Don't sour grapes forever
The title of this blog post is a reference to this fable I read in Chinese school growing up. I may get some of the details wrong, but the story is about a fox who discovers some grapes. Unfortunately, the fox is too short to reach the vine and so can't eat them. The fox walks away from the situation with the conclusion that it didn't want the grapes anyways, they were probably sour. Now, I think of that mental move as sour grapes-ing something. It's a coping tactic that I've used for many years, and was something that I honestly associated with maturity and responsibility and being an adult. Adults aren't supposed to get upset when they don't get their way, but as a young adult, it was difficult for me to sit with the negative feelings that accompanied that, so sour grapes-ing whatever I was trying for ended up being my approximation of that. To give an example, I recently ordered a suitcase and compressible packing cubes online. The packing cubes came in thre