Too many people conflate realism and pessimism, I am not a pessimist I simply see problems and solutions in a different way.

I find myself being told I am “negative” or that I “give up too easily” when faced with a situation or problem that doesn’t have an easy or obvious solution; that is simply not true, I need time to come up with a different way to figure it out, and people get impatient; especially if they are used to their way of doing this to be the “correct” way.

What makes all of this all the more frustrating is the fact that two people in my family are teachers, one a middle school teacher and the other a high school teacher, and they are trained to get students to listen and do work in a specific manner, this translates to outside of work as well, usually in the form of getting frustrated and angry when someone “gives up” and “refuses to listen”.

I try my best (probably not my hardest) to not let this bother me, it isn’t easy and tends to lead to icy attitudes and general ignoring of each other for several hours.