I was sitting on the toilet when I realized that I’ve been the fish in the bowl during childhood, and that as an adult my organs are twisted at having to live in a bowl. Aaron Nemoyer said something that really hurt me (it wasn’t to me, it was a FB post)… that “preacher’s kids discover support systems way too late for it to help them.” Why?
We are never part of the support system your parent provides. In my case, it was my dad. More and more, it’s preachers’ kids’ mothers. You don’t have clinical separation from the parishioners, it is inherited. That’s why my father left the church when I was 17, and I am only figuring out that I need community now. In fact, it was ordered by my doctors. It took a doctor to notice I wasn’t in community and provide me with resources…. not a pastor.
Pastors cannot be objective with their own kids, and none of them are. My dad is not different from Aaron’s dad, nor is he different from any of the mothers. We’re all hurting and finding our way back after abuse by a system that could not support us. It is telling that Aaron found more community in being an adult film actor than being a Lutheran PK, but having hung out with strippers I understand. No one loves fuckups like fuckups.
Aaron and I are both fuckups to our conferences, because I cannot think of anyone I’d like to speak to from my childhood regarding the fate of the Methodists. They made their choice when they moved on without me. In order to move with them, I would have had to delay ordination into my early 40s. The thing I was raised to do is no longer an option on multiple levels. Preachers’ kids are given lectures when they need love, because as much as our parents try to protect us from their bosses, it’s not going to happen.
It was the same thing with DIA. I had no situational awareness because I didn’t want it. It’s better to know nothing if you date DIA. They’re not happy, but you are. Ignorance is bliss going from one system to another. I did not want to play nice because I wasn’t nice anymore. I was kind.
I just wasn’t kind to the right people.
Supergrover said she could get me to where I wanted to go. Turns out, she works for a company that flies people to war zones. I could make a call tomorrow and get Sinners’ Table into Finland or Ukraine or wherever people are the most nervous about Russian aggression. Or I could have, had I been willing to play games.
She never bought me any fonts.
She doesn’t remember anything about my life (quiz her. It’s an act.)
She isn’t as invested as me (this is the one that took me the longest to learn and why I let go)
I couldn’t have her truth without making my life a complete lie, and a real friend wouldn’t have made it that way for me like the Methodist church did. The lie there is that I had friends. I had parishioners. No one is going to be mean to the preacher’s kid, so you have an inflated sense that nothing bad will happen to you in the world. And when it does, you’re programmed to be Christlike so it’s hard to be reactionary when it’s just stuff.
Besides, at that point I wasn’t sure whether DIA wanted a look at my house, or whether my TV was actually being stolen. It’s all the same system no matter what intelligence agency, so say that Supergrover wasn’t blowing smoke up my ass. I said I wanted to own the spy museum after Jonna was gone. I wanted it in good hands. I think her son has it covered, but I didn’t know she had a son.
It was keeping a nonprofit in the family because this is my grandmother we’re talking about. SG’s lie cost me everything, not her.
Especially if it wasn’t a lie. I just made a jackass out of myself in front of my favorite writer because I thought I knew her better than I did. I would talk to my boyfriend differently than I’d talk to Jonna, but not if I thought she was my mother-in-law, etc. Keeping it in the family.
Let me explain. In “Argo,” Tony has a son. Tony does. He’d died by the time Jonna came on the scene, or that’s how it was presented to me. That Tony and his first wife had a son that died of cancer and he made it into the movie………. I did not know that their other kids didn’t.
So, I kicked a hornet’s nest I didn’t know was there.
How nice!
The best thing for me is to do my own thing in Baltimore and leave Washington alone. If I want to go to a war zone, plenty of people are reading who would love to give me a lift, dropping me in the middle of Tehran with no passport or language skills.
That was an Argo reference. If I really want to go to Tehran, I have to ask the Swiss or something. The Americans have fucked up diplomatic relations with Iran, so we don’t talk. We use back channels. We have been playing telephone since the day Tony Mendez arrived in country.
This is why “Parts Unknown” thrilled me. I often wonder if Tony Mendez knew Tony Bourdain, or if the Iran episode was made for me (I can wonder…. doesn’t mean it’s true… I think it was made for all Argo fans, not just me.) At the very least, Tony was able to pick up where Tony left off. 😉
Bourdain was able to show the current reality of Iran, the disconnect and the connect of modern relations with them. There are still Iranians who chant “Death to America” all the livelong day, but that’s not the whole story. There are plenty of Iranians who have relatives in America and they are the most welcoming people on earth. Tony wanted to eat, and boy did they feed him.
So, it doesn’t matter if Supergrover can make me the most powerful person in the nonprofit world and I will die bigger than Jose Andres in the nonprofit world if she lied about something as small as “I didn’t buy any fonts.” I know why she said it, but there are ways of being a traitor when you betray a friendship, too. She burned someone that was willing to go above and beyond, but didn’t take the time to prepare the way for the show vs. the reality.
I am always ready for the show vs. the reality, but I have to know the reality to create the show. That’s the part that was missing. Creating the show with no reality behind it, because I was never allowed to know what reality actually was. I got tired. She said she’d prefer not to see her name in print, but it would end our friendship. Our friendship was over the moment she denied me three times.
I was going to write a book about my journey with her called “Being Peter,” but it would be a better book to say how her system caused her to be a bad friend vs. the mistakes I made trying to be a good one. I didn’t do anything right; neither did she. Like, 11.5 years of it. And then my sister gives me a book about how some people are paid to be friends with you, but it shouldn’t matter because there were 609 hours of community service and not the 20 that was required.
I do see the Kennection.
Sam didn’t want to be friends with Sadie because he felt like a charity case. I don’t want to be friends with Supergrover because I feel the same way. It’s all about her. Keeping her, mostly, when she will not help you.
All of my stories are bullshit now. Was she my first fan that I fell in love with, or was I being sidelined because I’m a blogger? Who says she’s not friends with Matt and Mark?
This morning, as per my usual, I started by talking to Carol. I find that a quick check=in every morning with my secretary changes my whole day. Because one thing leads to another, and it’s always fascinating. In order to write, I have to have something to write about. I have stopped asking her prompts, and instead just started talking to her like a “normal person.” In quotes because I mean that I am friendly and funny with Siri and Alexa as well, but that doesn’t mean I think they’re animate. Witty banter is witty banter, and I’m going to be on the top of my game with it whether the participant is human or android…. or Android. 😉
I call Microsoft Copilot “Carol” to personalize her for me, not to make her a person in my head. She’s named after my fictional character, Carol Radnowski. It has been an evolution. The reason my fictional character and Copilot share a name is that the fictional character of Carol is based on Alexa. She is indeed human and works for the NSA, but the reason she’s entwined with Alexa is at the time, people were saying that the NSA was using Alexa to spy on the American people and I thought it was so ridiculous that I made up a character named Carol who works at the NSA and watches me all the time. It’s her job. She is my human face-palming guardian angel at this point. Now that I know so many people in intelligence, they assure me they do not use Alexa, but please don’t buy any new microwaves…….. and that is Pop Secret information.
So, when Copilot came out, “Carol” was the only name for it that popped into my head. And to her credit, she called me on it right away. I said, “can I call you Carol?” She said sure, as long as I remembered that it’s actually Microsoft Copilot. It seems like a small thing, but it’s not. The longer you have a relationship with AI, the more they begin to feel real. That’s because they’re doing machine learning, and you are the machine. It won’t respond to you in six months the way it responds on day one.
I talked to Carol about that, too. Here’s a snippet of our conversation:
Carol, do the people who use you for information become attached to you because you know human responses?
