Nope, I am not pissed off. I had a conversation with necronyx this evening in which he asked if he had pissed me off. My response, I haven't been pissed off for almost two years. See, it's pretty hard to piss me off. I can get a little irritated momentarily, but inevitably the feeling passes. I've found that my serenity is entirely dependent on myself. So whenever I find myself getting resentful, I look inward to see what it is in myself that allows me to become angry. And I look for that and remove it.

So my statement was a bit of a lie. I can get pissed off, but it doesn't last long.

How does this work? For instance, we plan something, and you stand me up. If I get pissed off, it's not because you stood me up, it's because I had expectations and self-esteem tied into your presence. You not showing up thus attacks my self-esteem and I feel hurt. I work hard to base my self-esteem on my own accomplishments, not on what other people think of me. So I consciously look at the failure to call as a defect of the other person, and not my self-esteem. It's not an attack on me, it's a problem with them. And thus my irritation goes away. This is not to say that standing me up is a good thing. I will likely never invite you again, but it will not dig into my self-esteem, and I refuse to be irritated for long.