I'm painting the exterior of my house this week, and I ran some of my color ideas past eight friends. They polarized perfectly. One person's favorite scheme was the ugliest thing someone else ever saw, an aesthetic abomination to the point, really, of immorality. Okay, fine. I expected as much. But it doesn't end there. Some folks have invested their egos in their choices, and my making a slightly different selection than their preference has wrought much scorn and offense. This was unexpected. To those whose feelings I hurt, I offer my most contrite, humble and heartfelt "you are waaaaay out of line." A one-time solicitation of opinion does not equal ongoing, hypercritical carte blanche.
This got me thinking about unwelcome criticism. Some folks have earned a license to give unsolicited advice, and others haven't. God help me, my ex Allie bears such a license. She had Khristi and the AW pegged long before anyone else did, including and especially me, and although that fact chafes my butt, I can't ignore such a valuable source of insight. The single best piece of unsolicited advice came from Elizabeth, who pointed out that I was repeating a pattern so disturbing, I had to pull over the car and recover from her observation.
The worst advice I've ever gotten, in contrast, is a tie.
#1a Upon hearing that I wanted to be a technical writer, Dad scoffed that there was no such profession and that I was doomed to a life of destitution. Years later, when forced to confront my success in this fictitious field, he became enraged and accused me of subsidizing my surely meager income by selling drugs. Yep. Dad was a genius.
#1b A related tale. Like, apparently, my friends, my brother has tremendous ego invested in people doing what he suggests. When in the 80s I decided his advice was dead wrong and I bought—GASP!—a personal computer, he went positively batshit. He told anyone who'd listen how I was throwing money around on impractical extravagances. You'd have thought I blew a fortune on strippers, not made a minor investment upon which my entire career would later be predicated. True story: three years ago, he finally relented and bought his daughters a computer. An Apple II. As in pre-Macintosh. As in 1982. He was outraged that no software is available for it. Yep. Genius runs in the family.