Hi Elaine, [risking top-posting]
I need to deal with people with personality faults on a daily basis: on IRC, on IM, in real life, in E-mail, etc. I'm not always happy from their behaviour, but I try to deal with it intelligently and wisely. I don't blame all of Freenode's #perl faults on https://metacpan.org/author/MSTROUT or on https://metacpan.org/author/APEIRON or on thrig (= our channel master) or on Su-Shee or on popl or whoever, because while they have their faults, they still are essentially good people, and I try to find ways to overcome their issues as best as I can. Similarly, I admitted that I have the personality faults that you mentioned, but they are not insurmountable, and you can learn to cope with them instead of blaming everything that is wrong in this world on me (which seems incredibly silly and ridiculous when you think about it). In my entire time of contributing to the Perl and open-source/open-content community, I was able to make a lot of friends, and also was able turn some of my former enemies into either friends, or at least people who agree to collaborate with me and tolerate me. Would you agree to try to do the same? Here is an excerpt from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%E2%80%94 by Rudyard Kipling: <<<< If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: >>>> And here is what Marcus Aurelius wrote about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism : <<<< Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill... I can neither be harmed by any of them, for no man will involve me in wrong, nor can I be angry with my kinsman or hate him; for we have come into the world to work together... >>>> It's always the most effortless solution to expect the world to change according to your whims, but that usually won't happen and will only leave you feeling bitter and have wishful thinking and unreal fantasies, and will leave you as helpless as you are. In the long run, it is more constructive to handle problematic people and situations with tolerance, acceptance, rationality and some creative thinking. Regards, Shlomi Fish [SNIPPED] -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ My Public Domain Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/shlomif/ Chuck Norris is the greatest man in history. He killed all the great men who could ever pose a competition. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .