By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com
July 11, 2007

“Resentment is the poison you drink, believing the other guy will die.”

My son told me that. He heard it from a friend who is in Narcotics Anonymous.

The advice isn’t just for recovering addicts. It fits neatly into my life, which turned upside down a few weeks ago with an unanticipated lay-off from my job as a metro columnist at the Denver Post.

I commend the phrase to the millions of workers who share my fate, but also to anyone tempted by a bad turn to drown in their own bitterness.

That’s why I created SpencerSpeaks.com. Readers of my newspaper column encouraged me to find a new forum, and I wanted to keep moving toward a better life, not a bitter life. I hope you’ll visit here often, invite your friends, post your thoughts and join me on the journey.

One guy who already visited this site told me to change my picture.

“You looked pissed off,” he wrote to me at my new email address jim@spencerspeaks.com.

“I am pissed off,” I answered.

What matters is how I funnel the anger.

Like so many laid-off workers, I did nothing to deserve my walking papers.

In fact, six months before Post editor Greg Moore canned me he told participants in a live internet chat that I was the one columnist in the paper that everyone should read.

Then, he eliminated my job for financial reasons and told me there was nothing else I could do to help the Post.

This was one of three moments in the worst day of my life that would make a fine Dilbert cartoon or an excellent episode for the TV series “The Office.”

Another moment was when the managing editor for administration trundled over to my desk to tell me to go to the human resources department. At the time, I was researching a column about the Crips and Bloods staging a gang turf war at Denver’s finest public wine and cheese party, the City Park Jazz series. I was so busy trying to break news for the newspaper that I missed the email summoning me to my execution.

The third Dilbert moment came when I found out that the Post was going to give me four free trips to a psychologist to work out any issues I had about being let go. I guess they wanted to make sure I didn’t go Denver Postal.

In a country where employees are regularly dehumanized as “full-time equivalents” and hundreds of thousands of workers are dumped each year on financial whims, I’m sure there are plenty of other absurd, but funny stories. Please click on Post Your Thoughts and tell your stories in the web site Guest Book.

As anyone who ever got a raw deal knows, misery doesn’t just love company, it can use a good laugh.

But as comedian Denis Leary likes to tell whiners: “Life sucks. Get a helmet.” So after venting, let’s help each other remember that we must deal with things we can
control, not obsess about things we can’t. That, of course, is another 12-step mantra that applies to everyone’s life.

The point of the columns on this web site will be to inform and, occasionally, to entertain. I mean to challenge as much as persuade. What I do here is what I tried to do with every newspaper column I wrote for the past 20 years.

I don’t care if people agree or disagree with what I say.

Nor do I want them to rush to judgment. I care that folks think hard for themselves about important issues. I care that folks take the time to understand.

I’ll be writing about the Iraq War, universal health care, gang alternatives, gun control, racism in the anti-illegal immigrant movement, education, and self-righteous religious types.

I’ll be writing about anything and everything for which I have fire in the belly. You can toss in your two cents by clicking on the Post Your Thoughts section.

Let’s pour out the poison of resentment and drink in the passion of a free-wheeling conversation. The only belief we need to share is the collective faith that each of us should be doing what we think is right in order to improve the world.

Once you try to make a difference, there’s really not much time to pout.

Copyright 2007 by Jim Spencer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.