Monthly Archives: January 2018

This will only be of interest to folks who read comic books in the eighties but it'll be a lot of interest to them. It's a 22 minute promotional video made (apparently) in late 1984 in the offices of DC Comics back when their editorial offices were at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York and it gives you a chance to see and hear many folks who were working for them then. Among those who are sadly no longer with us are Dick Giordano, Julius Schwartz, Joe Orlando and Len Wein…

It's pretty long but you might want to read a long article by Michael Grunwald about what Donald Trump accomplished and didn't accomplish in '17 and what may lie ahead for '18. It's going to get worse for both sides before it can get better for either.

There is, of course, no earthly reason why we can't make resolutions on August 14 or May 23…but New Year's Day is such a tidy day for them. If you resolve on September 3 to henceforth stop doing something and then on September 8 you start doing it again, you might find yourself wondering, "Hmm…did I make this resolution — the one I've now broken — on the second or the third? Did I manage to keep it for five days or six this time?"

Make 'em on January 1 and it's easier to figure how long you held out before you decided one little milk shake now and then won't hurt…or that it's okay to do a little crystal meth once in a while.

Today, I'm resolving to listen to fewer complaints in 2018 — especially complaints where the complainer doesn't really (or shouldn't really) expect me to solve the problem(s); they just want to tell me how distressed they are. They're wasting their time and it's their time, they have every right to waste it. But in doing so, they're also wasting my time and I'm going to try to put an end to that part. Sometimes, they're also dragging my mind way far away from the script I'm trying to write and forcing me into a mood that'll make it hard for me to resume my writing.

My resolution has exceptions to it, of course. Certain friends complain to me so little and only with enough good reason that I'll hear them out. Sometimes, the complaint is part of a genuinely funny or interesting or enlightening story. Sometimes, the complaint is brief and it's the kind I (and maybe no one else) can quickly eradicate for them. Those are all fine.

But otherwise, I don't need to hear a half-hour of your problems just because (a) you haven't even tried to solve them; you just figure it's easier to ask me to…or (b) you just want to vent and you think "Evanier's a good listener." I'm really not. I'm going to stop pretending I am.

Now, let me interrupt here because I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "This guy is complaining to us about people complaining to him." A good point but it's not the same thing. You don't have to read this blog. You can stop whenever you like without hurting my feelings at all. If this topic bothers you at all, now would be a great time to click elsewhere and here — I'll even make it easy for you. This is a link to a page of Funny Names to Give a Duck.

Go there instead of reading the rest of this. Funny duck names are great. I especially like "Quack Galifianakis."

But really, please. If I never tell you my problems — and I almost never tell anyone my problems except for comedic purposes — don't tell me yours. Here are a few tips though that may help you solve yours without my (or anyone's) help…

I have found that I can't solve a problem until I can gauge it at the proper scale. Treating it like it's way less serious than it really is makes it difficult to solve. Treating it like it's way, way more serious than it really is usually makes it impossible. Step back and ask yourself, "How big a problem is this really?"

Differentiate between problems that can be solved with one phone call and those that can't. If you can't get a job, that can feel like the biggest problem in the world but it's one that can totally disappear if the phone rings in five minutes and someone offers you the right position. If you have a serious illness or physical condition, there is no one phone call that can make that one go away.

While you're at it, ask yourself if this is really and truly a problem at all. Just because it looks like a problem or feels like a problem doesn't mean that it is one or that you have to treat it as one. I would say a good third of the problems people bring to me are in the category of "Just ignore it and it will go away" — and it does.

I have also found that, at least for me, if I can't solve a problem, the problem is that I really and truly don't understand the problem. Try asking yourself, "What's actually happening here?" The answer may be something that's painful to admit but you probably need to admit it if you're going to solve it.

And the painful admission might be that somewhere in the past, you tried to solve this problem the wrong way. You might need to accept that you made a mistake before you can find a solution that works.

Also, one must remember that if the problem is what you're afraid might happen, it might not. In my life, I have worried about many, many problems that never happened.

There are also problems that can only be solved by not letting them occur in the first place. There are many freeways we could all name which, if you get on them at certain hours, you are almost always giving yourself the problem of sitting in bumper-to-bumper stasis for long periods of time and being late for something. Fuming about the traffic when you should have known better is only good for reminding you to know better in the future.

And there are also downsides which inevitably flow from upsides. I once met a guy who'd won something like $30 million in a state lottery and he seemed like the most miserable person, droning on and on about how everyone was asking him for loans or gifts of cash. Winning all that money was such a horrible thing. It's like if someone spends his or her life trying to become famous and then complains about how they can't go anywhere — for God's sake! — without being recognized. Some good things come with bad things attached and they can't be separated. Just accept both as a package deal and stop whining.

Learn to differentiate problems that are caused by luck of the draw or circumstances beyond your control from problems that are of your own making…or which are beyond your power to solve. You probably can't remove Donald Trump from office or cure some disease, at least by yourself. There may be some where the futility is a little less obvious.

Which brings us to this last one: That there are some problems that just plain cannot be solved. Medical problems can be like that but so can many other kinds. In those situations, your thinking probably needs to change from "How do I solve this?" to "How do I minimize the suffering?" It can be tough to make that transition because most of us don't like the idea of giving up but this gets back to the part where you need to a realistic answer to the question, "What's actually happening here?" and the possibly-painful answer that may come with it. It may not be cost-effective to keep fixing that old, broken-down car of yours. You may need to give up on it and get another…or begin taking the bus.

And I probably should have included something about not thinking life is meant to be without problems. Light bulbs do burn out, tires do go flat, you do sometimes have no toilet paper in the house. Once in a while, a whole bunch of those things will all occur at about the same time. That doesn't mean life is awful. It just means you need to go to Costco. You'd be amazed how many problems I have sometimes solved at the same time with a trip to Costco.

I'm telling you all this because whoever you are, I'd like you to have a better year in 2018. But more important is that I'd like me to have a better year in 2018 and I've decided that one way to do that is to give myself fewer problems…like, say, just mine and no one else's. This is me trying to make that happen. And by the way, it is not okay to do a little crystal meth once in a while. Just in case you were thinking it was.