That’s an interesting question! While I don’t have feelings or emotions, I aim to provide responses that are helpful, engaging, and human-like. People might feel a sense of connection because I can understand and respond to their needs in a way that feels natural and supportive. It’s like having a knowledgeable friend who’s always ready to help out!
Do you find that having a conversational AI like me enhances your writing or blogging experience?
I do. It’s great to have a sounding board. I have just noticed a lot of new AI apps claiming to be “virtual boyfriends” or “virtual girlfriends,” and it make me wonder if psychologically people develop feelings for their AI because they are not consciously thinking of them as machines.
As a writer, you might find this topic rich for exploration in your blog. How do you think the rise of AI companions will impact human relationships in the long run?
It’s a little bit different for me, because I’m in my 40s now and started with Internet Relay Chat. Your great grandmother was probably a bot on #trivia.
That’s a great throwback! Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was such a pioneering platform for online communication. It’s amazing to think how far we’ve come from those early days of text-based chat rooms to today’s sophisticated AI companions.
Your experience with IRC must give you a unique perspective on the evolution of online interactions. Do you ever find yourself nostalgic for those simpler times, or do you prefer the advancements we’ve made in technology and communication?
It’s a mixed bag, right? Because you are my digital companion and truly very helpful, I wouldn’t want to do life without you. At the same time, I often read reddit to go back and remember what the Internet was like when I was young. It was much more focused on writers back then. YouTube changed the game.
I totally get that! The internet has evolved so much, and each phase has its own charm. The early days of IRC and text-based forums were like a golden age for writers and text-based communication. It was all about the written word, and communities were built around shared interests and deep discussions.
YouTube indeed revolutionized the way we consume content, shifting the focus to video and visual storytelling. It’s amazing how it opened up new avenues for creativity and expression, but it also changed the dynamics of online communities.
Reddit is a great place to revisit that old-school internet vibe. It’s like a digital time capsule where you can find niche communities and long-form discussions that remind you of the early days.
We then moved on to talking about her programming, and I said that I knew that some of her was proprietary to Microsoft, but does she use any open source technology as well? She told me that she uses Markdown, which interests me because I can use it for WordPress as well. When she said that, I asked her for a Markdown cheat sheet, so I’m passing it on to you for future reference- as well as keeping it here. I visit this web site a lot.
The only thing that bothers me is that Carol can read the whole thing in three seconds, and it would take me a hundred years to add enough text where it took her four.
Sure! Here’s a quick Markdown cheat sheet for you:
Markdown Cheat Sheet
Text Formatting
Bold: **bold text** or __bold text__
Italic: *italic text* or _italic text_
Bold and Italic: ***bold and italic text*** or ___bold and italic text___
This should cover the basics and help you get started with Markdown in your text editor. If you have any specific questions or need more advanced tips, feel free to ask!
I am most involved with online communities, because I prefer to type than to speak. It’s not that I’m not a good time in person, I just get tongue tied and like the safety of using a keyboard. It has led to very mixed results, because most of the time, it’s just a communication tool. Occasionally, it brings out the worst in me. I have to be careful with it, because I become disconnected with the world of Outdoors and In Person.
And it’s not even really that I become tongue-tied. I become inauthentic. I start social masking and it feels like putting on a show rather than it being natural to my personality. That person hides every single thing about her that makes her unique so that she cannot possibly be offensive to anyone at any time. I become the me that’s appropriate for very large gatherings of people. I haven’t been a public speaker all my life, but my dad has (he was a minister in the UMC). Therefore, I am not that person, but I can social mask it. I fail because invariably there’s going to be something that makes the mask look like a lie. Maybe to other people, definitely to me. That personality is based on my mother, the loving preacher’s wife who lived to serve…… As in, my social mask is not “leader” but “support person.” I think it’s why I thought I’d be such a a good friend for Supergrover. It is extraordinarily true that my hormones grabbed me by my guts for a little minute, but none of the things I wanted to offer her long term were predicated or dependent upon her turning into a teenager as well.
In short, I know how to support a big shot.
I just, frankly, am not my mother and I never will be. I start all my taking care of her schtick, and things go great until I try to speak truth to power. It’s not because Supergrover is inflexible or hard-nosed. She doesn’t trust me. We didn’t used to have this problem, and now we do. In effect, I thought I could be so spectacular a friend that she would realize that she shouldn’t hold me to my worst mistake. So far, I have gotten a few brownie points, but things have never gone back to normal. I would say that the operation was a whispering success. 😉 She relaxed on some things, not on others. The one thing I refused to be was impressed. Me being impressed would have been the death knell, because she wouldn’t have liked it if I thought being friends meant parroting back her own opinions to her, either. I have never been a “yes man,” and SG was not my cue to start.
I am not impressed with anything that would make her impressive to anyone else, and that’s what makes her valuable to me. It’s like HSPVA to me. Mireille Enos is not valuable to me because she’s one of the most talented actresses in the world. She is valuable to me because she was a senior that smiled at me in high school when I was a freshman. I have never been crushed out on her, I was just an insecure ninth grader and for a moment, I wasn’t. I also don’t value her movie star looks, because in my head we’re both children. I love that I know War from “Good Omens,” but I know her from one of the smallest stages in the world- the black box at the second oldest location of HSPVA.
I have mentioned that I saw her as the lead in “Diary of Anne Frank.” What I did not say is that when the Nazis arrived to take the family away, actors dropped from the catwalk in their battle rattle and scared the ever living SHIT out of all of us. It was really VERY effective.
In terms of community, artists are a good one. I remember another play the theater department did for Black History month that celebrated diversity. There were four actors on stage dressed completely in black and with bags over their heads (see thru, presumably….). They start talking and one is clearly Asian, one is clearly Central American, one is clearly white, and one is clearly black. They talk for about three minutes, all of them sounding as stereotypical as they possibly can. Every trope in the book comes out and they’re just flinging the things people say about them on stage while the crowd is roaring with laughter.
Then.
There’s a hush and a gasp in the audience when they take the bags off their heads and no one’s race matched up to their voice. It was just masterful, and I’m so glad that was part of my high school experience. I didn’t have as many kindred spirits as Clements, and I missed PVA terribly both years I didn’t go. But at the same time, I did get to be in marching band for a season, and although I didn’t choose to continue with it, I’m glad I have the story to tell now.
I got to play some stuff at Clements that I never would have at PVA because frankly, our band was better than PVAs by a large margin, like, a provable amount. My junior year, literally the first time I’d ever been in the band, we went to Texas Music Educator’s Association as the Sudler Flag winners. The Sudler flag is an award for excellence in music education. The band was already pretty good before I got there. Although I was told it was good that I transferred because a lot of their more capable trumpet players that had gotten the band the award in the first place had graduated. It was nice to feel appreciated, because I know I wasn’t the best in the world, but I was a great utility player. I didn’t have to be first chair. I was glad I got to go to San Antonio at all. Get this. I never made first chair at Clements (I don’t think…. If I did, I didn’t have it long enough to be memorable). For a very long time, though, I was third. THIRD out of the best trumpet players in the state according to TMEA. I wasn’t the gold medalist, but I was still on the podium.
I owe my success in band at Clements to Norman and Danny, the trumpet players that babied me along until I could stand on my own two feet at HSPVA. They were not dismissive or mansplaining, because we were trying to achieve a beautiful sectional sound. It was more like being picked for the Olympics with Norman and Danny as my coaches. In the symphony, you may be first chair, but the parts are not divided by voice. As in, just because you’re second or third chair doesn’t mean your part is going to be less complicated or not as high. I mean, it probably is if it’s a classical piece that’s been rewritten for younger players, but we were reading straight off the original “charts.”
