Biggest Irritations of 2013 (New and Improved with Lemon Scent!) · 8:31pm Jan 2nd, 2014

I'm not one that likes or enjoys going around constantly complaining about things. I prefer to be rather chill about life and the daily upsets that happen. But... there are times when I just have to look back and take stock of some of the more impressive irritations that have passed my way over the course of the past year. I figure it's time to make a list and check it twice; maybe even get a little bit of humor out of it in the process.

10: Keyboards
Doesn't seem like an irritation, until you've gone through more than five keyboards in a single year! Yeah, s'right. I said, five!

I'm uber picky about what sort of keyboard I write on. I need a keyboard that it virtually flat to the table top. The flatter and thinner the better, I want to be able to rest my hands almost flat against the desk and write as if I'm touching the surface. But, finding that perfect keyboard proved a unique challenge, and one that had me throwing a few of them into the recycle bin.

09: XBox One
I was a Microsoft fanboy for years, I jumped ship from Sony back in '05 and thought that I would never look back. Then earlier in the year, Microsoft went all fucktard and announced a console that made me want to literally cry. I had devoted so much time to a company, a console and my stats on a system that was now seemingly turning its back on us as gamers in favor of home entertainment, and NetFlix.

Those months after the big announcement were hard waiting. It was truly an irritating experience.

08: Twitter Drops
I have two Twitter accounts; one for Pet Shop Daily and the other for me as a writer. Over the past year, one of the more annoying and irritating things has been the follower drops from Twitter for no damn reason. I make a few tweets, get a few followers, and then in less than a day, they drop. I mean, good Lord, how witty do I have to get? Is it maybe that I didn't tweet about every thing from brushing my teeth to pissing and shitting that they found me boring?

Sigh...

07: Marketing
Don't be fooled for a second in thinking that writing a book, editing a book, and independently publishing a book is the last step. I've had to do a lot of marketing, and internet sales pitching. I think in that vein, one of the more irritating things has been the weirdness of places like Goodreads and writing forums that want to talk writing, want to talk authors and readers but won't let you plug your book. The idea being that, I am supposed to get so involved in the community that people find me irresistible and want to know more about me, then maybe will ask, "Hey, do you write? What have you done that matches your awesome internet forum prowess?"

It's like putting out a sign welcoming all writers, but forbidding them to show off their work.

06: What Do You Do For A Living?
I hate being asked that. It's a loaded question, and one that can't really be put in words. For example, I get asked, "What I do?" I say, "I'm a writer." They say, "Oh yeah? What have you written?" or "What do you write?"

Then I stand there and stare at them. Well, let's see. I write genre bending sci-fi and mystery. Whoops. I just lost them at genre bending...

Or, I tell them about my novel, and they ask for a summary. How the hell am I going to pitch a book to someone that has no imagination, and would zone out about the part where I say, "It's about these mythical beings that live in America..."

05: That Look I Get When I Say, "I'm A Writer."
It doesn't happen very often, but on occasion, there are those that just can't hide that disapproving look whenever I tell them that I don't have a actual 40 hour a week "day" job, working for the man, and am instead a lowly writer. I guess when they hear that, somewhere in the back of their minds, they instead hear, "artist" and assume that I'm some sort of bum, or freeloader. I can handle their looks; hell, I can even handle the head shakes, but what burns my ass, is when they say, "That's a job?"

04: All The Self-Helpers
Maybe it's just the era in which I grew up; or maybe the way things were done back in the before time but, I find the constant onslaught of wannabee writers with self-help criticism a little fantastic and ridiculous. There is a passage of the Bible that says, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank of wood in your own eye?"

I've made it pretty plain that I don't and probably never will put as much effort into writing fan fiction as I would a novel or something publishable. The reason being... opinions, man. Never the less, I still write fan fiction, and I post it, and then somewhere in there is the comment that doesn't really comment on the story (good or bad or it sucked). Instead, it's a juvenile writer with no concept of story progression or basic voice of narrative that wants to find that one little comma, or typo and bring it to everyone's attention.

I try to disregard those sorts of comments because I know that it makes those guys feel good to braggishly flex their little tiny writing muscles in front of others; but there are times it irritates more than it amuses, and I want to give them a crash course in writing... the medieval way.

03: Beta Readers
Over the past year I have seen an explosion of good writers both professional and non-contemporary, making use of beta readers. I'm all for a good working relationship with one's editor, and with sounding off ideas on a fresh set of ears and eyes; but the dependence on beta readers and pre-readers has become a serious crux of the writing process.

