on unlocking my authentic, creative self

I’m so so so so so tired of politics.

I say this as a person whose life is mostly dedicated to politics in one way or another:

• work: communications strategy for 3 political campaigns
• volunteering includes:
  • communications chair of political organization – includes producing a monthly newsletter and ongoing web and social media content production, as well as plentiful other communication-related tasks such as press releases, interviewing and articles, etc.
  • served on 6 different political committees (at district, county, and state level) so far this year, including chairing 2 of them
  • officer on the e-board of political organization – involves meeting attendance, event organization and attendance, proactive efforts at organizational improvement including convening and chairing new committees, drafting and proposing updated rules, drafting resolutions etc., and various random other tasks
• friends:
  • I suffer from a lack of local friends since moving to this state (more than 5 years now), to be honest, but the ones I do have all intersect with my political involvement – either I met them through politics, or since meeting them they have joined in on my political efforts
  • my distant friends (of which there are simultaneously too many and not enough) are all also very politically engaged. Which is truly a good thing, as I couldn’t maintain a friendship with anyone who doesn’t have the same core values as me. But the problem is that “having the same core values” at this point in history means that we are all alarmed and appalled 100% of the time – we can’t not be. And this is exhausting for us all.
• Online, social media, and general atmosphere: completely taken over by politics. Again, I technically wouldn’t want it any other way, since I can’t, in good conscience, live in a bubble, but the problem is there’s just. so. much. of. it.

My current method of dealing with all this is truly not productive, either. I escape into X (currently Arrow and Arrow fandom). I’m definitely not alone here – nor is this a new thing for me. I’ve always been an escapist, running (usually) to books, movies, tv shows, fandom, etc. But that never truly helps, because it just forces me to neglect my responsibilities, leaving me guilty at best, and utterly/hopelessly behind at worst. And (for me, at least), it is never a real antidote because it is a consumption activity, and not a creative/productive activity. Consumption activities are never fulfilling; they always leave me wanting more (which is dangerous when it’s my primary escape).

So I’ve realized what it is I want, and need.

Well, obviously first I want the country to fucking fix itself, so I don’t have to worry 24/7/365 about whether or not I’m doing everything I can to fix it. That would be fucking nice.

Then I want to be truly creative. I’m so fucking done with not having creative, artistic friends, who help me be the weird (so fucking weird) creative person I am.

The problem is that I’ve never found the creative outlet that I need. All the conventional things don’t really work for me.

Visual art: I have whimsical visions and concepts all the day long, but I lack the skills to bring them to life. I can’t paint, draw, computer graph..ic, vid, pastiche, sculpt, ms paint, or photograph. I mean, maybe I should still try more. Maybe my medium hasn’t been invented yet. Maybe I have to invent it. But so far there’s just fancy after fancy, prancing through my brain, dancing away to nothing.

Music: I can sing. I am a trained singer. But I have no songs of my own. I have no lyrics. I have never been able to meaningfully connect all these things toward any type of authentic expression. I sing (and compose) like a technician. Meanwhile I can and do enjoy the shit out of music. I feel it so hard. I invent new feelings on the regular. I am transported. And I have thoughts. Again, I have considered writing these thoughts and feelings down, maybe even making videos about music – but this is once again a manifestation of the analytical side of me. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t connect with my creative self.

Storytelling: This is honestly the one that bugs me the most. I have facility with words. I can research, analyze, group, abstract and generalize, organize, argue, hypothesize, claim and support. I can present and persuade. And I can understand completely how stories work best. I completely understand characterization, motive, relationships, complex human emotions, growth. But I can’t invent. I can’t connect, emotionally, creatively, to stories of my own making. Even my successful stories (fanfic) work because I expertly mine the source material and manifest the source subtext in my writing. I produce works that are consistently called “emotionally dense” and praised for characterization and themes – and I’m proud of that, because my aim is always to make people feel more of what the source material makes them feel – but this type of storytelling doesn’t fulfill my creative impulses.

