I (might) be doing something right...

I find it curious that external events—and here, I suppose I should qualify that to say "external events of negative impact on one's life"—can have such a profound real-time adverse influence on my mental state, putting me in "pity party" mode, only to have that state almost automatically flip to "silver lining" mode with no conscious effort on my part a little while later.

I was feeling completely bummed after yesterday's phone conversations. About two hours later, I'd worked out a couple of strategies to deal with the situation, and since then, have come up with a couple more, and am enlisting the aid of an expert as well.

I might not have mentioned this here (as I've journaled about it before), were it not for finding a scrap of paper, during my daily "ten minutes of cleanup," on which I had scribbled some thoughts on a related subject, to wit: negative self-talk and the derogatory comments of others.

I wonder at what level such self-talk operates?

Long ago, I came to the conclusion that negative self-talk (or the negative comments of others) is only really "effective" to the extent that you let it. People cannot subjugate your soul by calling you an idiot, or by otherwise denigrating you—not without your cooperation!

But an interesting question arises in this context. What if you have, to some degree, acted in such a way as to have earned such opprobium? And it's your own insides, frankly, that are tearing you down?

At this point, my note sort of goes off on a tangent, and the question remains.

So now that I've "shown the tennis racket hanging over the mantelpiece" in previous paragraphs, I suppose I should whack something/someone with it to make this post make sense.

Sitting in a mental corner and shouting, "You idiot!" at yourself is not productive. You need to stop it from happening, which is a little like trying not to think of an elephant when someone says "elephant" to you at a party. (Partygoers who do that should be avoided, by the way, but I digress...)

How to stop it? Well, I'm no master of the technique, but putting it out of one's mind (by thinking of something else) is a good start. And here's a hint: if you've never done it before, it'll be hard the first few (hundred) times. After a while, though, it gets easier, and if you replace the "You idiot!" with thoughts of how to ameliorate the situation—apologize, make amends, etc.—it gets easier faster.

I find myself standing on a soapbox, apparently, and lecturing. Apologies, but I needed to get that out of my system.

Cheers...

Answering my own questions...

I ran across the word корректировка a little while ago, used in the context of something done to software.

The first word that came to mind was "update" ("The software was updated"), but the verb обновить came to mind, and got me to wondering...

So I started writing a note to my editor:

It would be interesting to find out what N means by корректировка, because in the strict sense, the word translates as "to patch" (i.e., perform actions to change small sections of executable code).

I kept thinking "out loud on paper" and added:

Updating commonly means installing a completely new version, which is much easier to have a customer perform and, frankly, would commonly be the approach selected by a vendor.

By the time I got to the part where I typed "frankly," I was convinced that "patch" was almost certainly wrong, so "update" stands.

I'll be alert to any squawks from the end client.

Cheers...

The plate runneth over...

Hey! Here it is, the better part of the day toward dinner, and I'm stuck between coming to terms with all the stuff on my plate and actually moving some of it back in the direction of my clients.

One thing I'm now convinced of: after cleaning up OCR of documents assigned by a relatively new client, the source word count goes down 15%–20% (so impressive numbers—take that how you wish—are no longer so impressive).

* * *For some reason, I've been the object of phone calls from all sorts of people who, not putting too fine a point on it, are trying to waste my time (e.g., a call from the bank's financial planning department to discuss my "retirement account").

Ex-squeeze me ladles and jelly-spoons, but what makes anyone think the afternoon before Turkey Day is a good time to do this kind of thing?

* * *Overheard while standing in line at the supermarket:

A: "...I'm just saying, it's a shame that people whose Mayflower ancestors were given refuge by Native Americans today don't want to let in refugees from Syria."

B (after a pause): "Yeah, right. That act of kindness really worked out well for the Indians, didn't it?"

Something of a curious counter, to be sure.

* * *I've already sent one job back today, and probably could send a second (it's 80% complete), while a third is not all that large (a couple of thousand words), but between all the bit-shuffling and post-OCR editing, I'm fairly beat.

Cheers...