Check your privilege! George Carlin Style

I’m having a ‘WWGCD?’ moment. Would WOULD George Carlin do? The past little bit my travels and wanderings have led me to explore a strange new world. The world of privilege. What is it? well.. oh lets not shall we? But if you must, click here for the rundown. I just.. cant..

Here is where I admit my own culpability: I used to use this word from time to time. I can no longer  do so in good conscious. Not because the motivation behind it has no merit (it does.. or at least it did.. until people went all crazygonuts with the word) but because of the absurdist, victimhood attachment and just flat over use of the word.

Oh, also.. I apparently HAVE a lot of these. Depression Privilege.. FINALLY! its about damn time that one paid off! Apparently depression privilege is ‘getting all the pity of having a mental illness, but the disease is well understood and “practically curable.” Also, I shouldn’t count as being mental unwell because I currently don’t have symptoms.’ So you got a little case of schizo affective disorder? HA! Officially better than you! Cause my brain only tries to eat itself in these specific ways while yours chooses other ways to eat itself and my brain eating MO is way betterer than yours. Suck it!

Somehow we went from well meaning discussions on class privilege and gender privilege to this: (do not ask me what they are, they are all google-able. I am beyond fed up with it so would appreciate not being a resource for more information on the crazy.)

List the First: Real and Google-able

• Adult Privilege
• White privilege
• Black Male Privilege
• Racial Privilege
• Male privilege
• Female Privilege
• Heterosexual privilege
• Straight Priviliege
• Gay Privilege
• Non-Trans Privilege
• Cisgender privilege
• Gender Privilege
• Gender Identity Privilege
• singlet privilege
• Passing Privilege
• Religious Privilege
• Christian privilege
• Non-Poor Privilege
• Wealthy Privilege
• Rich Privilege
• Middle Class Privilege
• Upper Class Privilege
• Class privilege
• cisclass privilege
• First world privilege
• Citizenship Privilege
• American Privilege
• Education Privilege
• Neurotypical privilege – anyone who does not have atypical neurology
• depression privilege
• Able-bodied privilege
• Ingroup versus outgroup privilege
• Horizontal inequality privilege
• Intersectionality Privilege
• Dominant privilege
• Non-otherkin privilege
• Couple Privilege
• Blond Privilege
• brunette privilege
• Ginger Privilege
• Average Sized Person Privilege
• Thin Privilege
• Athletic Privilege
• Privilege to Game
• academic privilege
• Executive privilege

 

List the second: Real, google-able but just too legit for our purposes here

• Parliamentary privilege
• Privilege (canon law)
• Privilège du blanc (different kind of white privilege)
• Privilege of Peerage

 

List the Third: Shit I just made up to prove a point (yet no less insipid than many items from list 1)

• Makeup privilege - not everyone has a talent for blending. we shouldn’t be judged because we cant contour properly or have defined lines eyeliner
• Colbert privilege - words are hard. some people just can’t understand references from pop culture, politics and internet memes all one show.
• Vedder privilege - some people have a preference for music sans  mumbling and ukuleles
• Risotto privilege - we seriously need to stop judging people on how well their risotto turns out. do you know how hard that is?
• Dreadlocks privilege - many many people have tender scalps which means carrying around feet long dreads all day would cause major headaches. its a disability really. so check your privilege before the next time you say ‘ooh awesome dreads!!’ some of us would LOVE to have them and just cant for medical reasons
• Roller derby privilege-you have to have healthcare if you wanna be in the derby. lots of broken bones and blood in them there rinks. no health care = no cool roller chick name
• Natural rhythm privilege – its hurtful to make fun of white folk who cant dance just because of their DNA.
• Spock privilege - did you know some can’t make the ‘live long & prosper’ sign? its genetic, for serious. can you imagine being a Trekkie at a con & you cant do this? So much shaming. Its gotta end guys.
• Vegan zombie privilege - seriously, what are they supposed to eat? why are scientists not working on a way to reanimate carrots and lentils? That’s discrimination, that’s what that is..
• Hipster privilege- not everyone looks good in oversize glasses or fedoras. We just wanna be able to love Macklemore without judgement, is that so much to ask?

 

But back to George.. I am gonna place my Carlin Bobble Head right next to my Buddha statue as they are equal in the eyes of my hero worship. I can think of no commentary greater than this from the man’s own words:

“The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it. I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don’t belong; it doesn’t include me, and it never has. no matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to.” 
― George Carlin, Brain Droppings

 

Entitlement Culture

GAHHH! The internet is internetting wrong again.

