do not engage

I got a bitter and nasty email this morning that kind of threw off my whole day. I don't, generally, like it when people are mad at me, especially in a circumstance like this one where I am pretty much entirely confident that I have done nothing wrong. In this case I was furious about the whole deal and had to stop and calm myself down before proceeding.

Not responding might be the best option - and usually is if it's a social media stranger - but this was someone I know and I have never much liked ghosting people. I have some weird thing about people deserving the fundamental respect of a response even if it's just an explanation of why I will be blocking them. Ghosting leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Anger is a valid response, and one I know well. I have, historically, been pretty bad about rising to the bait of getting into fights on the internet - there's a reason why I'm banned from my alma mater's Facebook group. But I have over the past few years gotten better about this too. Dunking on people or tearing into them doesn't usually make me feel much better and I don't think it accomplishes much either.

So I did what I have been making an effort to do of late. I tried my best to respond evenly but firmly: whatever you're mad about is neither my fault nor my problem, and I won't be responding to this any further. I don't know if this is significantly more productive than just ghosting, and part of me wishes I had let my anger out - god knows in this case I have plenty of it - but again, what does that get me? Standing up for myself and people I care about is important to me but wasting my time getting into an argument with someone who clearly just wants someone to blame or to shout at won't do anything productive.

I don't know if this is advice or self-affirmation or what but I guess I hope it's a sign that I'm growing. Anger is valid and important and all of that good stuff but you really gotta think about how worth your time it is to let something upset you that badly. You can just tell people to fuck off (respectfully) and be done with it! The world might be a better place for it in the long run.