Dog-Faced Daughter Of.

[mrissa]

The book in this article offends me! Norwegians are not just Satan's sons! Some of them are Satan's daughters, too!

(I have great difficulty typing the words "Satan" and "Stan." I keep typing one when I mean the other. This makes e-mails to timprov's uncle and aunt challenging. Nobody wants to read e-mail that starts, "Dear Satan and Judy.")

Some people on my friendslist have been doing an envy meme, asking their friendslist to express what they envy about the person posting. This would make me extremely uncomfortable. It's bad enough when people pop up with envy out of the blue. Inviting it is orders of magnitude worse. (I sympathize with the cultures who named their babies horrible things to ward off jealous spirits. Should you wish to refer to me as Dog-Faced Goat-Girl, that'd probably be okay. There may be more than one Dog-Faced Goat-Girl in your life, though, so I may not always know you mean me. It's kind of the Jennifer of anti-jealous-spirit names, isn't it?)

I have a couple of relatives who have talked to me about things they envy in my life, and a quarter of the time I've wanted to say, "Well, you can have that, too, if you work at it," and the rest of the time I've just wanted to hide under the couch until they go away. It's not so bad when what they mean is clearly not envy but "it seems nice that you have that." Otherwise--meep. Meepmeepno.

If someone says they admire something about you, or they enjoy something about you, the response is not always easy, but it's very simple. The response is, "Thank you." And on you go. Envy is not like that. "Thank you for envying me! I'm so glad you have corrosive and resentful feelings about some of my possessions or positive traits! Hurrah!" Nonono. And again, sometimes people make it clear that they don't mean that they actually resent you having those things, but sometimes they really don't, and tone is much harder to convey on lj, so I'll be steering in a very wide circle clear of that one, thank you very much.

Anyway, I seem to be at the tail end of this cold. I think I can eat real food today, and I feel mostly better, and I've been drinking water like it's my new hobby. I hear my mother's voice in my head when I'm sick: "Are you staying hydrated? Hydrate!" Some people think my mother's voice and my voice sound alike anyway, but I can tell the difference. I'm still feeling pretty beat, so I'm going to try to move slowly around here. Still, clear improvement. Always a good thing.

Comments

[pentacon.livejournal.com]

I feel a warm glow of pride, I always knew I Satan was one of my rellies.

I admire your ability to write, your attitude in your journal and your baking. Though I have not had the chance to sample you baking, I trust that is it good.

Glad to read you are feeling better, I am working from home with a scratchy throat, I am hoping it does not get worse.:(

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I hope it doesn't get worse, too.

Thank you for saying those things you admire. I know that "thank you" is the entirety of the polite response, but I really wasn't intending to fish for compliments when I posted that about the envy meme.

[pentacon.livejournal.com]

I know you were not, but it was a good excuse to get them in and maybe an invite to try your baking. ;) I also bake, but not as often and I would like.

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

I have a friend (although it sometimes takes an effort to continue thinking of her that way) with whom I used to do regular critique sessions. But it got so that every time I wrote a good scene or chapter, she'd say things like, "Oh I hate you! I can't believe this is only your first draft; I know you'll be published before I am" (never mind that I've *already* had 23 books published and have eight more under contract--apparently none of them count, not being novels, you know!). Sure, she was smiling and laughing as she said these things--but there was no laughter underneath.

Whoa, sorry for venting about my toxic friendship in your journal. What I really wanted to convey, though, was that I'm with you: envy is poison; I would never purposefully court it, not even with a silly meme.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That's just exactly the sort of thing I mean. I really don't like it when people start with, "I hate you!" Once I even murmured, "I'm not so fond of you just now, either." Occasionally someone does manage to pull it off with the laughter underneath, but it's very rare.

markgritter does correct me regularly when I say I've written seven books, on account of the three textbooks I've written. They don't feel the same to me because they were on contract, but they are indeed books, sitting downstairs on one of the end tables, so I suppose I ought to count them or rephrase to limit it to fiction.

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

He's right; you wrote them, you were paid for them, and they were published, so they absolutely count! :-)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Hoo yeah on the envy thing.

I will say here I envy everyone who is young (under fifty being young), and wish I could take a pill to roll back the clock so I could fix all my mistakes, and leave it at that!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Then you could make all new mistakes instead! Or else be boring and probably entirely lack empathy. Better to keep what you've got, I think.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

LOL! You're right.

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

So, you're sick. *Again.*

Yup. You're definitely doing a great job of convincing me that I exaggerate the frequency with which you are ill.

Definitely.

Ms. Sickly.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Dog-Faced Goat-Girl

How about "Cheese-Head Bean-Girl"? Since you can't be Cheese-Head Bean-Boy...

(Remember, there's no escape from cranky grapes--we are the grapes of wrath!)

I think I've been watching too much VeggieTales.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

My friends don't generally admit to envying anything about me or my life anymore. Because I either take it as a reference question (how can they get what I have) or file it away as useful info for taunting ("oh, I meant to tell you, the traffic here was *terrible* today--there must have been five or six other cars on the road with me!").

I will occasionally envy a friend to their face for something very specific--"you did what last night? I envy you!"--but I try to follow up with "I'm so glad for you." Which I am. If I'm feeling a lack of something, how could it possibly make me feel better if people I care about are lacking it too?

Envy

[(Anonymous)]

Thinking about this, there is a reason that the ten commandments include the mandate to not "covet" what your neighbor has. It is a poisonous emotion. As for me, I am happy with who I am, which is my own person. Envying something about another person diminishes who I am and creates an ill feeling between myself and the person of envy. I like that people are different than me and have different attributes than I do. It makes life more interesting and helps me to learn new things through them.

And just so we're clear, I like you just the way you are, M'ris, and I like to learn from you too.

Heathah

Re: Envy

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I like you, too, Heathah.

[ladysea.livejournal.com]

hehe

"Dear Satan and Judy"! *giggle*

We used to call Celefin Satan's Bichon until one day I read it as Satan's Bitch. When he is really naughty...he gets that nickname. =P

[windcedar.livejournal.com]

*laughs at Satan and Goat Girl commentary*

I'm always at a loss what to say about envious comments...fortunately it doesn't seem to come up much for me. BTW, mind if I friend you? - no obligation meant or implied to friend me back. I love your sense of humour. Not, of course, in an envious kind of way, just in a may-I-bask-in-your-presence way. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

Friend away! I'm very casual about these things. Periodically I check to see who has friended me, and I friend most of them back so they can see my locked posts. The major exception is if they have frequent posts on subjects that don't really interest me. If you decide to unfriend me later, I'm also unlikely to get offended about that.