Tag Archives: Guilt

Starting again

For quite a few days I wanted to write here again already. But I didn’t know what to write, so I kind of postponed. But today I thought, well, let’s just start, same like the sharing in my Twelve Steps group. At first I didn’t have so much to share and was often finished within the time allowed, but lately I just talk and mostly I just keep talking. And also there, I just start, not knowing what I want to share. I only know participating in my Twelve Steps groups and sharing helps me, makes me feel better, as I noticed if I don’t share, it makes a difference.

And looking back this whole Inspiration for Success thing was about sharing, was about wanting to be heard. And I still want to be heard, want to achieve something. But more and more it is about me, about sharing myself, sharing my thoughts, helping me, and hopefully also someone else, you.

So one of the thing I encountered today was this:

“Wikipedia describes guilt as “a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or believes — accurately or not — that he or she has compromised his or her own standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard and bears significant responsibility for that violation.” The purpose of guilt is to enable us to make amends or right what we did wrong. When we wallow in guilt however, or think of ourselves as bad people, then we have moved on to toxic shame which is mostly unhealthy and unproductive.” – Anon

And the main reason is that I am feeling an enormous amount of guilt. And I asked something like what the purpose of guilt is. And this was the answer someone gave.

Another thing I encountered today was the daily, or regular e-mail of Leo Babauta. And I won’t copy it here, as I think it is too long, but you can just read it at Meditation according to Leo Babauta.

And I don’t know what to write further, so maybe I’ll write here later on, maybe not. But at least I started again, and that feels very good.

Mistake? Accident?

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Two things in my mind right now, and they may be related.

The first was the remark of Tony Fernandes about the accident with AirAsia flight QZ8501, the remark that the phone call he received about that was the worst thing in his life, no matter rehearsals or something. And at first that appeared weird to me, as, and don’t get me wrong, air crashes are part of life for any airline. I can’t imagine any airline not having dealt with or having to deal with a crashed plane in the past or the future, as accidents, including with planes, just happen. But then I realized that AirAsia is kind of the baby o fTony Fernandes, so I guess his feelings about an air crash would be different from the feelings of an ‘ordinary’ CEO of an airline. And I know he is kind of a people person, so of course his feelings would be with the crew, passengers and their family. But still, what he said and the way he said it surprised me. The worst moment of his life? And that he expected he would never forget it, that that phone call would stay with him for the rest of his life? That is quite something.

Then another accident happened. Or something like that. As it appeared that one of the domains of one of my customers has been expired. Which is kind of a deadly sin for a web development company, for someone delivering web services. And it started with an e-mail that looked like spam, an e-mail indicating that there was something wrong with the domain and that urgent action was required. And I get many e-mails like that, but as I remembered there was one domain about to expire I decided to check. And indeed it was the domain the e-mail was about. But the creation date was January 25, 2014, so still four days to go as normally domains are registered for one year. And the renewal date was January 30, 2015, so almost ten days to go.

So I decided to renew the domain, which is normally just a few clicks and also this time. But something appeared to have gone wrong as there was a message about the domain being in the redemption period. And I didn’t know exactly what redemption period means, so I just decided to contact the support through chat, only to find out that I was indeed too late with domain renewal and had to pay an additional USD 200.00 to get the domain back. So of course I was very upset as this customer has financial problems and has kind of stopped all the work. And he has also indicated a while ago that he didn’t have money, but that he had paid a cash advance and that that should cover cost for a while. And as there were no real big expenses since that time I never bothered to make push my proposal and/or check whether the cash advance still covered my expenses. But it also means that I basically don’t earn anything from this customer, let alone USD 200.00 additional cost.

So I felt really bad as this month I basically don’t have any income and an additional USD 200.00 on top of normal living expenses is an awful lot of money. And as I am supposed to be the expert and also use that as a selling point I felt and feel obliged to pay for my mistake of not renewing the domain in time, even though it felt kind of unfair as I already advance a lot of expenses (like domains) for this customer and the USD 200.00 would mean I just lose money on this customer. So I am already hit very bad by hardly having any business for this customer, and now I even have to pay USD 200.00 for a mistake I made.