Back in the day (say.. a whopping 3-4 years ago, in the age of the 24 hour news cycle thats like a zillion years or something) railing against entitlement culture meant getting pissed off at people (mostly men, yeah i said it) who felt they could catcall, ass grab, and whatever else they felt like just because they wanted to. Or it meant getting angry with people with first world problems whine about why they cant have it even easier. Or it meant getting really angry at already stupid rich corporations fucking over the rank and file just to make another $0.05.

Well today I have  seen ‘progress’ and I reject it as such.

Today I have seen the ‘marginalized’ go a wee bit batshit over some truly insipid shit.

First up, suicide! Cause ‘zomg society doesnt cater to my VERY specific subset even tho when people try to describe me as being part of that subset I yell at them for trying to label me!’ Here’s the thing: you dont get to get mad at people for not accepting you as exactly how you want to be seen and then turn around and get mad when they do accept you as that very thing. Gay, straight, poly, broni, what the fuck ever. People rail SO HARD to be accepted as this ‘thing’ only to get all kinds of pissy when they do gain that acceptance cause ‘zomg this subset thing is hard! it was supposed to make my life all better once I got into the club!’

Newsflash, princess: every subset has its difficulties. If you’re gay, sure you get to be in the parade.. and you get the shitty discrimination the other 364 days a year. If you transition from male to female, sure you can hang out at certain parties in certain clothes if you want, you also get to be treated as ‘less than’ by a certain percentage of society. If you’re a furry you get to go to conventions and yiff, but you also get the weird looks when you check your luggage at the airport. If you’re poly, sure you & your partner may feel its ok for you to have 14 partners, and if your employer finds out you may lose your job.

Nothing in this world is ‘easy’. It all comes with catches and caveats. No ‘one thing’ is going to flip your happiness switch for you. YOU are the only consistent factor in that. And the world is also pretty damn amazing if you just switch which lens you are looking through. At least there are parties, communities and sometimes even legislation to embrace some of these subsets now. When else ever in history has that ever been true?

 

Next up, wow.. are people bored to death or something? Or has Westboro Baptist Church just really taken hold of our vocabulary? There was a time when a petition or a protest was for things like stopping wars, ending discrimination, calling attention to matters of national health. Today? Its because a certain bra maker doesnt make bra certain bra sizes and Disney unveiled a new look for ‘Meridia’ (ye olde awesome chick from ‘Brave’).

I lament I only have one head to hit against my desk.

Dont like what private companies are doing? As a consumer you can not buy their product, write a blog post, write a letter to the company, etc.. But can we not call these things protests? Its called a preference. WBC ‘pickets’ every moderately high profile funeral they can find. They arent picketing, they are just showing up. They keep using that word, I dont think it means what they think it means. Same thing here. I dunno maybe I am just ‘get off my lawn’ old, but when I think of protesting I think of taking action to try and enact sweeping social change for the good of humanity, not to express butthurt that Disney gave a Princess a B cup.

And if you are really super pissed about a company not providing the thing you want to see? DO IT YOURSELF! I do not understand this ‘I really wanted to see..’ culture we have created.

 

 

The newest superhero movie: I really wanted to see villian x,y,z in it

But you didnt front the money, write the script, audition or do anything to make that happen. K…

 

The latest iphone: I really wanted to see x,y,z apps

But you have no idea how having that app might affect say, your phones ability to PHONE people? K….

 

Such & such event is happening: I really wanted to see it have x.y,z theme 

But you didnt fund it, find the venue, do the organizing, or even speak up when they asked for imput. K…

 

What the fuck is wrong with everyone? We have more tech than ever before to create exactly the worlds we want to live in and rather than creating those worlds we use that tech to sit around and bitch that the worlds arent being created FOR us. Sure.. lemme know how that works out for ya.

Or you could learn to sew and make your own bra? Make your own dolls and sell them on etsy? Hack your phone to the exact customization you want? Or make your own movie (thanks to DSLRs and kickstarter, this has never been easier),  host your own event? Or at the very least, just fill your world with the people you feel honor you.

This stuff is not rocket science. Its not at all difficult and doesnt even require much effort. It just takes you making your world fit you rather than feeling entitled that everyone else’s worlds conform to your preferences 24/7.

 

And now I shall learn the lesson of my very own blog post and stop expecting my social media feeds to be what I want them to be. They are what they are and…

I DONT HAVE TO READ THEM.

 

Today my happy world involves little more than a hula hoop and sunshine. I’m not entitled to it, but I’m damn sure gonna enjoy & be grateful for it!

 

But what I really meant was..

