Rant-om Feedback

Remember that song “Lean on Me”? I kind of do that, except instead of leaning on someone, I am making noises at them, and they are generally frustrated and angry. It is basically the same thing.

My name is John Szeder and I love therapeutic ranting.

It feels good to stand in front of a gigantic canyon and scream your head off when things are a little out of control and crazy. Sometimes it is not always a gigantic canyon, and certainly, it is not always the right idea to scream, but you get the idea.

I am glad that I have a few specific people that I can rant to when the situation warrants it. I have my movie-rant person, my work-rant person, and yes, even my children-rant person.

Being able to articulate all the things that are busting my chops helps me process them and figure out what I ought to be doing differently. Sometimes it helps me understand that maybe I should not do anything differently at all.

I can pinpoint the time I first understood the value of ranting. I was a sympathetic ear for someone else’s rants. The year was 2001. I won’t name names, but anyone who was there probably understands what the ranting was all about. The rest of you can remain guessing—what happens at Rant Club stays at Rant Club.

Before you randomly start popping off to the person next to you on the subway, I want to establish a few things.

It is important to rant to the right person. Do not assume you can rant to your boss. Sometimes it makes sense. You should test this carefully before it shows up in your end-of year-review, and not in your end-of-year bonus. Some people do not love a complainer. You may have a special relationship with your boss with some amazing trust if you can rant to them, and vice-versa.

It is important to rant about the right things. Do not rant about your children to single people. This is perhaps a very extreme example. You may wish to have your ranting relatable to your audience.

While it is important to respond appropriately to someone else’s ranting, do not assume you have to fix whatever it is that they are ranting about. Also, do not jump immediately into Devil’s Advocate mode. Sometimes all you need to do is listen and agree.

It is important to thank your listener. “Hey sorry for ranting” or “Thank you for listening” are good things to include in your ranting ritual. Let your rant recipient know that this was a cathartic cleansing exercise and that you do feel better.

I don’t want you to read this one page and necessarily pick up the phone and start bitching at someone all day every day. Well, maybe I do if you are going to stream it online.

I will say for the people who rant to me about things, I do feel special about it. There is a level of trust that they have given to me by opening up about things that deeply disturb them. It helps me to see that other people are struggling with things from time to time, and I appreciate having that glimpse into who they are and the things they do not believe make sense. I also know that having someone to talk about stuff like this helps them to process an issue, or at the very least just feel better about it.

Well, that proved to be shorter than expected. I also somehow have it in my head that I could make a pretty good TokTok about this. I won’t do it, but I am scared that I thought about it. Someone somewhere is going to go and get themselves an incredible twenty or thirty views based on this sentence. I would say thousands or millions, but you all know from your love of reading words that you are just as much a boomer as me.

See you all again next week.