The problem is that I don’t understand my own creativity. I am, in so many ways, an analytical person – so much so that I have frequently doubted whether or not I’m really “creative” at all. Yet every day, in my head, in my fancies, in the weird ways I express myself, in my failure to find anyone who truly appreciates my level of abstraction and whimsy – in the fact that I basically have to tone myself down and interpret myself to every single person and every single interaction I have with others – I am reminded that I am creative. I just don’t have a name or an outlet for it. And I don’t have anyone willing to appreciate or even really tolerate it. (The only person who is aware of and tolerates it is my husband, but, as far as that goes, he basically regards me as some kind of unicorn). What I really need, but don’t have, is anyone who can help me understand and grow it.

I’ve been increasingly gaining awareness of this situation – of this lack and this need – over the past several months. I think this is why I started my Instagram, for example, and why I came back to this blog with the intention of using it to just express myself, whenever and however and fuck continuity and comprehensiveness and audience expectations. I just need to find my outlet. And I need to find people who help me live my authentic, creative self. People who can help me unlock and harness my creativity. Whatever it is.

 

 

a little bit on tolerance

there’s some fandom stuff happening right now that I don’t really want to get into because it makes me tired and I’ve honestly been through it all so many times and that’s not what I fan for. and yet I find myself always having opinions…I’m going to jot just a few thoughts down here, but MIND YOU: this is not a comprehensive review of my thoughts on the matter. just a couple extraneous thoughts, brought to you by the following combination:

1. fandom outrage
2. my lifelong lived experience
3. this tumblr post, my tags (see them?) and my further thoughts on the post and those tags:

Here’s the thing. People on this post are asking stuff like “yeah, but where’s the line?” And I’ll tell you where I think it is: it has to do with the magnitude of the intolerance combined with how well you know the person. Oooh, this should be a graph. Maybe I’ll make a graph.

[note to self: make a graph and insert it here]

Basically, the better you know a person, the more familiar you are with the context in which they’ll do something insensitive, and the more familiar you are with their history of bias and their history of growth, the better you are able to judge a person’s “growth.”* With this context, you are much better able to tell how a person’s actions indicate their intentions.**

Conversely, the less well you actually know a person personally, the less familiar you are with the context of their actions, and therefore you are much less able to judge their intent by their actions. ***

So here are my rules:

1. you may (nay, in some cases you must!) call out insensitivity or outright intolerance when you see it.
2. the degree to which you are allowed to righteously express outrage at the action versus the person making the action must be tempered by the above (the magnitude of intolerance versus how well you know the person).

* “Growth” is a subjective, value-laden concept. Each of us has a subjective concept of what constitutes “growth,” and it literally just follows our own experience of self-growth. But we all start from different places and have different growth-related goals, as revealed by our past mistakes, among other things…. WE MUST NEVER ASSUME THAT ANYONE’S GROWTH JOURNEY PARALLELS OUR OWN, and WE MUST NEVER JUDGE ANYONE’S ACTIONS BY WHERE THOSE ACTIONS FALL ON OUR OWN GROWTH JOURNEY. (Also, simplifying things like this assumes that once we Learn A Lesson, we have Grown and we will never make that same mistake again. We will. AND we’ll make similar mistakes that will be perceived by others as the same mistake.)

** Not to mention the fact that the effectiveness that any criticism you level at a person will be directly impacted by how well you know (or do not know) that person. If your best friend gives you a bitter truth, you’re going to receive it much better than if it came from your random co-worker. Or, you know, a complete stranger.

*** Okay I wasn’t actually going to say anything specific to the Stephen Amell debacle here because I really don’t care but to illustrate my point I’m going to give this as an example:

People are generally decrying Stephen Amell’s insensitive post regarding the Hagia Sophia: okay. People are also generally decrying his response for calling a fan “stupid”: also okay. BUT. People are losing their shit over it based on the presumption that they have a more righteous idea of how to be tolerant: NOT OKAY.

That really wasn’t clear, so let me try to explain. The root of all this fury seems to be that Stephen Amell is not appropriately reverent over a religion (Islam).