Its 3am. I should be trying to sleep. But after a few hours of internet browsing (if you havent checked out the ‘Draw My Life’ phenomenon on YouTube, you should.) something from earlier is still bugging me. Let’s put it to rest so I can get some rest too.. maybe..

So earlier I was half teasing a friend about some wall posts she had been making with another person. This is gonna get tricky to write without giving too much (unnecessary and personal) detail.. so let me just cut to the heart of it:

My heart to be exact.

I think I have some weird form of social media empathy. I go REALLY far out of my way to be considerate of other people’s feelings when I post anything on social media.

• I just had a great time at the pub with a group of friends that included the ex you are still torn up about? I wont post about it. 
• I couldn’t make it to your birthday party because I had already accepted an invite for another event? I wont gush about how awesome my night was. 
• I know you are having a super sad day? I wont go on & on about how today I have the happy brain chemicals and feel like the world is made of cotton candy and friendship bracelets. 

In short, I think about my audience. Yes, status updates are supposed to be about yourself and your world and other people’s feelings are not your cross to bear. But I really do think about who all will read my post, what they have been going through, will they be hurt in some way by my (at the end of the day, meaningless) post. Of course from time to time I get a little emo rageful and post my own damage for all the world to see.. but I post MY damage and MY hurt (and to tell the whole truth, I am not so uppity as to not post some snark to shut down some passive aggressive bullshit). But mostly, I just cant bring myself to not think of others when I am posting things.

And this is one of those things that I just assumed other people did too, only to be reminded again and again that not everyone operates like I do.

Nor should they.

I understand that when someone posts about a party they went to that I couldn’t afford or an event they attended that I didn’t go to for whatever reason that they are not doing it to ‘rub it in’ or  harm me. I am just not that important. They are posting just what they feel, which is exactly what the medium is for.

But I do feel like some tact is being lost. That some basic manners are being shoved aside. That a little bit of our humanity is being eroded.

You know how long it takes me to decide if a post might hurt someone’s feelings? Less than 30 seconds. If the answer to the question ‘will this make so & so sad?’ is yes or even maybe,  I don’t post it.  But I think I am in the minority, as in a minority of one.

I guess I just don’t feel that my 10 seconds of ‘zomg wow!’ expression of some life event is worth the potential minutes, hours or days that someone else would feel sad because of my post.

I’m learning to not take things personally. But its hard. Especially when you are already in a bit of a fragile place.

There is a saying a friend of mine has that is ‘the one with the problem drives the solution.. ‘. Meaning, if you have a problem with something you have to be the one to figure out what would make it better.

Here is what would make this better for me: If my friends would take a second to ask themselves if I would get sad about something they wrote, then maybe just not post it? I’m not talking about big life events like having a baby or winning the lottery. I’m talking about making it obvious that something that is very painful for me is oh so trivial to you.

(for the record, the things they are posting are far more cutting than ‘i had an awesome time at a party you werent at’. I’m not quite THAT shallow. But I cant be more descriptive without being really specific.. so generic examples it is)

I know that’s needy and whiny and pathetic. But these are feelings. I’m not always proud of them, but denying what they are is just flat not helpful.

I also know its never gonna happen. I watch other people’s posts and almost gasp at the insensitivity of some of them. Its all ‘me me me’ and ‘oh that hurt your feelings? meh, cant be bothered…’ Its on every platform, across every age range and with all genders.

There are definitely times and places to push people out of their comfort zones. I really could care less if someone takes offense to a post I make about not raping people. But this isnt about broad political issues, this is about a throwaway post that 30 seconds of mindfulness could avoid being unkind to someone else.

I cant change the actions and behaviours of others. I can only change my reactions to things. And try not to take it personally. But if you never take anything personally, are you even a person?

I don’t know.

This next part should really be a second post but.. fuck it. If we’re putting it to rest, lets put it all the way to rest.

I think part of why this bugs me so much has to do with all the reading I have been doing on dealing with narcissism. I said earlier that this was hard to deal with when you are in a fragile place. And I am in that fragile place right now. But maybe some of this is my own doing? Because how would anyone know I am fragile at the moment? I’d like to think that if they knew they would be a little gentler with me. That may just not be true, but its kinda shitty to blame someone for doing something they may have no idea they are doing. Who knows..

But I know this: I imagine that some folks close to me may be a little confused when dealing with me. I think I come across very different in text than I do in person. Not that my views change or anything, but my demeanor might. I think I probably look pretty happy and bouncy in person, but late at night in front of my machine.. I’m quite sad. I’m quite unsure of everything. I’m quite broken. And if you chat with me via blogs or text or email during that time you may get the broken girl only to see her in full on bounce mode when you see her in person next.

