34.40 Managing Annoyances — F/U

Religion-Outside-The-Box

The 77% Weekly

The 40/52-weeks-a-year, spiritual-religious newsletter

A reflection on annoyances…
I am doing the exercise that I sent out on Monday — Managing Annoyances — and have two observations that I wanted to share with you.
(No, I’m not going to tell you the number of times that I get annoyed a day as that might lead to competition.)
Here are two things that I’ve found:
  1. I want to record WHY I am annoyed every time that I get annoyed.  I really want to be able to justify my irk.
  2. The simple act of taking out my note-pad to record my annoyances short-circuits my usually path of making a snarky comment.  As Victor Frankl said: Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
I hope you are trying this exercise and learning about you — after all, what is more important to learn?
Rb

—

It’s o.k. to seek love.

November 6, 2025

Beloved reader, I am redoing the rotb.org website.  Again. Why am I redoing the website again? Because a website older than (blank) years is (blank minus one) years overdue for a facelift.  (The standard is three years for small sites and six years for large sites.)  ✧✧✧ While placing into the background a composite grid, 15 wide by five tall,

Read More »

Apple-Banana-Cap

November 5, 2025

An apple, a banana, and a baseball cap.🍎🍌🧢 ✧✧✧  I arrive at the wedding venue super early. My preference, always, is to arrive early, find the couple, and let them see that I’m on site. (It usually calms them down.) But, today, I’m super, super early. The couple haven’t even arrived yet. “You the photographer?” I ask a man pulling

Read More »

Deleted Scenes from the Book of Jonah.

October 17, 2025

A few weeks ago, in writing to you about the High Holy Day services, I referenced stopping the telling the story of the fish-dwelling prophet, Jonah in order to read to two-year old Nora. I thought, “Hey, I know what would make a good article! A fuller, playful retelling of the Book of Jonah.” But, then I read what I

Read More »