The Power of "No"

 

"Gloucester Marine Railways"

Nikon D800

Nikkor 50.0mm f/1.4 Lens

Snapseed

Once you make a change in a system, that change often  bleeds through to other areas that were not the original target of the change in the first place. And - how could it be otherwise? Very few systems are completely isolated - maybe air-gapped computers... Certainly there are no isolated systems inside a human. It's all one sloshing slurry of conflicting emotions, desires, and plans. And so - when you adopt the power of "No" to do the incredibly humiliating and difficult work of significantly reducing body mass, that power of "No" starts getting applied to other areas of your life. Say for instance, cutting the cord on a job that was misrepresented in the interview process. In years past, I would have stayed with that shitty job, desperately trying to make it into something that was actually good for me. The power of "No" helped me to cut that place loose in three weeks.  Three weeks instead of three decades. Then there is alcohol.. I've never been a big drinker or connoisseur of flavor profiles or "notes of tobacco, maple syrup, and mint" and all the rest of the bullshit cover that goes along with consuming poison.. So - I dropped alcohol.. well - 95% dropped anyway. There have been a very few occasions over the last 16 months where I broke the "NO" and had a beer or, the purer form of the poison - a martini. From here on out I'm going for 100% "NO" on alcohol..  Recently I've (finally) gone the "NO" route with Christianity and all its horrifying delusions.. This has been a tough one, but I think it's finally dead to me.  Then there is pulling myself out of social entanglements which have not served me.. Most recently - getting out of a chat service with former colleagues where there was a long-running one-note joke about how lazy and stupid I am. Then there is the dreaded, quarterly  'dinner with former colleagues' which had a similar dynamic to the chat server situation but with different people.    A switch has flipped in me. I would rather be absolutely fucking alone than be the prop that makes others feel better about themselves. The power of "No" is not done with me. I don't have any idea about how it will be applied in the future...but it will be..  ~