those are rare and very measured times and places.

So back to yesterday's thoughts. I'm not saying that I think I want to be all that different, or that I want to change that much. In fact, I'm not sure I could become non-optimistic. But there have been times when I DIDN'T see many red flags in several situations. And in discussion with close, trusted friends, I can see where I had blinders on in regards to some very poor-goober-like behavior because I wanted to believe only the best.

Now, apply that history to the overheard conversations in the past several weeks. Friends ABCDE and F all have said something about friend X. I don't know friend X very well, but I certainly never thought blah-blah-blah overheard thing. Blah-blah-blah thing reminded me of red flags in the past with other goobers. So I have to wonder to myself, are Friends ABCDE and F blowing something out of proportion? Is it gossip that got out of hand? Or is it really a red-flag behavior that I need to be careful about? Am I handicapped by my seeing-good-things behavior, that I miss the red-flags sometimes?

**THAT**, my lovelies, that ability to skip the red-flags and be ignorant on purpose, would be a Bad Thing (tm) in my opinion. I *shouldn't* be stupid and blind and ignorant, for some lack that I don't want to believe in goober-like qualities.

The Good Thing (tm) in my opinion, is that sometimes what I do *well* is see the Good Qualities in someone always branded a Goober, and sometimes it means they start encouraging their Good qualities more, because they don't actually want to Stay a Goober. I think that's the part that's worth embracing --> encouraging the Non-Goober qualities to increase, especially when someone doesn't like their own red-flag behavior and they WANT to change and grow and be better than that.

*This* is wonderful, and I'm thankful to the friends over the years who have pointed out my OWN red-flag behavior, called me on it, and said "let's cut that out please." They were right, the red-flag goober-behavior needed to stop, and the good, excellent behavior needed to increase. I'm not there yet, I still have plenty of red-flag behavior in my own life that needs to be trimmed, removed, and stomped on, but that always gives me the incentive to go back to my "let's look for the good and let's weed out the goober."

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: An anonymous red-headed guy I knew in college, can no longer remember his name, but he called me on my bulldozer behavior, and he was right. And I was better for it, because he stood up to me and said "stop it." I've always been thankful to him, for making me cry and making me realize my behavior was completely inappropriate, non-helpful, and totally goober. Hopefully, I've done him (and me) proud since then.