They are equating this to religious intolerance (intolerance against Muslims).

BUT THOSE ARE NOT THE SAME THINGS PEOPLE, DON’T GET IT TWISTED.

(And honestly, I think this is why Stephen Amell was mad and called people stupid. I also would be mad if someone mistook my lack of reverence for a religion as an attack on people who follow that religion.****)

A person is not required to feel religious reverence on another person’s behalf. And if, as happened in this case, a person feels the need to explain why they think something is insensitive toward practitioners of a religion, they absolutely have that right. But they DO NOT have the right to expect that someone else is going to agree with them. Obviously, the Hagia Sophia is religiously significant to many people. Just as obviously, it’s not to Stephen Amell. Was it insensitive of him to post what he did? Yes. Did people have a right to explain why they felt it was insensitive? Yes. Was it kind of jerkish, and definitely ill-advised, for him to call someone a jerk (especially when the reason for calling that person a jerk is misunderstood)? Yes. BUT WAS IT PROOF THAT STEPHEN AMELL IS AN INTOLERANT ANTI-MUSLIM ASSHOLE DESERVING TO BE SHUNNED AND NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN? No. Absolutely not.

**** I am an anti-religon activist. As I have said elsewhere on this blog, IT IS IMPORTANT THAT PEOPLE REALIZE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING ANTI-RELIGION and BEING ANTI-PEOPLE WHO FOLLOW A RELIGION. And yet hardly anyone seems able to comprehend that difference. The difference is this:

• Being anti-religion means recognizing that religiosity is not necessary for, nor does it even have anything to do with, being moral, and recognizing therefore that religion’s net impact on the world***** and on humanity****** is negative
  • any good we do in the world in the name of religion can also be done without religion
  • there are a lot of horrible things that can, and have, and continue to be done solely because of religion
  • therefore the absence of religion is not detrimental, but the presence of it is uniquely detrimental
• Being anti-religion but not anti-people who follow a religion also logically follows from the above because people can do good things in the name of religion; it’s just that religion is not necessary for them to do good.

When I talk about wanting religion to disappear from the world, it should be obvious that I mean I would prefer it if religion simply did not exist. And what I would like to have happen, ideally, is for every single person who ascribes to religious beliefs to examine their own beliefs, and ultimately to come to the above conclusion (that morality and goodness do not require religion. That there is literally nothing you can do in the name of religion that you cannot do without religion except discriminate based on religion).

And of course, anyone who knows me – who actually knows me – would never ever assume that me being anti-religion would mean I was anti-religious people. That absolutely does not jive with who I am, my examined life-stance, my values and ideology and principles, at all. (Not to mention that many people I love do identify as belonging to some religion, including most of my family, or that I was raised to be a devout Catholic and I consciously struggled for at least 10 years to come to my current beliefs).

But, no matter how untrue it would be, I can kind of understand how, on the surface, someone who doesn’t know me well might conflate those two things and assume that because I’m anti-religion, I’m also anti-religious people – simply because the idea is not common. It’s not the sort of thing that most people have thought about (unfortunately).

But I admit that if someone got mad at me based on this assumption, if they went around proclaiming that I was a bad person because of it, I would be pissed. I mean the appropriate thing would be for us to have a conversation about it. For me to have a chance to explain the difference. But, since this hypothetical person doesn’t actually know me, I bet they wouldn’t reach out. They’d just add me to their list of “types of intolerant people!” – they’d be intolerant in the name of intolerance. (And yeah, just so we’re clear, I’m aware of the paradox of tolerance, but, if you see my explanation above, that absolutely does not apply here because I am not intolerant of people, but rather an idea. And to be fair, I’m not even actually intolerant of religion – I just would like it to diminish in importance and eventually disappear because human society and information has evolved beyond the point where it was a force for good). And while that would suck – I don’t like it when people don’t like me, and I really don’t like it when people add to their Sanctimonious Toolbelts – it really wouldn’t make a big difference in the grand scheme of things. I am not famous, and I don’t have a platform for my ideas.

