No victims allowed

Before I get to that, I just finished watching Tiger win tonight. The guy is amazing. Austin and Els were challenging him for a while there, but Tiger came on strong. His partner in the final round, Ames, was one of the people who made some disparaging remarks about Tiger...Ames tanked, so perhaps people will learn to keep their mouths shut. Ha! There are certain folks in the world who take comments like that as a personal affront, and proceed to kick your ass and then rub your face in the dirt. It seems that Tiger is one of them. It's fun to watch!

My favorite comment from today was from one of the commentators, when Tiger nailed a putt: "This guy can really roll the potato." That made me laugh!

Okay, the victim thing. My friend Greg at work and I had a good conversation about this at work today, and it's truly one of my pet peeves. I have no sympathy for anyone who constantly blames everyone else for their problems. I don't care if it's financial, marital, personal, job-related, what have you, there comes a time when you have to step back and realize that hey, maybe MY behavior has something to do with this! If things like that happen to you over and over again, I would think that you'd start to figure out that maybe there's a problem with what you're doing. That seems highly logical to me, as Spock would say. If it seems like certain things happen to you repeatedly, perhaps it's time to take a look at what you are doing and make an adjustment.

There is no such thing as a free ride in life. We all have the opportunity to make things happen for ourselves--we live in America, and there's a reason so many people want to come here from other countries. It upsets and angers me to hear people say things like, "I'm entitled to this," or "You OWE me." Here's some news for you--no one owes you anything. There are so many opportunities to make things better for yourself, and to me, it's just a matter of how bad do you want it? Really...do you want to learn more, and make an effort, or do you want to be totally lame and expect a handout for the rest of your life?

For me, it all comes down to personal responsibility and accountability, and we have the ability in our country to do almost anything. If you hate your life, your job, your situation, make a plan and say, "I'm going to change things." If you sit back and expect everyone to come to you and change your life, or if you expect people to just give you money, I want no part of you. Begone, lame person. You're a waste of space.

I mentioned Greg earlier, and our conversation about such things. He's heading back to evening shift soon, when he goes back to taking classes (he's close to his degree). I'm really going to miss him--it's been so much fun talking with him! Like I told him, he brings out my inner fifth-grader. He replied, "I like to think that I'm the fifth-grader in everyone." You are, my friend, you are...but the serious conversations are fun, too. He's a peach.