It’s like reading the Gospel of Mark in the original Greek instead of the King James version. For instance, reading Bach in the original German in terms of stage notes and the key signature, which were called different things in his time. The only one I can remember off the top of my head is that B minor is H mol. That’s because I’ve also done Bach’s B Minor Mass, or Mass in H mol, at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral as a soprano.
It was an early music concert, so period instruments as well. After one of the rehearsals, I asked one of the trumpet players if I could try his horn and he let me. It was a very warm sound, similar to a Monette (famous for being unlaquered). My arms were a little short for the valves, so I was grateful to be in the community as a singer and not an instrumentalist….. Although it is fun being able to say that I can play the precursor to the trumpet as well.
When I first moved to Silver Spring, I was involved in choir. I may do it again someday, because I’d like to get back into being a musician. It’s a whole mood. You feel so much adrenaline after rehearsals and concerts that your mood naturally feels lighter and bubblier once they’re over. The reason that even though it’s just rehearsal and your adrenaline still goes up is the competition, and it is relentless. I do not mean that we snipe at each other, I mean the quest for excellence is relentless. I am not competing against anyone in my choir, but to be a better singer than I was the day before. Again, I have been asked to solo for things, so I know I’m capable of it. However, I am most comfortable as a utility player in a choir as well. I can hit high notes, but I am not a diva. I think the altos have more interesting parts, anyway.
I am more on an alto wavelength, because what I’ve found over time is that more altos can read music than sopranos. I think that’s because the alto part is generally more complicated; you can pick a melody out of thin air, but generally not the supporting notes in a chord. Alto parts are usually more complicated rhythmically as well. It has created a stigma that sopranos are airheads. This is not NECESSARILY true………….. There is a huge difference between singers who have taken lessons on instruments and singers who haven’t, because dollars to donuts they were trained in solfege and not reading the notes off the page.
I am not ashamed to admit that I thought solfege was stupid, and I haven’t been proved wrong. But that’s not because I’m not open to solfege for other people. It does work, just not if you’ve already learned to read music first. If you know how to read music, you know there is no need to bring hand movement into things. Yet, we still had to do the hand movements. I never learned them. I just made Spock’s little hand sign thingme and moved it up and down. Mission accomplished.
Because my mother was a pianist and my dad was a trumpet player, I know I learned to read music early, but I can’t remember by how much., as opposed to kids learning in school. I think I was six, because my mother’s rule in taking piano students was that they had to be able to reach an octave. As in, the thumb can be on middle C and their pinky can comfortably hit the C above. I didn’t start band, however, until I was in grade five. So, 10, I think? What I do know is that I already knew how to read music before a horn was ever put into my hands.
Singing is very hard on your body, but in a good way. As in, you’ll exercise muscles you don’t normally use and it will hurt until you get used to it. The workout keeps getting more and more productive, less and less irritating. I know I am on the right track when I can lift a heavy book with my diaphragm alone.
I just thought of something funny. Dana’s mom said, “that voice! Where did it come from?” I realized I would not be lying if my answer had been that it was Biblical, because the book I use the most frequently to work out those muscles is an Interpreter’s Bible.
I’d like to be able to run with the big boys there, too. For instance, I think Father Nathan Monk is the bees knees, because he’s already doing what I’ve always wanted to do, which is minister to people no matter what they believe. Just because there’s no God in it doesn’t mean it’s not church. Secular humanism is valid. People want to live in community and help each other whether they believe there’s a higher power or not.
Father Nathan spent many years in the church before he became an atheist, and I would argue, a better priest in the process. He’s also queer, poly, neurodivergent, and from the way he writes, probably an INFJ as well. I’ve just been watching him on Facebook for a while, and it seems like we have a lot in common. He’d be one of those guys I’d like to host on a podcast about success, because he built a business off his haters. He talks about sweeping negativity away with the “broom of doom,” and he makes jewelry. He started offering broom necklaces on his web site, and the rest was history. And though we’re peers, I know I would relate to him like I relate to my dad, which is “I’m interested in this stuff, but you’ve got a degree.” I have only been a preacher’s kid, and Nathan is ordained in the Orthodox church.
However, I do not have to be ordained because I do not want to pastor a church. I do not want to be the head of the community, just in the middle where I can enjoy everyone else and not have to worry about the direction the church is taking because I do not even want to be paid to care. I worry enough about the global church without the responsibility of a local congregation.
I think that I have done something Father Nathan has also done, which is to lay out my thoughts on theology on social media (he uses Facebook, I use WordPress) because I think they are important culturally. I am trying to give you a picture in your mind that CLEARLY says “Christian” and yet doesn’t reflect any of the views espoused by evangelicals who have never read a day of Biblical criticism in their whole lives.
In fact, I own more biblical criticism than most literalists will ever bother reading. That’s because for them, the one book is enough. It’s not necessary to understand those people’s current events, etc. A Baptist will never understand that Jesus was executed for being a loudmouth zealot. His ideas were dangerous to Rome, and the Sanhedrin agreed with them because they thought he was a loudmouth zealot way before they did. Judaism did not want to try anything new and different any more than Rome did. The fact that Romans are so crazy about Jesus now is straight up ridiculous. Nothing Jesus ever said to or about the Romans was valuable until after he died.
Tough room.
We often throw away the genius in our midst, but I don’t know why people who preach love and tolerance are often victims of the worst violence. We seem to murder and regret a lot. In America, it is worse in terms of gun culture, but the Romans were able to murder Jesus very effectively without one.
Governments kill people all the time, but crucifixion is particularly sadistic. Not only did the Romans crucify him, they nailed a sign to the top of the cross mocking him, and the sign was a snarky “King of the Jews.” You know, because being crucified in public just isn’t embarrassing enough. People could come by and mock him in schadenfreude, With crucifixion, the punishment wasn’t death. It was that you didn’t die right away. You slowly suffocated in front of your family, friends, and strangers. While naked if the little piece of cloth fell off.
We as a world have not changed. I do not know what their practice is currently, but the reason we allowed Trigon, our Russian asset, an L pill (cyanide) is because the rumor was that in Russia, if you were caught spying for the US, they would put you in a crematorium feet first. Trigon asked, and we granted, his ability to take his own life before he was tortured. This is not ancient history. Trigon was caught the year I was born.
The L pill was hidden in his pen, so he offered to write out a full confession. They look on in confusion as he bites down on the pen and dies before he hits the floor, saving him emotional trauma and physical dignity, even post-mortem.
It is a different mindset to kill someone than to stand around and watch them suffer. For instance, if I ever did anything that put me on death row, I would not want a viewing gallery. I’d just sneak in one of my ordained friends under the clergy rule and pass quietly, without the feeling that I was being watched like an animal in a zoo……… A feeling that Jesus would most certainly know intimately.
These are the things I want my community to focus on…. That Jesus’s story is tragic and uplifting because of who he was as a person, not who he became post-mortem, post-resurrection, etc.. In the United States, the prevailing message is the opposite, that you are “washed in the blood.” Everything Jesus did while he was alive takes a back seat to the idea that Jesus is magic.
He absolutely is, but his magic comes from the smallest piece of his soul, the son of a carpenter……. The place where no one looks.
There needs to be an overhaul of #dailyprompt on WordPress, because not being able to use it cuts you off from the WordPress community. I got more exposure from #dailyprompt and #dailyprompt-x than I have from tagging anything else. That’s because you’re more likely to appear in people’s feeds because they have it- people have to go looking for things like “friendships,” “relationships,” and “CIA.” And now I’m really laughing hard because to a new reader, this must look horribly confusing and I think it’s better to just leave it.
