Diary of A Homeschooler-When I Get Angry
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Today’s article is all about anger… whether you can control it or not, everyone gets angry.
Welcome readers to this week’s article. I’m sure all of you have both heard and felt anger, one of the most prominent of human emotions. Everyone gets angry in life. Children and toddlers throw tantrums when they want food or a toy (except I still throw those kind of tantrums even as a 13 year old), adults get angry if they don’t get a promotion or they come home to find the house a total mess (like my dad), either caused by the angry child, or a dog. The elderly get angry when they forget their glasses are sitting right in front of them.
Anger is an unavoidable aspect of life and can build up overtime for certain people, which is unhealthy. Releasing anger is a very important thing but for me, I sometimes feel I get angry on the smallest of things nowadays. I sometimes wonder if those are the side effects of being a teenager, but usually, that thought is dismissed. The other day, I got angry at my mother (as she is really the only person besides my brother, that is at home most of the time) when she told me to eat my oranges. Everyday, she lays out an array of snacks for the day until my brother comes back at 4 pm. The snacks usually consist of a bowl of chopped baby carrots, one and a half oranges, and any other sweets likes some Gummies, a packet of ritz crackers or roasted seaweed. Almost everyday, I always refuse to eat the orange because I find them weird in taste. But of course, I am fighting with my mother so there is no way I am getting out of eating the oranges.
That day, I said I wouldn’t eat them and she responded by telling me I wouldn’t get dinner. This upset me and I angrily stormed away. Anyways, I ended up getting dinner and I also ended up eating the dry, sour oranges. Yet still, everyday I get angry that I have to eat them. I wish I could tell myself there is no point of wasting my energy on getting angry because of an orange fruit, but there is no stopping it.
Small things that make me angry can sometimes have an effect on the rest of my day and my mental health as well. One example of this, is actually a video game. I am not a fan of games like Fortnight, or Call of Duty, or PubG (is that how you spell it?) but there is one game, that I always play. It is called Clash Royale and it is a strategic game with no guns or violence at all. It consists of cartoon characters that are deployed to destroy towers for crowns. The player with the most crowns out of 3, wins the game. There are many variations to the game modes and I enjoy watching the game on Youtube as well. I love it because it actually uses skill or placement, timing and sharp decision making. This is why I have literally mastered the art of Clash Royale. Of course, I am over exaggerating the game’s premise.
One game mode I usually play to test cards or gain crowns for opening chests and unlocking new features is two versus two. In this mode, you are paired up with a random player and you face another set of random players. What gets me angry here is my partner. I am a winner, I don’t like losing, and I especially don’t like losing because of someone else. When playing a match, if my partner makes mistakes, I get angry.
What I then do is exit the game and leave him/her to fend for themselves. If they think they should play offensively instead of defensively, let’s see them do it by themselves. Now, I know thinking that I am the best player in the game is pretentious (and I am definitely not the best), but in my defence, I think my partners need to try harder.
Getting back to my point, when I get angry on small things, I get frustrated and usually try to quit. This habit is both unhealthy and healthy as when I quit, I get to relax my mind a bit, but I have developed the habit of getting angry more and more.
I get angry at family a lot as well. Specifically my brother. Sometimes I feel like making him jump into freezing cold water and watch him shiver, but that’s a bit too much. I guess when I am mad at a family member, it wears off very quickly. That anger usually vanquishes as fast has it had come.
So, how do I overcome anger? What I always do to overcome any anger I have, is distract myself. I think distractions are a key to keeping your cool and also, procrastinating. Technically, you are multi-tasking… in a bad way. After I do storm off to any other place inside my home, I usually read a comic, or watch a video or work. I find anger drives me to work so when I am mad, I’m also at my peak productivity time which can cause a drastic and helpful change in the direction my day is going in.
Sometimes, overcoming the anger can be harder. I remember one day in January when everything felt horrible. I was slightly depressed as my day was a full disaster and the fact that my brother, was off from school, did not help in any way. I was piled up with triple the school work I usually had and I had to submit multiple assignments, some of which were worth more than 50 points (which is considered a lot as per my school’s grading system). I had to plug in my father’s computer into our old tv in the basement and present a whole 30 slide presentation I had made in two hours along with a script. I recorded the video which turned out to be 10 minutes (just a tad bit over the 3 minute maximum mark) but I was in no mood to do everything again. I tried to upload the file to my laptop, and it didn’t work. I tried to email it, and guess what (?), it didn’t work! I tried using Apple’s horrible Airdrop feature, but apparently, a MacBook does not include that feature. Everything was feeling so low, and I was so angry… at everything, that I didn’t even have any inspiration to write.
So what did I do? I slumped in my chair for hours trying to figure out something that definitely wasn’t working, and I wasted my time watching Netflix and banging my head against my chair. At about 3 pm, I was done with it. I realized there was no point of acting sad and groaning all day so I gathered myself, and relaxed more. This time, with a cool mind, and all my thoughts fell away from the situation. I called my dad and he showed me a simple trick to download dropbox, then download the file, then upload it to google, and finally submit the link. I guess that day, God came in the form of an internet service designed for downloading files… what do you know?
In a nutshell, when in anguish, anger, frustration… all those life-sickening feelings, you need to remember to gather yourself, and forget about everything for just a moment. In a sense, you need to find your happy place, and the solution will come with time. Unless you are waiting for weeks or months for a solution, then I recommend you actually put your mind to the problem and try to fix it (please don’t let a child’s rookie advice ruin you life).
Finally, there is one last thing, one last way that I use to overcome anger. I use it to fuel my day. I drive that anger towards something worthwhile and I think even as a kid, it work’s perfectly. I hope that I don’t sound like I am some sort of self-proclaimed wise guru when I say driving your worst emotions can sometimes lead to more success. The simple example of using my anger is to work the heck out of my body and is just one of many things anger can do for people.
So don’t be ashamed to be the short-tempered person in your society, because that temper might just be the defining characteristic that helps you get through every day.
In conclusion, anger is an emotion we all experience. It can’t be stopped, but we can differ the ways we react, overcome and use anger in our daily lives. I hope my advice doesn’t seem, as I said before, pretentious because in the end, you are reading an article by the same guy who quits on his video game teammates because they don’t play well. Thank you for reading.