So I didn’t really know what to do, except explaining my situation to the customer support person and asking if they would be willing to help me, like waiving the additional USD 200.00 as I am dealing with domains for almost ten years now and this has never happened to me before. And how could I know there was a five day advance renewal required? Yes, being the expert I should investigate, but who would do that (and remember)?

And then I realized this was not just an ordinary mistake, but just like plane crashes, a lot of things had happened leading up to this event:

My business is not doing well, which means I don’t check my domain account as often as I used to.
Part of the reason my business is not doing so well is still the economy not doing so well.
And as I was not that busy I had time to move part of my domains to another registrar, also to save cost. If my business and/or economy had been better I would have probably not spent time on that.
Because my business is not doing so well I don’t have much cash, meaning I did not include this domain in my last domain renewal transaction earlier this month. Partly again because of my credit card cut off period that was after that transaction. Something I normally don’t mind so much about, but with slow economy and no cash…
I am used to getting quite some e-mails about domain renewal and normally domain registrars are very alert on this. Somehow I have the feeling I don’t get e-mails as often as before and not getting a serious warning before a domain gets in its redemption state is really weird.
However, again because business is down I don’t put so much attention to issues like having the feeling the e-mail warnings are not in time. Strange, but true.

So after realizing all this I also realized that all of this is more of an accident than a mistake. And what mistake did I actually make? The only mistake I made was not knowing that this type of domain needs to be renewed at least five days before it expired. But should I really blame myself for that? Yes, I consider myself an expert, but who would keep track of this type of thing without any warning? I couldn’t see that even anywhere in my screen and I didn’t get any warning, where normally the closer a renewal date is, the more e-mails I get, especially if you are about to lose a domain. And yes, I was late, later than I realized and then I wanted. But still, if you are used to warning e-mails?

And then I saw the site was even offline, which didn’t make any sense to me as the creation date was January 25, 2014, valid for one year, and the expiration date shown in the screen was January 30, 2015. So how can a site be cut off when the expiration date has not even been reached.

And then I realized there may be a real mistake, a mistake in the system of my domain registrar. As I understood from the support person that the domain needed to be renewed five days before the ‘real’ expiry date. And the expiry date in the screen showed January 30, 2015, so five days after January 25, 2015. So the real cause of the redemption of the domain may just be an error, a mistake, in the system of my registrar, which may also be the reason I didn’t get a warning message the domain was about to be lost.

Still, this post was and is not intended to discuss all kinds of technical issues. My main reason to write about this was that it felt very unfair that I was supposed to take a loss of USD 200.00 where I don’t even earn that much from my customer. And that somehow I took all the blame and responsibility and consequences for the solution of this issue. As I didn’t want to involve the customer in this. So one of my questions was and is if it is okay, in this type of case, to involve the customer in this and maybe even ask him to pay all or part of the cost.

And next to this, what are ‘mistakes’ and what are ‘accidents’ and who should take the consequence. And yes, I guess this all goes back that I am too soft to be a businessman. As I should have just pushed through with contract renewal and just let the customer pay what he has to pay, as I am quite sure he has an outstanding balance now.

So being too soft indeed can have far reaching consequences and is apparently not healthy for both parties.

And I am very tired now, so the end of this post is a bit chaotic and not to the point and well written. But the issue of ‘mistake’ and ‘accident’ is worthwhile to think about further.

Responsibility, guilt, forgiveness?

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I am still searching for more clarity on responsibility, guilt and forgiveness. And maybe this mornings event where I found out one of our dogs had a bad cut in his mouth was intended to clarify this a bit more, but believe me, I didn’t like the event and I am still upset as I decided to postpone any action as it was just too much dealing with it. And there were many thoughts in my mind, including an “I can’t”, a phrase my mam often uses, a phrase I hate, as it is just not true, at least not literally.

But basically this morning I decided something like “I can’t” towards this issue with our dog, even though I forced it into an “I don’t want to”. And it was a hard decision as I felt responsible and my “I don’t want to” made me feel guilty (towards the dog?).

And a lot of things are going through my mind, as apparently I know the difference between responsibility and guilt. And it also comes to my mind that there is a difference between feeling responsible and being responsible. And right now the question “who decides” comes in my mind. And it seems there is a whole grey area around this, so apparently in the end it is just opinion if responsibility or guilt is applicable. And everything seems to point to me, as the dog is basically okay and the main issue is that I hate things like this for various reasons. And the main reason is that I don’t like injuries and handicaps. So in this case I can’t stand that the dog would have a distorted lip for the rest of his life. And the strange thing is the dog doesn’t seem to mind, so I am the only one who minds. And maybe my partner, but he isn’t here.