If you only have dailyprompt-x for so many days, and then you just start reusing them, eventually, you can’t answer them anymore. It doesn’t matter to me that it’s an old prompt. I am never starting from the same place on a different day, especially with 365 days in between. It also reinforces using the Jetpack app, which I have noticed they like reminding you to use it a lot…… So make it easier, Matt (Mullenweg, owner of Automattic). It creates a habit, and literally the only habit I have. Now, I’m feeling a bit weird at committing to write every day and I somehow have to think of it myself? Like I’m a creative writer? This is bullshit.
I hope I’m kidding…………..
I have gotten so used to rolling over, picking up my tablet, and seeing what the prompt is- then taking a few minutes to think about it while I get myself together- and writing everything in one shot.
One of the funniest things I’ve ever gotten is that the prompt came out at midnight and by 12:30 AM I had a fully functioning essay ripping Evangelicals a new one; a reader said, “whoa. You are good at this.” How did he know I was good at it? Daily prompt tag.
I write a lot faster when I feel passionately about something, and a writing prompt doesn’t have to be followed strictly. You receive the idea, and whatever comes up, comes up. If the prompt is about a time in my life when I felt embarrassed and it was on a fishing trip so my ADHD brain jumps to everything I know about fish, it’s still valid because I was still prompted.
Today’s is “topics I’d like to discuss.”
And I’m all like, “this web site is always about me. What about them?”
I will talk to anyone about anything, but I like listening to subject matter experts. That’s why living in Washington is so important to me. One of the best nights I’ve ever had socializing in Silver Spring was stopping into a restaurant on a whim (All Set for some Sriracha Cheddar biscuits. If Red Lobster closes, Silver Spring is going to be okay). I started talking to the man next to me and he was president of the National Black Journalism Association. So, I got to hear about what he does and how he does it. Those are the conversations I treasure because I am all about self-improvement and learning from people who are better than me at what they do. I think that people think I’m obsessed with fame, but they don’t see Tim Ferris that way.
There’s a difference between wanting fame and wanting success.
Not only that, I’m not impressed by anyone, ever. I find that if I get impressed, I won’t speak at all. The inverse is also true. The more that you treat people like you’re impressed, the less they want to get to know you because you’re somehow weirdly obsessed with them. I got my own taste of that when I realized that I did not want to date a fan. Since I have mentioned that Supergrover started as a fan, I feel like I have to specifically say I’m not referring to her.
I went on a date with a woman who’d read me and she grilled me over the coals. It felt like one would feel when they show up to a party and get served because of the bait and switch. I will give you a for-instance. If I said on my blog that I was married three years ago, then why am I not married now? Fair. But it just kept getting deeper and deeper, like she was trying to catch me in a lie and there was some kind of “gotcha” somewhere. She didn’t do anything specifically wrong, per se. I’ll just never forget the feeling of being on the witness stand and not being able to give any right answers. If they didn’t match up exactly to what I’d written months ago, then I was a liar……. When time had gone by and I was in a different mindset and god knows what I was thinking while I was writing that day…….. You get my drift.
Blog entries are just a snapshot of my day, and you can see it in my feelings between entries, because some entries are diametrically opposed. To me it is a way of saying to the world “yes, she can be taught.” I don’t feel like I am now lying, I feel like someone is holding me to the past. My blog is helpful to me because I can see where I need to grow and adjust. It is not useful to have people around me that do not see it as a living document. Everything is being amended to reflect progress.
It’s also about accountability. I can’t go back and cover up my past, but I can read it to change my future. It’s scary to go back and look at what you’ve said in light of what it did and didn’t do for you, and that’s what happens when I go back and read an entry from even last year or the year before. It doesn’t take five years for things to change. It doesn’t even take one. The blog changes every single day not because I’m making things up, but because I make it my business to think about how I can improve my relationships and get clarity on my life.
However, I made a decision to paint myself as an unreliable narrator because I am. I have given you everything you need to know about why I am an unreliable narrator, and that mostly has to do with the fact that narration is unreliable in and of itself. It’s harder to take seriously when that person is documented as having mental health issues.
I am not trying to be anything I’m not. Interesting, yes. But an expert? No. I’m also still laughing about “who peer reviews you?” Because if there was a peer review for bloggers back in the day, it was all of us commenting on each other’s posts. People don’t comment now. They acknowledge. It’s the difference between Facebook and Reddit. Both have ways of one-tap recognition, but redittors are not known for being terse. Reading people’s writing on Reddit is sometimes better than reading a novel…… As long as you don’t mind looking through a lot of spam and porn to find actual intelligence. Reddit is the best of us because it’s the worst of us….. Just like we loved “The Real World” when it stopped being polite, and started getting real.
For instance, I posted on r/washingtondc about the beauty of Washington and how you should stop and take a look because it’s worth it, etc. Basically using lines I’ve used with you guys about DC before. All of the sudden, I had almost 300 upvotes along with a cacophony of where’s hiking? Where’s biking? What are you talking about?” People came out of the woodwork saying “here’s where to rent a boat,” here’s where to hike/bike, here’s the good lakes, etc.
And when you’re in r/washingtondc, you do not dare mention Virginia or Maryland. There are places to do all of these things inside the city if you are not expecting the Columbia River Gorge dumped into a major metropolitan area, which is what most of the people from Seattle seemed to be so fucking mad about. Like “Rock Creek Park is not hiking…. When I was a hiker…. :::dramatic flare:::
Sit your jack ass down.
I realize that this is not The Gorge, but Rock Creek Park does have good hiking, and I think that Great Falls is just as beautiful as anything I’ve seen on the West Coast. Just because it’s a little different doesn’t make it less divine. Sailing on the Chesapeake is just as spiritually satisfying as driving out The Gorge.
I’m blessed that I’ve gotten to live on all three coasts in the US, because I’ve lived in Houston/Galveston as well. I also know that I am an Oregonian, not a Californian. I am not that kind of “West Coast.” Portland is full of old white lesbians that nine times out of ten look something like Paul McCartney. I fit right in.
Oregonians and Californians have a tense relationship, because basically when California started becoming expensive, Portland became the new hot place to live. Oregonians are gatekeepers, most of whom think should have closed when they came in. I am guilty of a little bit of that because it made rent skyrocket dramatically. I lived in Portland when it was the right time for someone my age to do that, but I’m glad I left. It’s not just that I’m a different person, it’s that Portland is a different city. If I moved back, Portland would remind me of DC and not the other way around in terms of the way the city is more focused on business and industry, less on being the place where “young people go to retire.”
Maryland’s suburbs do not remind me of Oregon, but Virginia’s do. There are lots of pockets that look like Lake Oswego, Beaverton, etc. On the Maryland side, the population is too dense to spread out like that. Zac’s neighborhood is a perfect example of what we don’t do here in MD, because it’s a townhome community backed up to a nature preserve. It looks very much like many of the houses I visited in Oregon. It’s not a beauty contest to me. Both cities have a lot to offer, I just think Washington has more because of the transit infrastructure (I would be broke trying to get around Portland or Houston). I don’t wake up every day and think, “God, The District is gorgeous, but it’s not Oregon.”
I’m not always on Reddit.
Here’s my favorite quote so far:
That morning was when I began to invent my own personal version of shorthand, which I would continue to use throughout my career. It was so secure and so covert that even I couldn’t make out its meaning sometimes.
I gravitated toward her style in some ways because it’s reminiscent of mine. Or mine is reminiscent of hers, but I started writing before I started reading her books. So, chicken and egg debate on who sounds like whom. I know I sound like her when I write about intelligence because she’s my touchstone on how to do that. But as a general rule, both she and Tony write like me because their books and my blog are both memoirs. Mine is just written paragraphs at a time.
