Day 5 Free writing

Greetings! While doing today's work, free writing in my journal (I use the Penzu online journal), on one topic, I remembered a different time: I'd been called for jury duty, but not selected for the jury.

Later that day, my dad told me that I was not chosen because I'd answered something incorrectly, as if it were a test I'd failed. (The lawyer had asked us what kind of magazines we read, and apparently my needlecraft reading was not relevant to the case. I had no problem with that, and the court house cafe had great cheese-crisps, so it had been a nice day until I got home.)

Was this incident representative of the kind of logic I grew up with? If so, how could I ever have satisfied him? I know that I've also earned his admiration over the years, in spite of having chosen a path he could never have imagined. But he was a perfectionist, and handed that down nicely to his daughters, even if he didn't always make sense.

Now I live with others who with great frequency have illogical expectations, and my anger flares reflexively. And, then, of course, they are clueless about my reactions, and can only conclude that I am a nut. So, I close my mouth and get sick.

Thanks for reading!

 

Your father unjustly criticized you about the jury duty. I doubt the needlecraft magazine was why you weren't chosen to serve on the jury.
I'm a former Chicatgo Tribune crime and courts reporter and know that being chosen for jury duty is an in-exact science.

So you inherited your father's perfectionism. Try to modify it so it doesn't cause you pain. Be glad you chose the direction you did.

I had a roommate for seven years and we got along great, partly because I agreed with his philosophy that we should always respect
each other's right to be irrational. Accepting that, we never had an argument.

 

"his philosophy that we should always respect
each other's right to be irrational."

LOL! Thanks, Walt!