I hate when people do that. I hate that kind of inconsistency. (which is another byproduct of being raised the way I was.) Yet I find myself doing it. I dont mean to. I am actually hyperconscious of it. I will often think ‘I need to tone down the happy to be more in line with that other conversation..‘ Of course then I think thats just dumb. That if you are happy, just BE happy.. inconsistency be damned. But it still niggles at me.

Thing is, it feels like its always this way and not the other way round. Always ‘happy in person, emo in text/email/etc..’ and never ‘emo in person, happy in text/email/etc..’ 

And I know why: because I was never allowed to have my own feelings. I never knew what kind of mood I was in when I got home from school until I knew what kind of mood my parents were in. I was not allowed to be sad, angry or even happy on my own terms. I was there to fix things if they were wrong with others and be immediately cheerful when things were going well.

I still have SUCH a huge problem crying in front of anyone, even those I know love me unconditionally. I can have a spat with my partner on the way to a party but as soon as we walk through the door its ‘everything is awesome’ time. Much like the drive to church/actually walking into church dichotomy of my childhood.

Noone but me is keeping me from showing people I am having some tough times. I dont know that showing them would solve the ‘social media insensitivity’ issue. I suspect is wouldn’t.. and that just makes it harder to show them. As Brene Brown states.. vulnerability is good, but only with those who have earned the right to see it (big time paraphrasing).

I got no answers beyond ‘let it go’ and ‘dont take it personally’. It just always feels like I am the only one ever doing this work and it can get exhausting at times. It would just be nice to not have to be in that constant state of readiness that is ‘here we go, reading the friend feed, be prepared for triggers everywhere…’ Its like being on high alert all the time.

I know part of the answer is to just not look at it (more of just a band aid and not an actual solution, but .. any port in a storm). And I do. I have certain people gagged, blocked, unfriended and the like across several platforms. And it does help. But the way social media is set up is to see what your friends are doing and sometimes that intersects with those you have on ‘ignore’ and you see it anyway. So the only total solution here would be to unfriend everyone. To not even log on. And there are times I do that. Go for days without logging on to a site just to keep negative things out of my eyeline. It helps some, but something always slips through. Perils of living in the information age I suppose. But it does seem kind of sad to throw babies out with their bathwater. You hate to unfriend EVERYONE.

or maybe I just need nicer friends..

or maybe just..

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle,”

Let’s get ready to ramble! or.. Gaslighting, Narcissism and other fun things

I have no idea where this post is going to go. Buyer beware..

Earlier I was concerned I had reached the end of the internet. Nothing was holding my interest and I was le bored. And then I found myself on a board for people with narcissistic family members. I am bored no more..

I have been to this board before, but kinda just glossed over it. Tonight I started reading the stories and.. whoo boy.  I’ve dealt with narcissists in many capacities over the years: family members, lovers, partners, friends, etc.. In most cases I would kinda identify the disorder and move on. I never really looked too closely at the minutiae. Tonight I am and all I can say is: there be dragons.

Each person’s story is unique, yet many hold some rather shocking similarities.

• One odd one is people still dealing with misshapen toes and fingers decades later from childhood injuries/fractures that the parent claimed were no big deal at the time and did not seek medical attention for the child. Who’da thunk it?
• Battles over hair styles and hair brushing. Soooo many people reporting that they had no idea till years later that hair brushing wasn’t supposed to hurt. Many of the same reporting that they were forever locked in a battle of wills with mom over what hairstyles they could & couldnt have, and having mom copy their hair to ‘compete’.
• Weight. Constant, constant, constant emphasis on weight (under or over) and how unlovable the child was/is because of it. Also, intense focus on mom by mom on HER weight and appearance.
• That’s another one. How huge appearance was/is to the folks. To the point of bankruptcy from shopping to get all the right things/look the right way to impress others.
• Bank accounts. Having the parent have control of an account that never reconciled/money just vanished from over the years /place to hide money from the other parent.
• Hypochondria. The hundreds of diagnoses! They never end.
• Lack of privacy. If you only exist to validate them then there is no privacy because every bit about you is only in existence to serve them. This manifests in going through belongings, reading journals, telling stories about you to anyone/everyone else.. but of course its not a 2 way street. You arent ALLOWED to talk about them to anyone, ever.
• Lies. Denying events. Making up events. To the point that the person starts to ‘track’ what was said/done in a diary or log of some kind to have proof of what was said / expected of them in each conversation. Only to have the narcissist say that keeping track of such things is ‘silly, irrational or ridiculous’ when shown the contradictions between what was said then vs now.
• Getting angry at their kids for not ‘getting everything you can’ out of a potential friend/partner. Not an expensive enough ring, not enough gifts, etc..
• ETA: another weird one.. moms working at the school the kid went to. often to ‘control’ what classes were / were not taken and to keep an eye on grades / progress.