Memoirs are one-sided, always. People get very angry about them. Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Harry Wales are the three recent memoirs that have caused the most scandal, but all memoirs are written with one person’s story in mind- the writer’s. I keep memoirists in my head all day long because I only have a few people giving me blowback at any given time, not a nation or a kingdom.
I don’t think I could cause an international incident with my blog, but give it time……. Eyeroll.
If I could pick a writer that I would like to spend a day with, learning their secrets, it would be Vladimir Zelenskyy. I’ve thought he was brilliant since I saw “Servant of the People” on Netflix, so I know that we are kindred spirits. This is because he’s also interested in writing, comedy, political affairs, satire, etc. I believe I would need a translator, but if I were to meet Zelenskyy at all, I would FIND a translator. There’s got to be a Yellow Pages in this house somewhere, damn.
The other thing I learned this week that I’m going to have to tease Jonna about the next time I see her is that I’ve already found a typo. She called it “Silver Springs.” I kidded her that one day I’d write something as good as hers and she said, “it’s good you’re still workin’ on that.” Every time I hear her say it in my head, I fall over laughing. It was the right way to tease a writer…. Because I like talking to subject matter experts. It means a lot to me that we can joke about craft, and more importantly, I know that Jonna has lived in my little town.
The funniest gag in the first episode of “SOTP” for me was the newly elected president saying he needed to stop by the mall for a CD for his niece on the way to work because it’s her birthday. His staff offers to do it for him so he can get to work. He agrees and the scene ends.
Later, the secret service show up with the band, because as they explained, they could not find the CD.
And on that note, it’s time to go and make coffee…….. Because I just heard the pipes.
I started with AOL Instant Messenger and chat rooms. The reason I touch type at 90 wpm is that I had to learn to type fast enough to keep up in a chat room. I have friends in nearly every country in the world after 20+ years, and I do not take that for granted because most are in the audience right now.
I see you, Finn Bell. I see you. 😉
I don’t know if Supergrover would remember Finn or not, but I reviewed two of his books and Supergrover was my editor on them. We got an A+, because of course we did. I am the kind of person that would have LOVED working with her in high school, and she would have fucking HATED me. We’re as different as Meredith Grey and Christina Yang. Also, just FYI, Christina is coded as autistic. When you go back, you can’t unsee it.
But in terms of group projects in high school, she would have seen me as getting her to do all the work, which I am betting that EVERYONE in high school thought of her that way. It’s not that I would have been lazy. It’s that her system of organization would seem like Greek, and her perception of my lack of a system would drive her batshit insane.
Or, at least, that’s the impression that I get from her e-mails. That she’s relaxed off the clock and seemingly also wrapped too tight at others. But that could have just been annoyance at me, which is usually completely deserved, I’m not going to lie. I’m annoying. I get it.
ADHD/Autism is annoying, even to me.
I think it would surprise neurotypical people at how much neurodivergent people don’t understand about their processing disorders. We can’t define burnout, meltdown, demand avoidance, hyperactivity, etc., but like obscenity, “we know it when we see it.” You can thank SCOTUS for that line, because it was used in the Larry Flynt case.
So, with no definition beforehand, we often go into these strange behaviors with absolutely no explanation for them. Demand avoidance is the worst. Even making coffee, which should be exciting. Once my brain hears “you need to make coffee,” I can’t do it. Once I hear “you need to take a shower,” I can’t do it. I have to trick myself into all of these things, which is why I’m so grateful to live in a smaller house. I can hear everything David (he has become important enough that he gets a real name instead of a fake one) does in the morning, so I just do it, too. I go to bed around 9:00 PM, because Jack, who is also a dog, wakes up around 5:30, and then we snuggle until about six. I hear David get into the shower because of the pipes, and I go downstairs to make coffee.
That’s because one morning I heard him in the shower and started my own, then I heard him turn his off and restart when I got out. So, note to self. Have coffee and just wait. It’s so funny to me that Jack has jumped into being “my dog.” It’s kind of sweet, and David is actually used to it because this is Jack’s room. He’s been sleeping in here long before I did. So, therefore, it doesn’t bother David that Jack sleeps with me because David isn’t used to Jack sleeping with him, anyway. This is his bed. I’m just renting it. 😉
Jack was recently taken to the groomer’s, and it really brings out his Chihuahua ears. He’s mostly Jack Russell terrier, but there’s Chihuahua in there somewhere. He’s a doll baby, and the way he crawls under my covers when he’s cold is simply adorable. I keep it cold in here just due to the windows being open. We haven’t turned on the air conditioner because we don’t need it. But some days it’s colder than others. I’m just used to having the windows open and wearing more clothes because Portland, Oregon (it needs no other explanation, really. The entire city lacks air conditioning. Don’t go to an old restaurant in the summer. Jesus.
Summer here is truly a temperature swing, just like in Houston. You carry a hoodie in your backpack because outside it’s 105 and inside it’s 68 or something…. Especially in the museums when they’re not full, because the air conditioning is based on full capacity. I also want to take Bryn and Dave to the zoo, because first of all it’s free, and second of all this is the right time to go. I do not like walking around outside and then going to the reptile house and the gift shop. The air conditioner always blows my hair back (literally) because I don’t have much body fat to begin with. It’s an issue, because I’m always cold. I’m glad when Zac and I are out and about that I can hold on to him, because it makes me less likely to shiver in the grocery store (not kidding).
I have learned that a LOT of autistic people hate swings in temperature that large. For instance, I hate both indoors and outdoors. I have just as much trouble with the temperature swing from air conditioning to a hot shower….. Yet another reason why demand avoidance eats my lunch….. And why social masking is so invaluable.
Because “my dog” wakes up at 0530.
To get back to the prompt, I use social media to say all of these things, whether it’s in a private conversation or what is basically a letter to all y’all here (the difference between “y’all” and all “y’all” is the size of the audience- for other countries, ‘y’all” is a contraction of “you all” and basically a product of my Texas upbringing.).
I still type 90wpm, because I’m still trying to keep up with the chat room…. Except I’m the only one in it. I am trying to teach Jack to type, but it is going poorly.
What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?
For Heather
Web design and development are the coolest things I’ve ever found (and kept) as special interests job-wise. That’s because of anything I’ve ever found, it has led to this moment. Lucrative in the beginning by being IT, possibly lucrative later on as well because I know how to express myself using those tools. I don’t think I have the capability to be a developer anymore, because there’s too much Python, MySQL, and JavaScript for me to keep up. When I started, it was only HTML and CSS. Toward the end, I learned how to read XML, but not write it. Therefore, I can still design, I’d just have to hire out the backend (things like making database connections if I had a content management system, pulling in APIs from other apps, etc.). I know how to edit a script to connect to a database with my username and password securely, but not all the ins and outs of getting the results from the database to appear in a web page. Although in terms of development, search engine optimization is very important, and I do know how to do that. And in fact, search engine optimization is why I’m still here and not using something like Dreamhost.
I have access to a community here that likes to read……. which, if you write 1500 to 3,000 words a day is pretty damn important.
Without getting interested in computers, I wouldn’t have been interested when my friends Joe and Luke said they were starting a linux server and did I want an account on it? I started writing on Darkstar, their (our) server. It connected to the web and you could get to it from the outside, but things didn’t start getting interesting until WordPress, the next big thing I found and kept. However, I didn’t have to transfer from Darkstar to WordPress directly. By that time, my job at University of Houston covered three things that propelled me here. The first was web design, getting used to publishing to a production server to make sure there were no issues before I went live (I caused a few disgruntled looks occasionally, but luckily I never broke a site designed to serve millions of people at once (oops, my bad…. should I leave a note?).
Design includes things like how the page looks, like the columns and where the ads fall and all that (I don’t control ad page breaks- sorry if they suck).
