energy conservation

I'm a big fan of conserving energy, I really am. I have my computer and printer plugged in via a power strip that I turn off when I'm not using it; I unplug my cell phone charger, fan, and lights when I leave every morning so no extra electricity is getting sucked out.

But I'm an even BIGGER believer in conserving emotional and mental energy.
Think of the last time you were completely mentally or emotionally exhausted and were left feeling a little used up and unhappy. Was it because of someone you spent time with? Was it the evening news? Was it a crappy conversation with That Really Bitter Co-worker? (C'mon, we all have one, and if we're self-employed it's probably our cat.)

What if we could conserve our energy in another way? You see, when I wrote a few weeks back that there were big changes coming in my life, I didn't just mean confronting one person. I meant changing the way I deal with everyone and everything. And yes, progress is small, because it's supposed to be - the only change that sticks is the change you make one day at a time, one step at a time. Anything bigger or more radical and you end up bouncing right back to where you started, because that's just not how people work. (Not for my lack of trying, rest assured.)

Lemme give you an example: I have a lovely friend named Sara. Actually, she's my friend because she's dating one of my ex-boyfriends, but that just means her fabulous taste in men is yet another thing we have in common. Anyways, Sara is a lot like me - feisty, opinionated, and likes to be caught up on political and current events.

So there's this asshole douche-bag somewhere out there in the blogosphere who is claiming that men raping women is merely "equalization" - that, because women have affirmative action, the violation of womens' bodies is merely equalizing the power shift and that men should not be condemned for such actions.

Well, you can guess Sara's reaction as, oh I don't know, a member of the human race, unlike this piece-of-work blogger who probably climbed up from the same primordial ooze as the Westboro Baptist Church, those classy kids who protest at the funerals of military servicemen and servicewomen because God hates the United States due to the fact that we haven't branded The Gays and locked them up in concentration camps yet. (I think the question What Would Jesus Do? is a tad hypothetical at this juncture.)

The truth is, a couple weeks ago I would have been right there with my friend, all offended and worked up and pissed off and wanting to give this guy a piece of my mind (and no, I'm refusing to link to his blog, I will NOT give this guy more blog traffic)...

but I didn't care. It was energy conservation at its finest. He wasn't worth my time or energy. This blogger's point, coming from a place of ignorance and a button-pushing attention-whoring, was deemed unworthy of even the slightest glance backwards. I didn't read the blog my friend linked to. I just simply told her that it wasn't worth it for her to even pause in her life for a millisecond to get worked up about it.

This is evolution, my friends. Evolution of an attitude and perspective shift that is so powerful it can take the smallest moments and make them victories. We don't have to throw any more emotion than we want at people or places or events. We get to choose - that's why we're adults.

When I told my therapist about this incident, she clapped with such an amount of force and glee that somewhere in Neverland entire hives of faeries probably came back to life.

Conserving energy works the opposite way as well - sometimes the world is a bad and scary place. Instead of standing in the face of what is wrong in the world and freaking out at it... why don't we just turn on a light? Doesn't it take less energy to light one tiny little candle than it does to curse the darkness?

So here's where I turn the microphone to you guys, and you can answer anonymously if you want (it's not just for leaving snarky comments with no repercussions! Who would have thought!) - Do you have something, or someone, in your life that takes a lot of emotional energy out of you and leaves you feeling kind of crappy? If so, what can you do about it? I wanna hear all about your own efforts at energy conservation - because I'm digging how much happier this is making me and I can't help but want to share. :)