Now, if I were famous and someone got mad at me based on this assumption, I would probably be even more pissed. Because I would assume, being a Well Known Person, that other people would know that I’m a Good Person. And for someone to call me a bad person based on something that, to me, very obviously shouldn’t make me a bad person, would hurt. Would be annoying. Would honestly just fucking ruin my day and probably damage my ego a bit. And while the Right Thing to do in that moment would be to explain why my position doesn’t make me a Bad Person, I might be too irritated to do so. I might be too tired. I might be too lazy. I might just not care to take the time to explain something that should be (according to me) so obvious.

In other words, in this hypothetical scenario, just because I have a platform and I had an opportunity to use it wisely doesn’t mean I’m always going to do so. Because I’m also fucking human.

***** Anthropocentrism being a) a bad thing, and b) absolutely encouraged throughout human history, and into today, by the major monotheistic religions.

****** See Patriarchy, Holy Wars and other horrible things carried out in the name of religion, the continuing battle over reproductive rights (and, by extension, the chokehold that issues has on the American political system), anti-queer attitudes, etc.

Words

Since the Thing happened last Tuesday, I have gone through a huge host of emotions, none of them positive. While the processing will continue, I’m sure, for years, I’ve also been have many thoughts. A seemingly-unending stream of thoughts related to “How did this happen?,” “What can we do?,” “What is my role?,” and “What is it that people don’t get??” I’ve been talking to people, reading articles, listening to podcasts and NPR, and observing (and occasionally partaking in) Facebook arguments. All of these sources have posed important questions and points of reflection. Inevitably, there is much work to be done. I am going to try to address these things in writing. Whether I do it here, or on my Reflections blog, or on my official blog, I’m not sure yet. I foretell I will write a bit in each space. And while I relish the opportunity, I also am afraid. Because words and ideas have a tendency to whip me into a frenzy, but even as I articulate them, I feel a sense of powerlessless. I believe, whole-heartedly, that the articulation of ideas is the most powerful force in the world, and that it was the mishandling of words that has led us to this moment in history; and yet, there is the problem of finding an audience. I have heard so many well-articulated arguments, but if the right people aren’t listening, if the conditions for reception are not right, then those words are wasted. And I am afraid that my words, my effort, my fear and rage and disgust and outrage, are just another drop of sound in a vacuum.So I have held myself back so far, compiling a list in my head of topics to address, but staying silent. But I need to be brave, and I need to be smart. I need to find a way to amplify my ideas, or the ideas of other smart people. Meanwhile, I want to keep my list of topics, so they don’t continue to slip from my mind forever.

The daily to-do: Wednesday October 26

WELL! I have been really bad at keeping up-to-date here, but I felt like posting this morning because I have been pretty productive. Yesterday I worked on resumes and applied to two jobs. I am pretty pleased with the state of my resume(s), and this has given me the confidence to apply to more jobs. I applied to like 7 more this morning. Perhaps nothing will come of them, but I have had such trouble taking even that step lately (maybe always). So, I’m feeling pretty good.

I am not feeling good about my body. I am sure that I have put on several pounds, and I’m scared to weigh myself. Probably I put on like 7 pounds, and I really hate the feeling. I’ve been bothered by this, but not enough to really do anything about it, for a few months now. It’s been a slow gain, peppered by periods of loss, but overall a steady gain. After I ran the half marathon 10 days ago, I was feeling pretty good, like that could be the point of turnaround, but I took several days off running for recovery, and I kind of “celebrated” my success a bit too much. Then a few days after I started running again, I took that really bad fall, which forced me to not run, or even walk much. And I haven’t been able to do weights because of my mystery wrist sprain. And yet I let myself binge on chocolate and candy over the weekend. I can really see the results. 😛 Well, I am committing to eating better now. I should probably weigh myself and hold myself accountable for weight loss, but I don’t think I can bear to see 125 pounds on the scale, so for now I will wait and hope to lose a bit first. I am feeling physically well, so today I will run, and maybe even use some weights.

