My region is known for cultural complaining. Gather people from the Balkans around a table, and it’s like a championship in complaining. I suspect this bad habit has Ottoman roots. You shouldn’t stand out, to not gather unwanted attention. Misery as camouflage.
For me – not sure. At one point, I read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Carnegie is strongly against complaining. He thinks nobody enjoys listening to that and he’s a smart person. I suspect he’s at least partially right. So I’ve been putting some significant effort to not do that, or at least not as much. Also, some of the most popular subreddits on Reddit are all around people complaining about their relationships. So maybe at least some people find diving into other people’s problems a good use of their time.
Overall, I think have a good capacity to complain, and also a strong desire to not do it. Here, I let myself complain about cars, which I believe are bad for everyone, and about AI overviews of websites, which I believe are unfair use of other people’s intellectual property.
Speaking of heritage, here’s a Sofia classic. Pickled food and cats
My days used to be all the same, with some slight differences in the type of workload between work and weekend days. You can’t shake off unfinished work, health problems, or general stress just because it’s a weekend day. Most problems are sticky, like tar, and unrelated to the day of the week.
What changed?
I’m not sure how but between the daily steps, kids growing up, and the discovery that I can occasionally shut down Slack, a new experience became available to me: the afternoon nap. I’m taking a nap every Saturday afternoon.
I consider starting a new post series on my blog about my experience with the communist Bulgaria, between 1979 and 1989. The idea is inspired by a book I’m currently reading, but more about the book once I finish it.
The story today is about my first cat. She was a tabby with lots of white, not as much as the cat above but you get the idea. The year is 1987 or 1988.
My brother got her from a friend without permission, let her home, and she hid behind some furniture for hours. She was probably 4-5 months old at the time. Our parents weren’t too happy about it but played cool and let us have her. We were super happy, must’ve played with her for hours every day. She loved playing, loved chasing walnuts, and was overall a very energetic animal who seeked attention. My hands had some constant 10-20 scratches at any time as she was always sharp and ready for battles.
Our plays didn’t sit well with the neighbor from the floor below. Now that I have kids of my own, I can imagine the noise we made with the cat and all these walnuts and tennis balls. The neighbor’s response to the issue, however, was that he would yell at us, threaten us, and he tried to enter our place several times. One time, he kicked the door while my brother was on the other side, and opened a large wound on his forehead. My parents called the police. A very large officer showed up and interviewed us, then left. I still remember some very uncomfortable questions for my age, like exact words of the insults the neighbor was screaming. Also, the size of that officer was stunning for us. Obesity in communist Bulgaria was uncommon because people didn’t have all that much food. We were all thin.
There were no follow-ups, we reduced the number of rolling toys, and the neighbor banged on the door less often after that. My brother’s would healed. Cat kept finding walnuts for months after, I guess she had a secret stash in difficult to reach places.
She disappeared about a year later, apparently she got sick or poisoned during our summer break. Looking back, I suspect her diet might not have been very healthy as we didn’t have cat food. She would eat things like bread, milk, yogurt, and occasional canned fish. Wouldn’t be surprised if she suffered the health consequences for eating bread and not enough taurine. We were unaware of any of that at the time, Internet didn’t exist, and there were no vets for pets anywhere to be found either. Cat food as a concept didn’t exist either. Stores would sell essentials only – bread, milk, flower, sugar, and so on, and they would run out, so you’d have to wait on a queue or go at specific days or hours.
Having another cat after I became an adult showed me how much food a healthy cat needs and how large they can get. So poor thing, didn’t last long with us but at least, she was loved and played a lot.
Veselin.blog 