Eccentric Flower:200912/Sometimes It Gets Quiet

While I do not always adhere to the old maxim, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" - as should be obvious to anyone who's hung around here a while - there are times when even I realize that discretion is the better part of valor and whatever offensive statements I can muster up would serve no purpose except to scatter mud.

In short, while I may not always say things that are nice, I am trying to limit my nasty to nasty which I think is actually useful to state aloud in some way.

In particular I'm trying to avoid:

1. Sentiments which distill down to "Congratulations on your achievement even though I think it's useless" or "Condolences on your setback even though I think you kinda deserved it." If I were capable of biting off the part of my tongue that had the "even though" clause on it, I could safely say them, and sometimes I can do that. But sometimes I can't, and those are the times when I just need to stitch my lips shut.

2. Observations on the many ways in which the world is manifestly going to hell. Come January I may remove the moratorium on them, but I believe we've had enough of them from this source for 2009. Don't you think?

3. Notes about everything I think you're doing wrong and why. You don't need to be told that - not by me anyway. I have decided that I'm no longer going to give a frank statement of a mistake I think someone else is making unless it is specifically and directly solicited by that person, and hesitantly even then. I think most people actually don't want to know or be told when they're making mistakes. I think most of us have to run into the wall before we truly see it.

4. Griping about the poor-sleep, restless, ill-at-ease, vaguely-headcoldy, not-really-accomplishing-anything limbo that my life is in at the moment. We'll just take that as read. It will probably improve once I actually manage to work on anything major at my job and finish it - I've realized that the major Secret Agitator in my life is the feeling that I'm not earning my pay - but right now I'm not really inspired to do much more than fight fires, and frankly I think my brain has already gone on winter recess, so I'm just sort of stalling for time and telling myself that I'll pick the pieces back up in January. (It doesn't help that everyone else is similarly sleepwalking at the workplace right now. If it weren't for one crucial bit of business we have to attend to this month, we'd all just take December as a dead loss.)

Um, so, unless I see any interesting links or news items, it may be sort of quiet here for a bit longer. Not that you'll notice much, I think - my reading and observing habits tell me that the web pretty much goes on hiatus for large chunks of late December anyway.