For the past 35 years, well….pretty much for my whole adult life, I’ve tried to use a few words very consciously: can’t, had to/have to (and variants), and should have/shoulda. The last breaks down into me telling you that you should do or say something. More insidiously we say this to ourselves.
In that vein, I realized I’m again spending far too much time on reading things I think I should, and not enough on what I like. This occurred right after I subscribed to a newsletter from the New York Times which twice a week will highlight some songs that are pretty salient and should be listened to, a topic I really care about. Yes, I appreciate the irony. Instead I spend several hours making sure I’m on top of geo-politics, cultural developments, science and technology, and all sorts of sociological things like economics and psychology.
In the past couple weeks a few things happened, but I don’t even have photos to show for it because most aren’t fun and some are ideas, not physical things lending themselves to the snap of a shutter: an impending death in our family; a friend having serious surgery; discovering that a minor roof leak isn’t so minor after all and requires a complete re-roofing from the rafters on up; and learning today that quite possibly an incredible amount of our personal data may have been stolen because of some third party company I’ve never heard of but which inexplicably has our complete health records including diagnoses, our complete financial stuff like credit cards and account numbers, and oh yeah, our Social Security numbers. Apparently health insurance companies use this company to do what they can’t because they’re too busy counting my money.
Sigh. I shoulda just posted a photo…
all the voices in my head 
I could easily be all wrong. However I wonder if you had siblings as a child. I was an only child. Not spoiled, but still everything boiled down to me. Result – I’m much too self-centered to do much of anything I don’t want to do. But still, I understand so much of wisdom comes from the lessons we learn bumping into walls. Are there easier ways? Life teaches, but life is also the test.
And I agree about words. Use wisely. I used to say, “I hate this or that.” But no, I didn’t really. Much too intense a word. Yet the words we us, they color us. I don’t wish to be colored in that way. Good to pay attention.
Astute comment, Neil. I’m the older of two. I don’t know if there’s a lot of difference between “only child” and “eldest”. Though difficult to assess second-hand, my brother-in-law who is eldest of 8 seems to have the same dynamics. Where the only child *thinks* he’s perfect, the eldest must *be* perfect. I’m not sure there’s a big difference between the two.