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Poking the Bear

Every now and then I will get an email from my client that takes passive aggressiveness to a whole different level. 
If there was a Master Black Belt in passive aggressiveness, my client would be a sensei. 
In my younger years, I would have fired an email right back that would have probably gotten me in trouble. (Not that posting to a blog is any different- if not worse). 
Today, now that I'm older, I feel a sense of inner rage, start an email, and then delete the draft. With technology today, it's so easy to blast a text message, a tweet, [a blog post], an email, a Facebook post, etc... and out it goes into the inter-web. I remember the good old days where I would take the time to hand write a letter and make the effort to get a stamp and mail it. That's when you know you are pissed because of the shear time it took to get your anger on paper and into the postal system. But I digress. 
I'm lucky in the fact that my parents are Buddhists. The only issue is that they sent me to a Southern Baptist church when I was younger. So I'm all kinds of confused. But I'd like to think that I Iean more towards the zen side of things -- except when I get passive aggressive emails that push the right combination of emotions that put me on edge. It's already bad enough that I'm stuck in middle management purgatory. But to be provoked to a point where I end up not wanting to go to sleep or wondering if I should just get back on an airplane where at least I get compensated for the misery -- something is definitely wrong. 
I've blogged before about wanting a Jerry Maguire moment- or just one Kanye West moment where I could care less what happens to me after I throw "2 middle fingers up in the air."
Unfortunately, I can't have either one right now. 
So for those of you that have an inner a*hole that gets triggered once in a while, here's my advice. 

  1. Type up your response. 
  2. Read it and perfect it. 
  3. Delete it. 
  4. Sleep on it. 
  5. Think about all of the things that could be worse - (it's hard, I know). 
  6. Make it purpose to one day have that Kanye moment.

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