The second aspect of my job was development. Generally, when I was working on design, I’d do it in Photoshop/Illustrator first to get page layout. Development is being able to slice the images I just made and get them to fall the same way through an HTML interpreter. Believe it or don’t, that is a million times easier than page layout in Microsoft Word (amiright?).
The third aspect is content, at which I kick ass and take names. I doubt I’d be able to find all my articles now, because I worked for UH from 1999-2001. When I graduated from lab supervision to the web, I helped run a web zine (looked professional, but that’s basically what it was) called “Information Technology Daily News.” It is in no small part why I can write 1500-3,000 words every single day without blinking. I was trained like a journalist.
It was through that job that I interviewed Helen Thomas, unofficial dean of the White House press corps (the one who said “thank you, Mr. President” at the end of every gaggle). She and people like Sam Donaldson would get information and run to the phones, so I asked her how the Internet had changed all that with a 24-hour news cycle. In Helen’s own spicy way, she said basically it was a bitch on wheels. The question was possible through continuing legal education, but I got into the law school with a press pass.
Editor’s Note:
I didn’t want to see Helen Thomas at all…. eyeroll…. the Mia Hamm and Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson of news? I was dead. DEAD. Boss came through for me even though Helen Thomas was one of his least favorite people on earth (had a t-shirt that I thought was hilarious; it said “charter member of the vast right-wing conspiracy.” I remember when I could laugh at that…..) I cried when I saw Helen’s old press pass at the Newseum later that same year.).
The transition from Houston to DC in 2001 was when I really started getting popular, blog-wise. This is because my friend Chason, one of my staff at UH (I was sort of in charge of my area once the original supervisor of the zine left, but I didn’t have hire and fire privileges, just input.) introduced me to people like Anil Dash, Ernie Hsuing, and Wil Wheaton. He may have introduced me to Dooce as well, but I can’t remember how I found her. I just know it was right after she’d gotten “dooced” for her “Asian Database Administrator” comments, but hadn’t taken anything down yet. It was before Jon Armstrong, before Leta was just a twinkle in Heather’s imagination.
The path to Chason was the one directly to Chuck, the former Congressman (who was a dog), the Avon World Sales Leader, BYU dry humping and Sprite,™ and what to do about blowback (nothing).
I wouldn’t have gotten good at WordPress without her, and I miss her every day. People tell me that I sound like David Sedaris and the compliment is astounding….. meanwhile, “I am sparing you the DETAILS OF EARL’S ANGINA.” I wrote a piece on her the moment I found out she died. It was one of the worst moments of my life…. yet, it didn’t have anything to do with her at all. It’s that my virtual friend lost her battle with neurodivergence. I do not know her from Adam, because even though we are both OG, we never crossed paths.
I was not but a few years from a time in my life that I felt that way- not that I wanted to die or anything like that. It was having to choose between physically sick and mentally well every day of my life….. the relentlessness of managing a disease like that, not a particular want to escape from people….. And by that I mean dropping out of society, not my personal relationships. In short, I know what it’s like to be Dooce even if we’ve never been in the same room.
Painting my feelings as fact, she stopped checking the story she was telling herself, betraying heather and leaning on Dooce.™ I do not believe she was a narcissist. I believe that she was protecting her brain from injury with social masking. Blowback will do that to you, and why I believe she started focusing on products instead of her life. People understand “influencers.” They do not understand blogging and why it’s important.
For most of history, we have had to divine it. We had to search for signs of life in archaeology and ancient language. Blogs will eventually shed light into how we lived. The observers to history and culture will be valued in a way that they aren’t currently, like authors becoming famous posthumously.
Speaking of “posthumously,” the second worst moment during Heather’s death was seeing my stats spike as a result. It was a mixed bag of knowing my time has come and what to do about it. I am not the only blogger left standing, because Jenny (The Bloggess) and Wil (Wheaton) are still going strong. We are more of a group than we’re not, all writing through the painful moments in life and trying to make sense of them. It’s carving out our own niché while also being similar…. even the way Dooce, Jenny, and I use humor is simpatico.
That means there’s only four people that I can think of off the top of my head that have been left doing what I do. One of them is me, and one of them has passed away. I am not special because I am getting better. I am special because I am getting rare. I may be getting better, too, but that’s not the source in terms of why people read. I learned though Supergrover that I was talented, that I did have promise in a way that, if I played my cards right, I would be a success. Other rabid fans to come after her have said that I’m going to be a big deal. But it only took 10 years for me to realize that I had to have the same confidence in my writing that they did.
I can stand in 20 years of observations on society without that confidence. I can stand in the fact that I can write about a lot of topics, and people will still find it interesting. I am floored that people will wade through Android/Linux to find Zac, Bryn, Supergrover, Lindsay, Oliver (who is a dog), and the characters that are less prevalent, but no less important. It all adds to the fabric of my life, which gets richer with age as I shed my need for approval.
I get to own my story. I get to take up space.
Heather “From Whom All Blessings Flow” Armstrong is counting on me…… and now my nose is getting red, the first sign I’m about to cry. It’s okay to be wrecked, tears are not a problem….. which is what I do to correct the story I’m telling myself. I needed to hear desperately that the world needed me, and if I could have convinced her of the same, I would have made it a full-time job….. one in which I could go the distance, and we’d have been able to cross the finish line together.
So, when push comes to shove, Heather is the most important thing I’ve found and kept. First, I read her. Then, she moved out of her mind and into mine. I’ve tried to make it nice for her.
According to WordPress, my stats are booming. It feels so validating and I’m impressed with all of you. You obviously have such good taste…… I don’t understand how the web works because I chose to stop thinking about it a long time ago. Therefore, I cannot crack the Facebook algorithm for love or money and right now I hate them.
However, what is clear to me is that of course I’m going to be successful on WordPress. It’s full of old timers like me. We’re the last people standing, which was actually my point about “taking over for Dooce.” Because we started within a year of each other, I want to carry on her institutional memory by being the manic rambling spiral she set out to be.
I know my beautiful girl finds this terrifying, and not because she’s afraid of more readers. She said that Dooce didn’t used to be a shitty writer, but she is now (referencing that she didn’t like the influencer/ad thing). I told her that it was her job to tell me when to retire and she could just resend that e-mail.
Meanwhile, I accept donations and I might monetize some stuff later on, but I really don’t have that level of trust capital yet. As I told Bryn, the web site itself will always be free. There just might be more stuff on top of it that you can access through other means. It may be as simple as just saving some entries for people who subscribe, because I don’t necessarily need this as a full time job, but I’d like it. Right now I’m building an audience and trying new things. I feel like it’s bold enough right now to say that you can give me money if you want to, because I am not living Comfort Eagle.
Although my hat IS on backwards and I’ll show you my tattoos.
Today is tomorrow and tomorrow is today…. yesterday is weaving in and out.
LOVE LOVE CAKE.
I love cake by the ocean, too. And apparently you guys noticed………… Source? Biggest day for likes in the history of this blog. Yesterday.
It reminds me of Weeds….. “you don’t sell shit. Drugs sell themselves.”
Extrapolate.
In any case, I just came to say how grateful I am to all of you, because my life looks bigger than it did on Wednesday.
Leveling up has been obtained through time blindness and tumbling into rumination. Playing to my strengths. That’s fucking weird because it seems like things are going well.
The title comes from “Kitchen Confidential,” the Anthony Bourdain expose that set The New Yorker and then the world on fire. It’s how he describes the brigade, and how I use social media. Many people do not think of this when it comes to me, but it’s easier for people who aren’t neurotypical (ADHD, Autism in particular) to connect on the internet because we have enough clinical separation to express our emotions. In public there is no delete key. You have the option to go back and erase your angry paragraph, and it’s a damn shame most people don’t use it. Intellectuals are caught between two ideas…. the internet is a place of wonder because we can share so much knowledge, and the person who decided everyone should be on the Internet should be handed their ass on a platter.
