“All right! We did not die today, I call that an unqualified success.” – Fear

The family took me to the movies for father’s day, where we watched the newest Pixar movie “Inside Out”. I assumed that it would be another great movie from the folks at Disney/Pixar (and it was), with ample wisdom for my child to absorb at least a little bit of. What I wasn’t prepared for was the wisdom being one-size-fits-all, applicable for children and adults.

Here’s the premise in a nutshell (with a touch of spoiler): there’s a team of emotions steering your behaviour, and if a couple go missing, your psychological world is thrown into chaos. When we’re children, Joy is the dominant emotion and the desired state of affairs. As we age, it becomes more complex and can’t be painted with one emotional colour. Growing up means having experiences that have a multitude of emotions attached to them. You can’t just drive towards joy to the exclusion of every other feeling.

And that’s where insight leaped from child development to full-grown adult challenges. I realized that I can get stuck chasing unfiltered joy, and that’s an unattainable goal. In fact, chasing happiness that’s devoid of tinges of sadness, regret, fear, anger, etc… is an exercise in frustration. Not only does happiness elude you, so does contentment. You can’t go back to the monotone joy of childhood. And you wouldn’t want to, even if you could. The richness of human experience is built upon the totality of human emotion, both positive and negative. Take the sweet with the sour.

I’m also prone to letting Fear take the helm of my psyche, which can set the bar a little low for goals (see the opening quote above). I need to continue to work on integrating fear into the collaborative emotional team, making him a partner instead of a tyrant. Life will continue to have scary moments to it, but focusing solely on avoiding the things that I fear will keep me from some truly interesting and fulfilling opportunities. 3 cheers for less freaking out!

It’s funny how a simple choice of words can shift your perception.

I tend to be very critical of myself. Maybe that’s a natural state of affairs for humans, or maybe the well-adjusted among you don’t spend time berating yourself over missteps and missed opportunities. I’m not one to say.

I have a handful of talents, like any of you. I grade myself harshly on the application of those talents, looking at them as examples of my “wasted potential”. I think I rate them in terms of being able to use those skills “professionally” AKA “making money with them” which is a mug’s game from the start.

But a few weeks ago, my friend Dan gave my negative perspective a nudge. I had baked some cupcakes for our friend Jeff’s birthday, to share with the whole Friday night gaming group. The cupcakes were a hit with everyone, especially Dan. His exact words were: “Baking is definitely one of your un-nurtured talents.”

There is a world of difference between “wasted” and “un-nurtured”. I stopped regretting the current state of my abilities, and instead, I started to see the possibilities for growth. Every day you have a chance to nurture your talents and see them bloom into something wonderful: Why spend time beating yourself up over what you haven’t done with them so far? And for the love of crumbcake, don’t measure yourself against the money-making yardstick.

Pushing out the seemingly endless promotion for the whole Kickstarter book stuff over the last month (spoiler: hit the goal, everything work out!) led to a small bit of social media and blogging burnout. I was sick of talking to you and you were sick of hearing me.

Now that our time apart has passed, I feel refreshed and ready to return to my ramblings. Today’s topic is Obscure phrases, specifically the phrase “bun-fight”.

A Bun-fight is an English expression that is of indeterminate origin. Whenever it came into popular use, no one person successfully took credit for it coming into existence. Think of it like a Victorian meme.

There are 2 uses for the phrase:

1) A fancy, formal occasion

2) A heated argument over something trivial

The first definition seems incongruous, since “fancy celebration” and “fight” usually don’t go together very well. It makes a bit more sense, however, if the party you are referring to is a tea party for children. Picture a room full of children in uncomfortably formal clothing, squabbling over who gets which doughnut.

In common usage, the second definition is the one that sticks. It’s a pretty good way to describe a nearly pointless argument over some trivial detail. If you need to have a little variety, or you’re a fan of even more obscure phraseology, try these alternates that have sadly died out of common usage: “Crumpet-Scramble” or “Muffin-Worry”. Drop either of those phrases at your next coffee klatch and revel in the confused, worried looks of your conversational partner.