So. When I asked you why you didn't discuss your day with Mrs. Cac... you gave me the whole example of what happened that day, yes? Now... what **I** heard you saying was... I don't like to bring my negativity home.
nope. I was merely trying to give an example of some technical obscurity, and how it is difficult to have a discussion with someone that has no basis for understanding that obscurity.

I used to run into this with my cousin, the pH.D-candidate chemist. I'd try to get him to explain to me what he was doing, and he just couldn't. I have no basis for understanding. I'd have to go get a bachelor's degree in chemistry before I could even begin to understand. So, I had to settle for:
me: how's school going?
him: um...good!
And then we'd talk about his latest coltrane CD...something we both understand. its got nothing to do w/ the married relationship, or even a he/she thing.
ahh...but in THIS group {it figures}, there IS some understanding of the example I gave, and we got off on a tangent about "fixing the code"..."why is the code doing that? you're telling the code the wrong thing. fix the code".
and I say, "I am not a programmer". That's not "being" negative, a-la "the glass is half empty". that's speaking in a negative tense, but its not "being negative". Its using 5 words to describe a situation, instead of the 5000 or more that would be needed to describe all the things that you ARE, but don't include the skillset neccessary for this particular problem, and let the listener do the math. This is "Strunk and White", not "Stuart Smalley".
Reminds me of the tv commercial where the surgeon is on the phone, talking to this poor guy who is sitting at his kitchen table, holding a butter knife, with a confused/horrified look on his face, while the surgeon describes how the guy should go about cutting out his own appendix. The guy says, "um...shouldn't you be doing this, doc?". I don't believe that sentiment is indicative of a bad attitude.

I think if I said to Cac, who are you? I think, at the very core, you would say to me... "I am a pilot. But I am a pilot that CAN'T fly.

And because you hold THAT in your heart... everything that comes after that sentence, no matter what you say, think, feel, or do... is going to have a negative truth in front of it. It will color your entire existence that way.

well, that may be. I do feel like an imposter at times...I've even used that exact term, but not because of what it said in that article.