As a writer, I know exactly what I want in the narrative at all times. Likewise, I'm too apt to make drastic changes along the way, and then after it's all said and done, go back and tweak and re-write some parts to match the new direction I've taken the story. In the end, it's always my way or the highway. I don't bother with beta readers because I'm not interested in commercializing my artform, I give a damn about trending themes, and I couldn't care less about what someone else thinks I should do with my narrative. The burden of responsibility is on my shoulders, and mine alone. I don't share credit, I don't share my success. Period.

The writing workshops I used to attend in the early 2000s were invaluable in this regard. We discussed ways to break molds and skew concepts; we didn't make suggestions on one another's works and we never mentioned grammar or spelling. It was an unsung rule. We merely relished in the glow of being surrounded by creative minds and the barrage of encouragement we heaped on each other.

02: That One Friend
There is always that one friend that can only be handled in small doses; the one that is loud semi-obnoxious and enjoys the sound of their own voice over the roar of the crows. It's this particular friend that were it up to me would be invited over on a bi-yearly basis, and probably not a day, week, or month sooner. Unfortunately, this is not the case. My other friend that usually comes over to hang on Sundays is forever passing off an invite to the annoying friend, and dragging him along.

For the most of this past year, this friend has been a near constant fixture whenever my other friend would show up. Don't get me wrong, I'm too nice to say, "Leave his ass behind." But this is my house, and I wasn't aware that invitations for one person also equaled an invitation for all at the same time. My game room is small, there's barely enough room for me, my wife, and another person to sit comfortably and play games. Having a fourth person adds to the confines of the available space, and it means re-arranging the room to accommodate the fact that we are one HD TV short.

Well, we game it up, but therein lies the problem. The third man doesn't have a next generation console, so can't play the games we all have, get's irritable at playing the games we do have, and complains that we are better than him; when he's not accusing everyone online of cheating, and taking advantage of his weak FPS skills.

Last Sunday was probably the icing on the cake. I finally got around to buying all the Fast and the Furious movies on Blue Ray, and it was a big deal, since I'd not seen any but the first one. (I know, I suck) My friend helps himself to my just purchased movies, opens them, and starts to watch them on his PS3 since, he doesn't have any games we can all play at the same time anyway. Which begs the question... why he came over anyway?

So there I am trying to play Battlefield 4 and doing my level best NOT to look over at him while he's watching my goddamn movies. Can we all say, "irritated?"

01: Social Networking, God, and the Infinite Elbows
Over the past year, I've grown quite irritated with the whole social networking scene. For one, it seems that unless I want to be the last to know anything about what my family is doing, I need to be camping out on Facebook all damn day, seven days a week. Birthdays get missed, important events get overlooked, and in between hundreds of pointless motivational posters, there is constant copy-pastas of annoying and overly opinionated jabs at both my religious and political views.

Now... let me say right up front, that I have strong Christian views, I may or may not be a Republican, I might in fact be the greatest minority in the history of America; and yet I am not allowed to voice my opinion about any of these things without arguments, or annoying people offering factoids about why religion is a load of shit, or how monumentally bad it is to be even the slightest bit conservative. It's okay to have people insult, defame and make derogatory remarks about my views, even going so far as to insult my intelligence and call me names, but God forbid I am allowed to voice my opinion back.

I don't usually get irritated by opinions. After all, they are like elbows and assholes. Everyone has an opinion, and until recently it was okay to have a different view point than someone else. It added to the spice of life, and it made people interesting. These days, it seems that we have to agree on religion, sexual preference, and political views or, I'm just a close minded asshole that wants to cause the lowly meek of the world to suffer. I'm sorry, but I'm not going around deliberately finding anti-democrat pictures and loading them in my Facebook feed, or going out of my way to push my views on anyone; but what I am getting is my friends, loved ones and their friends making a point of doing this. How is this fair or justified?

Social networking has done nothing but enable constant opinions to fester to the point that, I'm tired of listening to people. I really am. Give me a good discussion, not an argument about every fucking thing. I don't want to know that God isn't real, I want to know that we can go to see a movie in a theater and not have to worry that some angry nerd isn't going to shoot the place up. I don't want to hear how fucked up the country is because of some president, I want to know how we're going to resolve our differences and work together for a greater good. But instead of really truly wanting to get along, it seems that people are more concerned with tweeting about how (hashtag bullshit) is so great, and how I'm not.

Well, fuck it. Nobody cares about your tweets, your Facebook idiocy, or the fact that you can be justified in jabbing at me from the comfort of your living room, and not having a backbone, and getting out there and having a real life set of goals, dreams, views. I don't ride the coat-tails of trending feeds. I stick to my morals, my ideals, and my goals. I treat everyone the way I want to be treated, and I don't go looking for arguments; even if these days it seems that the majority of the time, I am not being treated to the same level of respect I show others.

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So there you have it. My top ten greatest annoyances of 2013.

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