Gaslighting (this one’s a doozy):

• accusations of  taking things of theirs and hiding them . When pointed out they were right where they were always kept, they insist the things were put back because ‘you knew you’d get in trouble for taking them’. resulting in punishment for taking -and immediately putting back -things.
• I was always wrong. No. Matter. What. speaks nonsense. He just makes it up. He’s not worth listening to.
• siblings left to care for and ‘raise’ younger siblings for years only to have the parent deny any of it ever happened years later even though both siblings have distinct memories of the same exact events.
• claiming a child never had an interest in x, y, z even though the child (now an adult) has awards, trophies and honors for achievement in that very field of interest.
• getting angry for actually hearing what was said. ‘you should hear what I MEAN not what I SAY..’
• 50 degree bedroom with the busted radiator too cold? My fault for having poor circulation. Poor circulation? My fault for not exercising enough. Kids bullying me at school? My fault for being too selfish and not being kind enough.
• and so many more..

——————————

but this comment left me looking at my screen mouth agape..

I think I’ve noticed something and I’m gonna drop a sweeping generalization… holler if I’m talking out of school.

One thing I notice about the way we ACONs (adult children of narcissists) tell our stories is we tend to use a very cool, detached, “just the facts” style. (This does not disparage or discredit any ACON that happens to tell their stories a different way!)

I speculate that the very desire to tell stories and the “here are the facts as I have them” style is a consequence of a history of gaslighting.

We’ve been told that our memories are wrong, or our emotions are wrong, so our stories tend to turn on things like what was said (remembered with eerie clarity) and what the clock said and what day it was and how old we were and the bare bones who-what-where-when.

We seem to doubt that anyone would just take our word for something. And God forbid we reveal emotion when we tell a story, lest the listener tell us, “You’re overreacting.”

Maybe a beautiful thing about this *discussion* is finding like-minded tellers and listeners.

To a non-ACON listener, one isolated story doesn’t tend to raise eyebrows. Anybody can say a wacky thing once. But, to me at least, as a fellow ACON, the particular flavor of an N-story is so distinctive… and the aggregation of them so telling… and the absence of any empathy so pervasive… that those stories are fascinating and amazing and kind of addictive.

Good god do I do this. I try to infuse my storytelling with a zillion tiny details to PROVE that what I say happened really did happen. If I can recall the color of the car, then that helps prove the story about what happened in the car, right? You’d think.. but no. But still I do this. All day every day. I never wondered why, I thought it was just the way I talked. Wow..

and it made me realize a few other things too.

—————————–

I cannot stand people who push buttons just for the sake of pushing them. (its not their fault, often they are just being playful or even sweet or maybe helpful).

I had a shrink once who would say things like ‘what would happen if a, b & c happened?’ I HATED this. Finally one say I told him why.

‘Please stop with these quizzes of yours. They are scenarios that you have made up and that you have the answer to. And even if I guess correctly you could change your right answer so that I’d still get it wrong. You have all the power in this scenario and there is NO way for me to win. So can we just stop setting me up to fail?’ 

He looked stunned and said he’d never had anybody say that to him before and that he would not do it again. Sure enough, next week.. ‘So what is xyz happened?’  *head desk* 

I left therapy shortly after that.

—————-

I know a guy who’s big claim to fame is fucking with people just for kicks. I stay away from him. Its not funny and its not cute. And unless you’re Yoda or Mr Miagi none of that shit is anywhere remotely helpful. Its just childish and petty and I had plenty of it as a kid. I’m all growed up now and get to choose who I interact with and I just have no patience for people who want to make me look silly, or crazy or dumb or confused just because it gives them a giggle. Grow the fuck up.

—————–

Globalthermalnuclear War: The only way to win is not to play

The second I have to start tracking conversations to make sure I know wtf is going on is the second I get the fuck out of dodge. The latest example had me compiling 119 pages of emails to show where I had followed the stated wishes of others and yet still found myself accused of not honoring their wishes. ONE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN PAGES I had as ‘proof’.. in their own words. And yet.. somehow.. there was ‘miscommunications’ . Miscommunication my ass. More like ‘you got called on your practice of moving the goal posts every 7 seconds and didnt much like it’. Fuck that. I’ll go play with adults rather than pander to the whims of emotional children thank you very much.

