I had a problem yesterday, then I made it go away.

Someone with whom I sometimes work has me begging for things. He might not even know he's does this, but what's his is his and don't touch without permission. The fact that we work together would seem to give him incentive to cooperate, but he's suspicious and that gets in the way of so many things.

Yesterday, I needed something from him. A simple thing. He could easily share it. Situations reversed, I'd have sent it maybe even before he asked, but situations aren't reversed, so I asked — politely, carefully — if I could trouble him for it. Phrasing things, revising my thoughts so as not to offend, I realized I was begging. Ugh.

Neither needing the thing nor the begging was the problem. My problem was that I was growing angry. I wanted to complain about him to someone else. I wanted to tell him to go fuck off. My problem was choosing to make myself angry wishing things were other than they are with this guy.

That's a problem because I still need this one thing and need to work with him from time to time. If I go into each interaction angry and expecting a fight, I'm going to be a very unhappy boy.

Yesterday, anger and frustration welling up as I begged, I stopped and asked, "what other choices do I have?" Before anyone thinks I'm enlightened, what I yelled was, "what other fucking choice do I have working with this motherfucker?!" Still, that question served me well. What other choices did I have?

That's easy: I could let my anger go.

I hit send on the message, understanding that he's a difficult partner but I'm smart enough to work around that. A day later I still haven't heard back from him. I'll find another way to do the work and move him that much further out of my life, move myself that much farther from my problems.

Again, lest I seem enlightened, I wrote the line above thinking "move that motherfucker that much further out of my life." Luckily, motherfucker turns out to be one of my happy words. It's no problem.