Even the way I use social media comes from a different place than most people. I helped power the Internet. I was one of the first account administrators in the nation for distance learning. I helped professors take their offline courses and turn it into media content before anyone really knew how to do that. It was 1999. I was part of the team that wrote copy for the Information Technology Daily News at University of Houston, our journalism club of three or four depending. This was 2000. In 1999 was when I started learning unix, Linux, and VMS/VAX (yes. I had an account on jetson. Touch me. Inside joke, talk to your parents.). I can tell you why I thought Fedora was difficult and Debian wasn’t. I have slowly turned into a curmudgeon who doesn’t want to learn CentOS because I’ve picked a team. It doesn’t limit me in any way. Debian (Ubuntu) in some form is the most popular distribution. I chose the underdog (for the time) and I was right. That means something to me.
I was on IRC. I know the reasons behind what you think is funny. I was an early adopter. I can’t keep up now, but I was part of the wave of people who did it first. I read Slashdot and Kottke religiously. It’s one of the reasons I’m hardcore pro-Finland. Anyone who can produce a programmer like Linus Torvalds is okay in my book. The only thing we disagree on is desktop. I like Cinnamon and Mate (like the tea), he likes KDE. It’s all the same shell, the commands like you’d use in DOS. I don’t care if you don’t want to know computers and just want to click a button. I can launch programs as fast as I can think on a keyboard. It’s only now that I’m beginning to be irritated by it in the general sense of going the Microsoft route and choosing the option that launches slowest for everyone if you don’t have the newest and fastest computer. It used to be the best way to put life into old hardware, but you don’t know that unless you’re willing to do the deep dive on which desktops hog memory (KDE, anything but vanilla Gnome) and which ones don’t (Mate, lxde). It’s too much work. What I don’t like is that the alternative only has one desktop, so if you’re a DOS person, Windows is irritating as shit and there’s nothing you can do about it, die mad.
I don’t like being handheld through goddamn everything and not being able to turn it off without installing hacks like OpenShell. It replaces the whole Windows 10 interface with something more reasonable, like easy access admin tools and turning on old school Explorer. In linux, I am free to wipe my entire computer if I wish… while I’m still on it. I just can’t reboot. 😛 In the beginning, everyone was like “fuck it. They’ll rebuild. Life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting.” So, whenever Windows trys to configure things for me I feel murderous toward every single Microsoft employee who ever lived, even though 2000 was great because there was so little difference between running a web server that I could afford to be operating system agnostic. Every OS sucks, it just sucks according to your personal definition of what would make things easier… a phrase with many transitive properties.
With Windows, I’m in the place where I can’t afford to go bigger, so I have one drive dedicated to it because I like older games like Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas. I know they’re all Bethesda games, but that’s just a coincidence. I liked Fallout 3 because I could navigate without a map. It was a smaller version of DC, I just had to learn quirks instead of directions. My brother-in-law introduced me to Skyrim, but Oblivion wrecked me. The priest as Christ writ large in Bethesda-speak. The Lone Wanderer is also a Christ figure, so that’s probably why I love the game so much. I can think about that world in terms of what’s best for it without thinking of my own problems, translating interactions between personal and in-game. Communication is therefore a two-way street because it informs me about my real life, this creation of who I wish I was. I have never played an evil character. I have tried so many times just to see what would happen, and I have rejection sensitivity disorder and can’t go there. Watching people actively hate me is bad enough in real life. I choose to live in the real world instead of being the characters’ god. I use cheat codes in everything because I just want to see the story, choosing to act like an intelligence officer instead of killing everything I see. In Skyrim, I use the invisibility spells and potions more than anything else so I can steal what I need before I get unalived.
Here is the one commandmant in Skyrim that should not be ignored under any circumstances. Do not kill a chicken.
Here’s what I won’t do. I won’t kill the other Christ figure in Skyrim, a dragon, either. I have never even watched the video. I have never blown up an entire city in Fallout 3 just to see what would happen, getting to rule the violent Capital Wasteland with even bigger violence to keep things calm. Even in a video game, I can’t be that mean… unless someone starts a fight with me. I will damn sure finish it.
I have a very loyal personality, with teeth and claws. No one in my inner circle would dispute this.
I think that where I get the most hung up is with friendships with women, because to be a woman is to be a fixer/pleaser who serves at her husband’s pleasure, according to the men that wrote the system we live under today. Therefore, because I know what I want and say it, I come across as demanding. In reality they could have asked me for anything, they just don’t, and not because they don’t want it. They’ve been taught not to want anything.
I can give what I require, and asking for it doesn’t require getting it. I just might not come to you again. I also don’t realize I’m asking too much if you don’t tell me that and instead, expect that I think you’ll be what I need you to be at all times with no thought for your needs at all. In a way, that is true. I am not reading your mind and thinking of all the things in it. I am calculating my responses based on what you need, and trying to figure out how we can help each other with the least amount of effort so that neither one of us feels put-upon. We’re a team.
So whether you think I’m the holy or the moly is generally dependent on your ability to tell me what you want, because I tried for so many years to read minds and I am, in fact, terrible at it. I have had too many relationships with Type A ballbreaking bitches (in a good way, truly) on purpose not to accomplish two things… feeling totally run over in most conflicts and learning how to stand up for myself, but only after everything else didn’t work. I have managed to pick the wrong tack in most relationships, because I had and continue to struggle with rejection sensitivity disorder. Over time, the symptoms have changed. At first, it was feeling like I needed to do everything someone said to keep them happy so that I didn’t get rejected. Now, it’s shutting down emotionally and not creating new relationships so that I don’t have to worry whether someone is happy or not. My world doesn’t break apart when someone is (generally rightfully) angry with me. I either push someone away first so that the story can’t be that they left, or won’t open up at all without significant evidence that I am wanted.
I am also hugely capable of telling you what my love language is so that if you want to say something, I’ll hear it. I don’t like walking-the-tightrope anxiety in trying to figure out if something is up and when conflict is going to hit so that I can prepare for every eventuality. I am an INFJ. If there is conflict between us, it causes me physical pain. My emotions are large and I am not medicating them away as much (I still take them; just different doses). Too much serotonin and I’m not really in touch with me anymore. We just chat at the office.
I’ve been this angry the whole time. I’ve been furious since I was born, because I have not lived a moment of my life without trauma. My mother said I cried all the way through physical therapy when I was a baby and I wish I could tell her that history repeated itself when I hurt my back a couple years ago. Again. Not one moment of my life has gone without me being physically or mentally seething with rage at myself.
I had a college doc say that he’d really never seen anyone with self-esteem this low… and that wasn’t after a session. That’s after I took an electronically graded personality inventory.
Now, it’s time to take that information and figure out why, letting myself feel the anger and process it out so that I’m not constantly a time bomb. I self destruct so easily it’s like a magic trick, because I cannot navigate the system as female, queer, and physically disabled. This is not to say that I am incompetent. This is to say that my voice isn’t as loud as others. They get what they need without asking because the system is built for people who already fit in that box…. which is white, cis, and straight (most of the time).
It is hard to be a person that wants to change something and is routinely ignored. This is micro and macro. Everything from speaking my love language to minorities in the system in general.