————————-

The over reacting to my ‘over reacting’.

I gotta say I am way past fed the fuck up with this one. I do not over react. I REACT. When something irks me I rant. And my voice raises a little. I talk fast. I cuss. When Janeane Garafalo does it, she’s a genius. When George Carlin does it, he’s a God. When Henry Rollins does it, he’s an inspiration. When I do it? I’m ‘over reacting’

No I am bloody not. I am talking. This is what I do and how I am. Its no big secret, this is not new information.

I had to have a friend take my pulse once mid rant to prove to her I wasn’t worked up, I was just talking.

One person called me ‘truculent’ while praising my passion.

Many friends have asked me to ‘tone it down’, generally in the same breath as them saying ‘oh kim we adore you for your outspokenness and lack of fear to speak your mind!’

Grrrr..

I am me. I can be intense, I know this. You know this. If this a problem, perhaps you should not engage with me rather than  trying to guilt me into some whispered, watered down version of me. But then of course you wouldnt like me if I was whispered and watered down would you? Cause what draws you to me is my intensity and passion. So fuck you for trying to make me into something I am not.

This is who I am. Deal with it or dont. I am done trying to fit into other peoples boxes.

——-

There’s gonna be some boundary building round here.. and rule #1 – narcissists can GTFO post haste. Take your gaslighting bullshit elsewhere, we’re full up here. rawr and stuff..

True Grit

I have a bit of a new resolution: to stop wearing my crazy as a constant apology. A while back I made a post about the things I am trying to stop doing. Stop saying ‘should’. Stop saying ‘Im sorry’ unless I really am. Now I am adding this. For too long I’ve gone out of my way to bring up all the ways I am insane as a way to say ‘I am so sorry you have to be around me, you don’t deserve such awfulness.‘ Its a bit like ‘I’ll leave you before you can leave me’ or ‘I’m gonna make fun of myself before you can do it’. The fact is that I am crazy. So fucking what. I struggle and claw each and every day to get a little bit better handle on it than I had the day before, and if that isn’t good enough then nothing ever will be. No more will I refer to myself as ‘the crazy girl’ or think ‘of course they left.. who would want to be around all that?’

The fact is that I AM crazy.. I am also awesome.

What brought on this epiphany? If you have been reading this blog for any length of time you can probably guess the answer: Podcasts. Well, podcasts and the internet.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while. A few months ago while discussing something with David I said something about me being the crazy girl and he said ‘You know, I really hate it when you talk about yourself like that. It hurts me to hear you dismiss yourself so easily..’

Blamo! Shit just got real. Truthbombs just got laid down. This is why I say everyone should have a David.

So I thought about that for a long time and decided he was right. But there was more too it I needed to put together.

A while back I was listening to a Radiolab episode on something having to do with NASA. Oh! I know what it was.. they had Mary Roach on talking about her book ‘Packing for Mars’. (go read it, so much awesome). In addition to space toilets and other fascinating facts, she was talking about how NASA actually chooses astronauts. There are some basic requirements: height (too tall or too short and the suits wont fit), vision, flight experience, etc.. But the one quality that really mattered wasn’t intelligence or test scores, it was something she called ‘unflappability’.

She went on to talk about a time when the whole day had been spent taking pictures of something in space. The next day the tech told the astronaut in charge ‘Umm yeah.. all those pics you took? We cant find them. You’re gonna have to redo the whole thing…’ Can you imagine? You’re living in a capsule the size of a canoe, eating food from tubes and facing death every second from the sun, the cold, the vaccuum of space, you name it. This guy on the ground has one job: to get the pics you spent a whole day taking and he just.. loses them. What does she do? (female astronaut FTW). She says ‘Ok, we’ll take them again..‘ Grace under pressure. Unflappable.

Last week sometime I was reading a story about Navy Seal training/selection. (it was a popular image/story that was going around.. no idea if its actually true or if I have my facts straight here.. it was the impact of it I am talking about rather than the accuracy). The guy was talking about how one of the tasks they were given was to dive to the bottom of this pool (no gear, just holding your breath) and tie a series of knots. One of the guys was down there for some insane amount of time, 5-7 minutes or something? Eventually the instructors told all the recruits to face the wall and STFU. Seems the dude had pushed it too far and had run out of air, like.. completely. They dove in, pulled him up onto the concrete and resuscitated him. The first words out of his mouth after coming back from the clutches of death (literally) was ‘Did I tie all the knots? Did I pass?’ The officer in charge said to him ‘The point of the exercise was not to tie all the knots, you asshole. The point was to see how far you’d push yourself to get the job done. You died trying to do it. You passed.’  