Now I’m just going to make my list, since my head’s all over the place and I don’t even know what I’m meant to be doing. 

The daily to-do: Tuesday October 4

Today is International Wrongful Conviction Day. I find this article by Amanda Knox to be a useful resource. In other news, tonight is the Vice Presidential debate. I would like to finish my blog on the platforms sometime today, and send a link out with a reminder to my precinct to watch the debates, but probably that won’t happen.

This is the sort of post I make when I’ve had NPR on all day, as I have today. I like NPR, but sometimes I wish they would take more of a stand. They interviewed this woman this morning who was “undecided” about Trump, and waiting to hear more from him. Like, what more can you possibly learn that hasn’t already been revealed?? We have longstanding documentation that he is a racist, a misogynist, a narcissist, an incompetent businessman, a liar, a manipulator, a schemer, and a world-class idiot. Every time he opens his mouth he proves he doesn’t think. He has no fucking platform, no clear position on issues. He’s a joke, and serious people know he’s a joke. But then you have fucking NPR lending legitimacy to his campaign, and to the uninformed mouth-breathers who “like his attitude,” by not calling them out on their obvious lack of basic understanding. We get this from the cable news channels, who are afraid of (still) being labeled “leftist” (laughable), but I expect more from NPR. It’s not leftist liberal bias to point out facts. It’s called honest reporting. 

Fucking anyway.

Cosmo’s sitting here waiting for me to take him on his walk. It’s gloomy out, and probably going to rain at any moment. I’m just procrastinating today. I need to walk him and run, and I should have done it all already, so I can get back to working on my projects, but I’m having a hard time finding the enthusiasm to just start. Anyway. I’ve done a few random things already, and I feel like there’s one more errand-like thing I had to do today, but I can’t remember now what it was. >.<

Aw crap, now it is raining. 

The daily to-do: Tuesday July 19

And first, a side-note. I usually don’t write about much outside the immediately personal on this page, since I have my public-facing blog for more structured posts, but I don’t feel like messing around with that today, and yet I have to say: plagiarism is a thing. A real, serious, thing. As a former college professor of writing and rhetoric, I will be the first to admit that the rules of plagiarism, what constitutes plagiarism, and even the concept of plagiarism itself can be a bit fuzzy: depending on medium, context, intention, and country, among other things, the line between plagiarism and not-plagiarism can be blurred. But THIS is not one of those cases. This is about as clear-cut a case of plagiarism as I have ever seen, and I’ve had a student plagiarize me. And the fact that those fucking Trdumps won’t even fucking admit it is SO OFFENSIVE, which is a redundant thing to complain about, considering all the heinous, disgusting, stinky things that have come out of Trump’s face-hole. Whether or not Melania plagiarized from Michelle Obama’s speech is NOT a question – there is no doubt, no politically-dependent interpretation of the data, no two ways of looking at the matter. There is only fact. The speech is plagiarized. (And as this author points out, regardless of the plagiarism, the similarity between Michelle’s sentiments and “Melania’s sentiments” should already be a point against the latter, considering how anti-Obama they are). But of course, as Trump’s (and many conservatives’, generally, if we’re being honest here *cough*climate change for one*cough*) modus operandi dictates, he blithely makes statements that are counter to fact (see: lies), and he just doesn’t care. As Matt Sienkiewicz, an assistant professor at Boston College, says in the USA Today article linked above, “The Trump campaign (is) putting something right in front of our faces and telling us it’s not there. To me the message is something along the lines of them believing they can simply shape reality in the image they want it to.”  This has been his strategy all along, and the most horrible part about it is that it is working. His fans don’t seem to care one whit what he says, as long as he says it loudly and stupidly.  So there we go. Another grain of sand in the miles of beach of Trump’s lies. (A beach of lies next to a Trump resort of lies. These are expensive lies, after all).

Meanwhile, today. I haven’t done any non-profit work, and I have been trying to not think of it. Just focusing on getting my own stuff done today, and so far it’s been really nice. The list: