This is why god invented batting cages. Go take some BP for about half an hour or so; each fat softball that comes your way is (whatever it is that's bugging you). Doesn't fix anything, but you get to work out some agression and improve the ol' hand/eye coordination at the same time.

Two words. Death metal.

Go to a thrift store. Buy all the cheap plates. Go somewhere where you can smash them all, one by one.

Also, if I may piggyback on your frustration: while I am indeed flattered that my clients think I'm omnipotent, the fact of the matter is that I am very much, uh, not. Much as I might want to, I cannot bend the laws of space/time to suit their convenience. The only magic wand I have is in my pants, and it's got a fairly limited range.

Go to a thrift store. Buy all the cheap fax machines. Go somewhere where you can smash them all, one by one.

Much more satisfying than plates.

OMG, I have an ARGH for you. John McCain needs to wrap up this Wisconsin primary speech. It is painful. Painful I tell you! McCain, get some new speech writers. It is the same boring shit rehashed over and over. AAHHH! If I here about pork barrel spending and the road to nowhere one more time I'll SCREAM!!!!!!!

hear

I wonder if there's a batting cage in town; that's worth looking into. I do have a squash match tomorrow, but I don't think it's quite as cathartic.

Honestly, I don't even know where to start DEALING with my frustratants. I'm not sure if that's a word, but it should be. I guess irritants would be the word that does exist. Fuck it, I'm going with frustratants. Emphasis on the long A sound in the middle.

Hmmm. Coining a new word seems to have helped me to feel a little better. Sniglets here I come...

At any rate. Thanks to all for the suggestions.

Oh, you know what I hate? I hate it when people don't even let you get in the fucking door and into your office and take your coat off before they start demanding shit. Unless someone's DYING (and I can do something to stop it, which is unlikely, as I am an IT guy), there is no reason to rush someone like that. It's just not fucking civilized, people. Can we not just be fucking civilized for five fucking minutes?

Hard exercise of any kind is good. I love the batting cage suggestion.

My coping skills textbook suggests the following (I'm summarizing a bunch):

* Self-relaxation, both in the angry moment and in general

* Stress inoculation, or coaching yourself through a challenging situation, which means that before an event you would say to yourself something like, "I know this is going to upset me, but I know how to handle it" and during an event you'd say to yourself, "Stay calm, use my coping skills, don't blow this out of proportion, I'm in control" and after the event you'd say "I'm not perfect, but I handled that pretty well."

* Blowing off steam, which they emphatically remind us is a two part process: First stage is getting anger and arousal out of your system (that's where the exercise comes in), second stage is working out the problem. Doing the first without the second doesn't reduce anger.

* Believing in yourself as a coper. Focus on taking care of yourself and getting your needs met without harming others, and without judging whether your anger is good or bad. It's there, and you need to believe that you can deal with it.

* Practicing assertiveness rather than aggression or non-assertiveness.

* Practicing compromise and forgiveness.

(I'm hoping this does not come across as preachy. It's info I've been meaning to look up to help some of my clients; thought you might find at least some of it helpful!)

occhi, that's brilliantly helpful. Seriously. Thanks. I will take a closer look at the frustratants (feel free to try to spread that word around btw) tomorrow and see if I can use some of those inoculation approaches and the forgiveness.

I'm also currently trying to do away with a previously very judgmental temperament. It's not easy.

occhi, that's brilliantly helpful. Seriously. Thanks. I will take a closer look at the frustratants (feel free to try to spread that word around btw) tomorrow and see if I can use some of those inoculation approaches and the forgiveness.

I'm also currently trying to do away with a previously very judgmental temperament. It's not easy.

And then, I hope to master posting comments.

keep in mind also that late Mondays are the worst for IT people historically. I know this is probably little help at a time like this, but I have many friends in IT and they were all dreading today. If today was this bad, there is almost no chance that tomorrow will be worse.

If tomorrow is worse, I will send you a six pack of beer in the mail. Unless you don't drink, in which case I will send you a pound of coffee. Unless you're off caffeine in which case I'll send you some tea. Unless you're off tea in which case I will send you a pound of butter. Mmmmm butter. Now you have something to look forward to.

