Stuff to do today, failing at communication

I got my Christmas letter out today by email. This is the picture I put in it. We almost never are both in the same picture, let alone a picture that turns out half decent. This picture may be in the next five Christmas letters.

I only sent to people who don’t see us much. My aunt recently updated all the family addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses so cousins who have never had a letter from me before have one now. As soon as it was sent I did the usual second guessing. Why did I say that? How could I have forgotten this? But I’m glad it’s out. I don’t have email addresses for any of Chuck’s aunts and uncles, and for only three of his cousins. I also don’t have it for all of my dad’s side of the family, so it is woefully under-distributed. Maybe I’ll have to print it and mail it yet. We’ll see.

It’s a good day. I got up to date with getting all the data from the farm checking account into our bookkeeping program on the computer. I’m nearly up to date with all our credit card expense info. The big hurdle is my home checking account where I am seven months behind. But I’m on a roll. I can do that yet this week.

I’m writing on my laptop that Chuck gave me for Christmas last year because he is playing computer games on our main computer. Minesweeper. Who would have guessed? He showed me his time. I showed him the records (which all have my name on them). His competitive spirit kicked in and he beat my record in his next game.

Anyway, I love this laptop, but I have to get adjusted to it every time I use it. The keyboard is spaced slightly smaller than normal, it takes a much firmer touch and the spacebar especially needs to be punched hard. Half the time when I’m reaching for the shift key I hit the return key so I’m using the backspace key a lot too.

The boys are in the living room watching Lethal Weapon 4 and Joe Pesci is making some kind of impassioned speech while they laugh.

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I’ve been reading Nonviolent Communication some more. I’ve been trying to use it with not much success. A lot of the examples deal with responding to someone who is angry and possibly aggressive. The examples show how questions asked appropriately help the person who is upset to feel understood. Once they feel that, they are able to relax and work things out. So I get that.

My problem is the listening and asking questions to understand the person who is angry with me. As soon as the person says something false and sarcastic that disparages me or my motives, I lose my desire to understand and get totally focused on setting that person straight. From there we go downhill faster than a sled on Pike’s Peak. My weekend was filled with repeated interactions like that with one of my sons. We are taking a couple of days of break. Hopefully I will be more grounded when we try again. It is definitely harder than it looks on paper.

I believe in the principles presented. You don’t corner people verbally. If you want to make a request, first you test yourself to see if you are equally OK with a ‘no’ or a ‘yes’ answer. If ‘no’ is not OK with you, you are not making a request. You are making a demand, which is probably not non-violent language.

With non-violent communication the assumption is that people make sense. Their feelings make sense. My feelings make sense. The things people say and do come from their feelings. Their feelings come from the way they interpret the things that happen, and from the needs they have. So if Chuck does something that hurts me, usually the hurt comes from the way I’ve interpreted his action in light of my own needs, rather than from an intentional desire on his part to hurt me. A lot of the time it can even come from my not understanding my own needs enough to be able to communicate them to Chuck, but still expecting him to take them into account. It’s a good thing he puts such a high priority on communication.

The next chapter I will be reading is about expressing anger fully. I’m already full of questions about how you get to express anger when you are working so hard to rise above your feelings in an attempt to understand the feelings of someone else.