Martin Seligman has been doing research for years into the psychology of happiness. He’s found all kinds of interesting things. One of them is about grit. Actually alot of the work done on grit has been at the hands of Dr. Angela Duckworth who got her start under Dr. Seligman. Here is some of what they have found:

Grit is defined as perseverance and passion toward long-term goals (Duckworth et al. 2006). Gritty people tend to persevere, self-regulate and push themselves toward success. Drs. Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman (2006) found that the correlation between self-discipline and achievement was twice as large as the correlation between IQ and achievement.

Additional research suggests that people with grit:

• report experiencing more happiness than those who are less gritty, even when controlling for age and education;
• earn higher GPAs than their non-gritty classmates, even with lower SATs scores;
• are more likely to outperform in spelling bee contests, regardless of verbal IQ.

Dr. Seligman also found that resilience is key to happiness and growth:

In November 2008, when the legendary General George W. Casey, Jr., the army chief of staff and former commander of the multinational force in Iraq, asked me what positive psychology had to say about soldiers’ problems, I offered a simple answer: How human beings react to extreme adversity is normally distributed. On one end are the people who fall apart into PTSD, depression, and even suicide. In the middle are most people, who at first react with symptoms of depression and anxiety but within a month or so are, by physical and psychological measures, back where they were before the trauma. That is resilience. On the other end are people who show post-traumatic growth. They, too, first experience depression and anxiety, often exhibiting full-blown PTSD, but within a year they are better off than they were before the trauma. These are the people of whom Friedrich Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

 

Today I was listening to Episode 106: Soldier Robert Patrick Lewis on the Mental Illness Happy Hour. (If you have PTSD, go listen. If you have trouble sleeping due to PTSD, definitely go listen and then go get some 5HTP. I’ve been taking it for a few months and it really does help). Anyway, he keeps talks about his journey through basic training, through Special Forces training, through combat. And the thing that kept hitting me was his grit. He wanted to be a part of this thing (being a Green Beret) and nothing was gonna stop him. The physical training, the combat, the psychological toll of war. But when he was talking about the ‘selection’ he kept talking about how they would weed people out. The ones they kept have this quality of ‘get the job done. at all costs. fuck the pain. keep going. keep pushing.’ He said it wasn’t necessarily the guy who could do the most push ups who made it, but the guy who had pushed himself to his limit and still tried to do just one more. If that aint grit I dunno what is.

Passion and perseverance.

I guess to some people that might look alot like crazy. To me it looks like.. me. My first tattoo was a symbol for passion. And I’ve persevered through some fairly serious shit. I’m no Green Beret or Astronaut, but I dont give up at the first or even the 101st feeling of ‘this is hard.’ Have your kid die in your arms? Go get knocked up four more times. Lose 2 & have 2 more. Have trouble with drugs? Go to AA, rehabs, meetings, shrinks, whatever it takes to kick it. Everyone and everything you knew gets ripped away from you? Move to another country and rebuild. Finding yourself unhappy? Research and apply everything you can find on it until you make it happen. Got the worlds worst case of monkey brain? Sit, alot. Then sit some more until you can finally meditate and calm yourself the fuck down. Think it would be cool to spin poi? Do it, every fucking day until your arms hurt and then do it some more. Wanna get in shape? Go to the gym until everything hurts and you cant move.. and then go again. Pick a goal and make it happen. Hack it, subvert it, work it, push and push some more.

So yeah I am crazy. Crazy focused. Crazy motivated. Not all that talented but crazy determined. ‘Failed at farming, failed at business, Can’t sing, don’t dance …’ What to do? Become President of the United States, thats what.  So from now on I’ll not refer to myself as crazy, but as gritty.

 

Poly In Motion

Kink In Motion started as a way for me to talk about kink. It’s organically morphed into a wider scope where I talk about whatever happens to be on my mind. I still love kink, but more and more these days I find that what I really want to talk about is polyamory. Throughout my journey I’ve had many experiences, epiphanies, heartbreaks and amazing adventures. But they all have a common thread: the quest for connection. Lately I see poly as the most direct yet encompassing subject to examine that quest. Theory is all fine and good (and not a little bit fascinating) but a little useless without ever putting it into action, I’m finally setting apart a space devoted to poly. Hence…

(Kink In Motion is and will remain still active. But the more poly-centric stuff will be linked to from here)

It’s a little ironic that I would start this blog now, after going from three partners to one  in less than a year. But I think it’s also just as it should be. Afterall, we often do a good deal of our analyzing in post. I am by nature an introspective and analytical person and those qualities have been put into overdrive in the past few months thanks to my relationships and the events leading to my present status. There’s no use in going through heartbreak unless you learn from it. Parts of my heart have been broken, but breaks are just cracks and cracks are how the light gets in.