I will send you a six pack of beer in the mail. Unless you don't drink, in which case I will send you a pound of coffee. Unless you're off caffeine in which case I'll send you some tea. Unless you're off tea in which case I will send you a pound of butter.

Send 'em all. The world could use another herbalized amped-up greasy drunk.

My tomorrow is looking incredibly worse. So much worse. Much worser than you could ever imagine. I have ARGHs too! Many of them! So many, they're multisyllabic! Polysyllabic even!@! Yes!!!

Please send beer kthxbye.

I'm also currently trying to do away with a previously very judgmental temperament. It's not easy.

Ah. I skipped the part about "making rational primary appraisals," so I'll add that now. :-)

From the same Coping with Life Challenges as above:

"If you find yourself suffering from needless anger, you are probably making the following kinds of irrational demands:

* Because I strongly desire people to treat me considerately and fairly, they absolutely must do so, and they are evil, damnable people who deserve to be severely condemned and punished if they don't.

* Because I strongly desire people to treat me considerately and fairly, and because I AM A SPECIAL KIND OF PERSON, they absolutely must treat me well.

* Because I strongly desire people to treat me considerately and fairly, they absolutely must AT ALL TIMES AND UNDER ALL CONDITIONS DO SO.

"These examples of irrational beliefs were collected by Albert Ellis (1987)... Because it is a natural human tendency to want the best out of life, we are predisposed toward holding expectations and making demands that are not always reasonable. Make it a habit to test the rationality of your appraisals. If you insist that things should always go your way, that others must always treat you right, and that you should never suffer frustration, you are certain to become angry. A useful coping skill is to catch yourself and change your demands to ones that are more realistic ... [like]... 'I strongly desire that people treat me considerately and fairly. When they do, it makes me happy, and when they don't, I don't like it. However, because the world does not revolve around my wishes and desires, I have to learn effective skills for coping when I am frustrated and mistreated.' This kind of appraisal will still lead to feelings of disappointment and frustration when things don't go your way, but it will not result in needless anger."

I think the examples are a bit clunky, but the overall idea seems pretty strong.

thanks jess. I kinda hope tomorrow sucks too now. I'll be honest in my assessment though. I promise.

Also, more importantly to everyone having bad days/weeks/months/lives: hugs and whuffles and other feel-good-not-naughty good things.

I just want to see that pound of butter after it's been through the US Mail, Customs, AND Canada Post.

Volunteering with some kind of special needs charity will usually calm the soul and soothe the spirit. Don't take yourself so seriously. Getting out of oneself and into others helps with achieving serenity.

Lots of ARGHs here too. I will come back to this thread tomorrow to go over some of these fine ideas again.

Hmmm..if it weren't below freezing where you are I'd suggest slamming ice cubes onto your driveway.

One place I worked had a full-size muay thai kick bag out the back - very, very handy, and something I've lobbied to install at all subsequent workplaces (without success, sadly).

I also find office 'Tourette's moments' very cathartic - shut the door of your office and yell, loudly, the rudest words you can think of until you feel better.

I'm having an argh day. I probably don't have a right to complain about this, but something is acting up with my internet at work. It's now allowing me to load metafilter (or any of the sub sites) or live journal.

The thing is, we have a web filter but that gives a message "you are not allowed to visit this site" or whatever when it is blocking you. This is different - the pages just load and load and eventually it just gives up with a blank page. So I don't think that I'm being blocked by the filter.

But I can't exactly complain to IT about it, now can I? Argh Argh Argh.

Heh. For what it's worth, I am less argh-y today. I had emailed a friend of mine, who I've always known to give brilliant, off beat advice. When I said, "what's a beast to do?" he replied:

"Become a bigger beast."

I kinda like that suggestion.

Does that mean that you don't get any butter? That alone would make me angry again.

CRAP. I totally meant to lie. It wasn't the butter so much as the idea of beer arriving in the mail that I was after. Damn honest nature.