I’m excited about this post because I have a personal rule about blogging: I do not rant.

I appreciate a good rant on other people’s blogs, but I try not to do it on my own.

But, I am a slave to following instructions, so not only will I do this post, but I will amend it to:

Some THINGS I Could Definitely Live Without

1. People asking me what I do all day. I’m working. Just like you are.  Mind your own business.
2. Political partisanship. This is specifically directed at people’s whose Twitter accounts and FB pages are littered with flagrantly partisan links that seemed aimed more towards incitement rather than information.  I think a person should ask themselves before they share a news story, “Why am I posting this?  Is this going to contribute to promoting the noble and sadly neglected cause of achieving consensus?”  We’re all on the same team, emotional, ethical and national prosperity is proportional to the number of people who try to live that.
3. Gossip. This includes statements masked in the guise of extracting moral/financial/ethical/value lessons from the other people’s behavior. I care about what happens to you, what you think about you, what you want out of life. I’m not interested in hearing about what you think about your friends. I feel the need to add here that no matter how absolutely riveting your argument is about how you were totally right, considering the other side of the story is absolutely fundamental to who I am.  I’m not a good person to consider if you’re thinking about forming a lynch mob.
4. Hearing about anything related to driving. What route a person takes, how fast/slow drivers are irritating or how clever one is because they evaded getting a speed ticket for doing 85 mph in a school zone.  Every now and then is fine.  Just, you know, don’t go on and on about it.  Please.
5. Excessive self praise or excessive self deprecation. I’d like everyone to consider that both of these are conditions which indicate a measurable degree of self centeredness.
6. Applications that tell me where people are every second of the day. There’s a reason our society evolved into an organism where we don’t know our neighbors. I need space. I generally don’t care where a person eats lunch, where they grocery shop, or where they like to go drinking on a Thursday night. Someone needs to add a request feature to these apps, “Would you like to know what your friend is doing every second of every damned day?” My brain is only capable of handling so much information.
7. Ambiguous passive aggressive tweets or FB updates masked under the guise of cleverness about people you had a falling out with over a year ago. Stop it. Get over yourself. This is not being clever, it’s being a jerk.  It’s also so tacky.  SO tacky.
8. Mommy Wars. Working and raising a family is hard. Staying at home and raising a family is hard. Being a woman is hard. Being a mother is hard. Being a human being is hard.  Stop tearing each other down and start supporting each other. Mothers are forces to be reckoned with, not adolescent girls on a cheerleading team vying for who gets to be homecoming queen.  Diminishing another’s choices doesn’t make your choices any more right than theirs.  We can both be right.  There’s no rule against that.

That might have been boring for you, but, wow.  That felt good.

Care to experience catharsis?  Add to my list in the comments.