Let there be light, or at the very least.. learning.

 

 

Please follow me over there too! I’m kinda really excited to see how this one turns out!

A letter to myself a year ago..

Dear Me A Year Ago,

A significant date is coming up . A day that will in many ways turn your world upside down, in both the good and the bad ways. Many, many experiences and introspection will result from this date. They will lead to exhilaration and heartbreak. Keep the date. Don’t run from the pain you are about to dive headlong into.

The next year is going to be incredibly challenging for you. You’re going to want to throw in the towel a dozen times, your wrists are going to seem too plain and you’ll want to gussy them up with some crimson ribbons a few times, you’re going to be scared to death of threats real and imagined almost daily.

Sounds daunting, doesn’t it? It is. But be still. Listen. Experience. Lean into it all.

Because more than anything, you’re going to get a Masters level education in you. You’re going to learn.

You had a rough year the year prior, so you’re gonna be ready and deserving of some goodness. And you’re gonna get it, a lot of it.

You’re gonna re-learn the thrill of having something to look forward to. And you’re gonna have a lot of fun. You’ve spent a lot of time getting back in touch with what it was like when you were 5. This year you’re gonna get to feel what its like to be 15, without the acne.

You’re gonna relearn everything you thought you knew about alot of things, and since you are as stubborn as the day is long, the relearning is gonna come in the form of sucker punches to your gut.
You’re gonna have to redefine things we all should have learned in kindergarten: like what a word means, sharing with a full heart, and telling the truth.
You’re gonna have to redefine things we all should have learned as adults: like consistency, honesty, that passive aggressive bullshit is just not cool, that lies of omission are just as destructive as lies of commission, that keeping to the letter of the law and keeping to the spirit of it are two different things, that a policy of ‘begging forgiveness rather than asking permission’ is a lazy and hurtful way to live.
Next you’re going to do a few very brave and VERY scary things. They will not go the way you want them to. Your fears will be realized. You will be devestated and feel defeated on every front.
But something wonderful is about to happen too: you’re going to be damn proud of yourself.

You’re going to take all those things you have learned over the past few years and apply them. They are not going to lead to the outcome you wanted, but to the outcome you needed. So you could find you again, and be proud of her. You’re going to feel immense pain but also immense pride and a deep calm for showing up, being seen and being vulnerable.

You’re going to fight your way back, one step on the elliptical at a time, one writing at a time, one conversation at a time, one lonely night at a time.

You are going to marvel at the people who show up and want you to show them all the big scary parts of yourself. You are going to stand in awe at the sheer number of times they can patiently listen to the same ramblings over and over, yet you are going to trust them to tell you when its too much. They never do. You are going to feel so much gratitude for this.

You’re going to get in the best shape of your life, mentally and physically. You are going to grow muscles in places you have never had them before on your body and your heart. Your intuitiveness will soften into empathy.

You are going to really ‘get it’ this time and guard fiercely the notion that you only let in the things and people that bring you joy without heartache. You are going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out when to stay and when to go. By this time next year, you’ll know that the answer lies not in you, but in the eyes of others.

You are going to read a few books that will impact you greatly, and rather than write off their messages because it isn’t what you want to hear, you’ll take them to heart because its what you need to hear. You’re going to want to stay snuggled up under your blanket of self pity, but you’ll force yourself to listen to the lessons that will eventually lead you back to yourself.

You are going to listen to the stories of the struggles of other people and see yourself in their pain and their triumph. You are going to be so grateful for the vulnerability of others.

A year out you are still going to miss some things, but rather than let it consume you, you will recognize it for what it is: missing what you wanted and not what you had.

You will finally understand that just because you feel a certain way now does not mean it will feel that way forever. You will have some foreign sense of faith that there are great things out there yet to come.

You will start to dance again and this time you’ll take the pressure off yourself and do it for the reasons you did it in the first place: play, bliss, freedom, expression, connection and beauty.

Perhaps most importantly, you will learn what it means to be enough.

There is so much more, but the next year is starting now and there are plans to make, projects to get underway, people to connect with and so much more to learn.

Take the time to acknowledge the date, take a big deep breath of gratitude and humility and get on with it. Ask for grace and let it go. Feel the feelings and drop the story.
Just trust me when I say this year will knock the stuffing out of you, but you’ll get through it and be grateful for it… for all of it.

Just hold on, be still, listen, learn and most of all love.
~self