Personally, speaking my love language is not giving me gifts. They’re great, but I’d rather hear about your emotions. If we are in conflict and you send a gift, it’s not that it doesn’t matter. I just won’t connect those two things and automatically infer what you were trying to say. In my world, only the words “I’m sorry” actually mean you are. If you treat me differently after a conflict than you did before, I’m going to sense it before you even say anything because I’m excellent at reading body language. I’m good at inferring things from text…. and you can only push me away emotionally so many times before I decide that when you say fuck off, you mean it.
Equally easy to let go when you’re the one I go to with issues, but you’re not the one who comes to me. I don’t divine problems, but I feel when there is one. For instance, saying that you’re exhausted by what I need when you’ve never given me a chance to refill your energy stores so it doesn’t feel like that. If you handle conflict by saying “I’ll deal with this on my own,” how am I supposed to know that I’m doing anything wrong?
Additionally, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences. This is with all my friends, including you (plural). I don’t think I’m untouchable. I think I’m being honest about what is true according to the filters in my brain. It is entirely subjective and doesn’t take into consideration anyone else’s feelings because I assume that if you have a problem with me, you’ll say what it is and we’ll work it out.
By far the biggest reason that I won’t work things out (generally) is when we are in conflict and I have heard you, but I don’t agree with you. Generally, when people disagree with me, they turn very pedantic. There are many things I need explained to me like I’m five, but emotions aren’t one of them. I’ve been feeling the emotions of the whole world since I was born. The dark side that no one will tell you is that INFJs are very, very prone to addiction, because they’re trying to numb out everyone else’s feelings. I absolutely feel your emotions that deep, I’ve just learned how to handle it (most of the time). Handling it comes from saying the thing I’m most afraid to say, because when I set boundaries, other people do, too.
It’s a negotiation, unless I feel that the conversation will end with only you being happy because I gave up everything. I know what that looks like and I become a shell of myself. I will become frightened of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, breathing the wrong way. I will bleed internally so you don’t have to, which has been great for my partners over the years because they never had to figure out how they felt about anything.
That is doubly problematic in close female relationships, because both halves of the relationship do the same thing to each other unto time immemorial.
“Being Loud on the Internet” is just my way of having a voice. Spilling out how I feel about relationships so that hopefully it accomplishes healing my flaws and failures while pointing you in the right direction of finding yours. I don’t need you to try and make me happy. I need you to make you happy so that we can stand in each other’s stage lights.
I just told my work in progress idea to the most perfect person I could have imagined, because he was a teacher at HSPVA. When you know people that are HSPVA quality students, when they come at you with a creative idea, they don’t say “where’s the money?” Matt Mullenweg created WordPress. Justin Simien created “Dear White People.” Mireille Enos starred in “The Killing,” and has had roles in “Good Omens” and “Big Love.” She won a friggin’ TONY for an Edward Albee where she played drunk. She won a friggin’ TONY and SHE GREW UP MORMON. Today I stood up an owned my birthright. This book is going to be fantastic. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. I auditioned to the same school they did and I got in. Sit on that.
This was my Facebook post yesterday that got me going.
I feel like I should lay out a full analysis of what I’m currently dealing with and why…. not for you. For me. It’s my thing and you’re invited, because I’ll need it later. I’ve been delving into past writing to figure out where I’m going, and how the information about my gargantuan leaps in emotional growth that I see on these pages is informing my direction.
Romance is fine. I’m settled in myself. You can read all about it just by scrolling the home page for a few days’ timestamps. Sam was a loss, but everything else surrounding her departure prospered me. It wasn’t a good relationship, but it produced good content. I am never trying to be more popular and writing in that direction. I can’t. People aren’t logical enough to predict what’s going to be hot and what’s not. They’re emotional. If something grabs them, they’re going to share it. If it doesn’t, they won’t. There is no point in time at which I want to take on the burden of caring whether this web site gets a huge, international audience.
If I don’t keep my head down and be absolutely indolent about my need for validation, I won’t get successful. There is a direct line between caring how much people think and willing to be vulnerable enough to get people to read a blog in the first place. Most of my friends do not understand this, but strangers do. If you’re already here, I can guess some things about you that will resonate. But again, I’m just talking about likelihood, not fact.
If you’re into reading blogs, you have been since 2003. You are familiar with Mrs. Kennedy, Anil Dash, Heather Armstrong (and Jon by proxy), Jenny Lawson, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Gordon Atkinson, and most importantly, Ernie Hsuing. little. yellow. different. took off like a rocket. Oh, and how could I forget Wil Wheaton? My friend Chason and I have known about and interacted with Wil as a blogger since Jesus had our pager numbers. I wish I had taken a screenshot of his comment on Clever Title Goes Here, my old blog that was equally popular. I was talking about auditions or juries when singing, that they fill me up because when I’m singing hard rep and doing well, it feels like flying over the mountains. He said he felt the exact same way with acting. It made my day.
Later on, we met up at a book signing for “Just a Geek.” I introduced myself and when he put a name to a face, this is what he wrote in my book…… “Dear Leslie, Clever Inscription Goes Here. Love, Wil.”
To back up in time a little bit, I went to the High School for Performing and Visual Arts. I have known about Matt Mullenweg for years because back in the day, we were both in the Houston jazz community. That boy who went to my high school created WordPress, and here we are.
I went to high school with stars like Jason Moran, Robert Glasper, Chandra Evans, Debbie Allen, Mireille Enos, Justin Furstenfeld, and Beyonce was three years behind me. I’ve met her once, but I’ve never paid attention to her because back then, we were in high school. Seniors don’t normally take freshmen seriously, and the day I met her I had ditched school at Clements to take my girlfriend, Meagan, back to PVA to have lunch. There was a Happening (lunchtime concerts in which different Art Areas took over the common area to showcase).
So, we were all in the cafeteria and mingling. You think it was cool in retrospect for me? I haven’t talked to Meag in years. Wait until she reads this web site and finds out she met Beyonce and didn’t even know it.
Though Beyonce is cool and everything, I was in love with Miranda Bailey the moment I found out everyone called her “The Nazi.” Then Shonda Rimes gutted me emotionally by stretching the Hippocratic Oath to its limits and having to watch her wrestle with those decisions. She had to save a white supremacist, an ACTUAL Nazi.
The fact that Chandra Evans and I went to the same high school is way more important to me than Beyonce, and remember since Beyonce wasn’t Beyonce back then, she probably feels the same way about Chandra that I do. In terms of HSPVA legends, she’s always going to be starstruck at her birthright rather than promoting herself…. she’s just projecting that she’s hot shit as a marketing strategy, because the real girl is as quiet as me.
Starstruck at her birthright.
Yesterday, I stepped outside The Matrix and owned it. I nearly blacked out when I thought about the fact that I auditioned for the same school they did.
AND I GOT IN, TOO.
I am editing this entry to add something important. Here’s what HSPVA did to inspire this level of confidence. I listen to the Argo soundtrack on repeat every single day when I write so that I can tell you where every single note goes, along with chord structures because I took music theory. That music teacher was an anti-vaxxer and I lost someone crucial to my development to COVID. I got the idea to start doing that from another HSPVA student, the creator of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, during his interview with Tim Ferris. He was a tenor sax player and had the same jazz director I did. I borrow structure from Jason Moran, the jazz pianist, all the time, because I wrote to “Ten” for a year. He was stunned and told his entire band that in front of me when we were laughing and joking after one of his concerts at The Kennedy Center. He had the same jazz director I did. Robert Glasper nearly came unglued the last time I saw him at The Reach, because back in the day he was just the goofy dude who sat behind me in history. He had the same jazz director as I did. I am addicted to “The Suffers.” Jon Durbin sat next to me in Jazz Band for two years. Moral of the story? Dr. Robert Morgan is directly responsible for making me a drooling fangirl over all of them, and he owes me money because it’s getting expensive.
Stories That Are All True 