You Take the Good, You Take the Bad

I'm pleased to report that some of the things I'd been working on (and stressing about, big time) for the past two weeks came to fruition a few days ago. There's this article (written by me), and this article (for which I was interviewed extensively). There are also other cool but still-in-the-works opportunities related to April 1's big news that have been keeping me busy, but I think most of the whirlwind is over. (I lied! As I was writing this post I was called by a Chicago Tribune reporter and spent a good half-hour being interviewed...)

OK... so maybe the whirlwind isn't totally over, but I've at least had a chance to turn my attention toward some long-standing problems in my condo. Like a broken security-alarm motion-detector gizmo that we'd avoided getting replaced for over a year. (I hate scheduling repairmen visits, OK?) Or our kitchen sink that was backing up. And a toilet that would keep running 1 out of every 10 flushes. Etc., etc.

But there are still several not-so-fun home projects looming on the horizon, and while dealing with one of them I got the idea for today's post. It's very simple. When someone asks you, "What do you want first: the good news... or the bad news?", how do you respond?

I always want the bad news first. There's no question. You take a hit and then know that something better is about to follow, right? (Unless it's faux "good news," like: "You have pneumonia... but the good news is, you'll lose some weight!" Hardy har har.)

Is there anyone who would rather hear good news first -- knowing that it's about to be ruined?

And yes, I realize only a matter of seconds pass between hearing the negative and positive information and that your brain probably isn't going to process anything too differently either way so the order doesn't really matter that much -- but I still find it an interesting question nonetheless. I wonder if certain personality types would always choose hearing bad news first. This sounds like the sort of thing someone's probably conducted a psychological experiment on in the past. The bad news: I should've done more research for this post. The good news: But at least I wrote today!

- e