No Complaints

After 38 years on this planet, I have sadly come to the conclusion that I am a rather intolerant person. I am truly fascinated by the wacky quirks of others, and enjoy commenting on said quirks. I always think of the phrase attributed to Dorothy Parker: "If you can't say anything nice about someone, come and sit by me," and find that it sums me up rather well. I also find that I tend to complain more than is probably healthy; thus, when The Professor and I stumbled across A Complaint Free World we thought it might be worth investigating. It sounded like a nice idea, in theory at least. It would be nice to go through the day without complaining about things; driving would be calmer, my family would be happier, the house would be cleaner... (I can dream, right?) The idea is that you don't complain (or gossip - is that possible?) for 21 days, thus creating a habit. They recommend wearing a bracelet, and if you complain, you must switch the bracelet to the other wrist. Sounds simple, right? (Although I was pretty sure that my wrists would chafe from all the activity.)

We ordered ourselves a couple of bracelets (sadly, when I saw them on the website, my first thought was "Oh - they're ugly!" Yeah - I have some work to do...) Here is the Professor wearing his bracelet.


I've been somewhat lax about wearing mine - The Professor has done a much better job sticking to the program. However, there have been casualties:


Here is The Professor's bracelet now. Suffice it to say that one shouldn't complain angry. It's been an interesting experiment, and certainly helps me be more mindful of the petty comments I make during the day.

I don't know if it's actually made me a better person, but I haven't heard any complaints.