Ah, and there is the issue of insecurity, as I am not a vet or a doctor, so I wouldn’t know how bad the injury is and how and how much it would heal by itself.

So well, let’s make some statements:

The dog decided to fight, so he is responsible for having the injury in the first place (if he indeed got it through the fight I think he got it through).
I decide to have the dog, so if the dog is injured, I am kind of obliged to help him (as he can’t do it himself). This is a tricky one though, as in nature there wouldn’t be something like a human responsible for treatment.
My guilt is mainly related to the fact that I don’t earn enough. This means I don’t have a car, so today it was just too much hassle to get the dog to the vet.
My guilt is also related that I don’t have friends, so I have no one to ask to help me with this, like asking someone to bring me to the vet.
As I don’t earn enough, the dogs are basically too expensive for me (us?), so they would be better off with someone else (yes, there is also a whole world behind this statement).
The thing will probably not go away by itself as I don’t believe the injury will heal properly without being stitched by a vet.
I don’t think the whole thing is very urgent as the dog acts and looks okay, even though the would may not heal by itself.
Despite the last I still felt very guilty for not doing something straight away, but I think that has to do with the fact that I have to do something anyhow, so better do it now.

And right now it is very late and this whole thing is much more complicated (and interesting) than I thought, so I’ll stop now and pick it up later, either in this post or in another.

More on forgiveness

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The word forgiveness keeps sticking in my mind. Together with the related word ‘wrong’ and also the words guilt and responsibility as to me the last two sound the same, have the same meaning.

So forgiveness implies something wrong has been done (intentionally?). And to undo(?) that wrong you need to forgive. Or at least that’s one of the things you can do according to what I found on Wikipedia. As Wikipedia mentions condoning, excusing, pardoning, forgetting and reconciliation as alternatives.

And while re-reading the article on Wikipedia I realize that I am pretty vengeful, as recently I often notice I want revenge for wrong that has been done to me.

And I realize I have to stop now, as it is very late, I had a pretty bad day, especially the start and I’m just sleepy.

Strange, as I was planning a really good post here now today and I think I started pretty well.

So more or better tomorrow.

Forgiveness and Hiroshima

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In my mind is still the subject of forgiveness I was writing about yesterday. And I just saw a documentary related to the dropping of Little Boy on Hiroshima. And there was something else in my mind I think, but I can’t remember it right now. Maybe my silence when I feel powerless towards other people.

The forgiveness stayed in my mind because I understand it is related to wrong doing. And I think I can’t imagine or accept that things have been done wrong to me as I always find excuses for things, things other people do. Ah, another thing came up with me today or so, that I don’t know the difference between being responsible and being guilty. As for me being responsible means something like being guilty. So who would want to be responsible or take responsibility if it only leads to being guilty?

So it seems I am starting to realize that my dad did wrong to me. And that he was responsible, but, I realize while writing, not necessarily guilty. And the wrong he did had and still has unimaginable consequences for my life. And yes, I guess I am very angry with my dad, still, as I thought I had forgiven him. Or something like that. As the subject of my dad keeps coming back, but I guess many or most or all people have issues with their dad. Or with their mam. Or with both.

So it seems I have to accept my dad did wrong to me. As maybe that is what I don’t do, maybe I keep finding excuses for him, that he had his reasons for what he did and that his intentions were good. But maybe that’s not the point. As everybody’s intentions are good. For themselves or from their perspective. As I understand that the Hiroshima bombing was ‘right’ and saved many lives. As it prevented an invasion that would have probably cost many more lives than the lives of the people killed in the bombing.

But of course it was wrong for the people in Hiroshima, and later the people in Nagasaki. As their lives were ended or destroyed. So well, is there guilt involved? Maybe not. Is there responsibility involved? Certainly. So maybe this is a good sample to keep in mind while learning about the difference between guilt and responsibility.

And right now I’m just tired, so I’m going to stop now. But I think it was very useful writing, as I think it brought me a little closer to understanding.