Hah!

Mid Year Resolutions

For me especially it is time for Mid-Year Resolutions.

I kind of went off the rails with my New Year's Resolutions. Evidence for this: I don't remember what they were.

One was not to talk bad about people. This didn't really work but I suppose it made me more conscious of talking bad about people, which led to some reflections about why I would ever talk bad about people. And then to realize that people can be sort of threatening in various ways. So result: negligible. I do think that I may talk bad about people less than I did now that I have realized that virtually everything about other people that causes a reaction in me says a great deal about me, and less (that is interesting) about them.

Unless they are coming at you with a knife, even malevolent people are more innocuous than you might suppose. There isn't much reason to get in a dither about them.

One can choose the reaction to such people, that's all I'm saying.

Or not. Sometimes, it's not so easy to choose the reaction you have. That's when you know it is a bit about you.

Now, don't get like that. I didn't say that it's all about you.

I'm falling off the rails in other ways. I was undersleeping. Now I'm oversleeping. I'm picking fights with my husband, forgetting to eat, drinking too much alcohol, wasting time in various remarkable ways.  There are no words for the inertia. The idea of picking a pillow up off the floor or flossing or even getting out of bed sometimes. Look, I can't even finish that sentence.

Is gravity different?  Is g=not whatever it equaled before? Is quantum mechanics fucking with us? Is the moon not in the seventh house any more or did Jupiter stop aligning with Mars?

I'm trying to think of a good resolution to combat the malaise. All I can think of is: Eat more vegetables. Stay off the internet.

The malaise makes it hard to think of ways to combat the malaise.

So what are some good Mid Year Resolutions?

I am looking for those which will:

(1) Combat malaise
(2) Fix the economy and stop global warming.
(3) Help me to avoid sin, both venal and mortal.
(4) Extend our natural life.
(5) Are kind to animals.

Get a puppy? Is that the answer? It's that easy? Just get a puppy and all your problems will be solved?

You know, you should just go on over to Ozma Links

It's crazy dictator month over there! Yes, I haven't posted anything recently. Don't you want to be entertained?  Next up: Emperor Nero. I'll post about him just as soon as I whatever it is. That I was going to do. Something important, I'll bet. I'll bet it was something important.

Seriously, you really should go read Ozma Links

It's much more entertaining.

Ozma Links:  Entertainment,  mucho  entertainment.

Do You Have a Favorite Weirdo?

My goal here is take anything pejorative out of the term weirdo. I’d like ‘weirdo’ to either be a positive description or neutral.  

I’m going to go all out: Let’s start thinking of ‘being a weirdo’ as a good thing.  

I want to live in a world populated by weirdos. There are already a fair number of weirdos in the world. What I want: A world where everyone is free to be weird, where we never hesitate to be weird, when the mood strikes. A world where we appreciate the deep creativity involved in weirdness and the essential contribution to society made by weirdos.  

Some places are already like this. I went to a college that was a magnet for weirdos and many students at that college had a deep fondness for the weirdos. They were part of the fabric of the place. They also made if possible for some of the students to become weirdos themselves--for the men to wear skirts, the women pinstripe suits, for some to wear nothing at all. People in some dining halls ate food out of pot lids with chopsticks, fell asleep on the common room floor with their physics book as a pillow, occupied construction cranes to protest animal testing. 

Among the enabling weirdos was a guy who would bring his Mister Microphone and serenade the passersby, the guy who wore different shapes painted on his pristine white sweatclothes who spent the afternoon doing slow mime-like motions with a white umbrella, the guy who occasionally brought small TVs and appliances to smash in some kind of luddite celebration.  

I was surprised to go to other universities and realize that they were probably enforcing the laws against public nudity, loitering and impromptu performance art. And that I didn’t feel free to go barefoot everywhere in those places. The weirdos had been such great cover for my own minor weirdness. 

I did luckily spend some years after this in a town where certain weirdos were embraced as part of the community, local color and all that—like the guy with the beard who dressed in women’s clothing and roller skated everywhere. I’m sure there were some people who weren’t fond of these weirdos but it was unseemly to criticize them.  

You wanted to know the story behind these people but it was almost better not to know. Every one of these people could be the imagined recipient of thousands of origin stories, a kind of superhero.  

The trick to not being a weirdo: To make everyone think they know your story, or at least the important parts. The key thing about the weirdo: They make you want to know why.  

What put me in this weirdo-embracing frame of mind: Tonight, I saw a woman, very small, almost elfin sitting at a table with some normal-appearing friends. She had the whitest face, and the blackest hair. I do not believe, although one can never be sure, that nature gave her a face that white, hair that black. It was not waxy, like a vampire’s face but soft and delicate. It had to have been some kind of white makeup. She was a fragile weird flower, about 60.  

It isn’t just that there was something strangely beautiful about that kabuki makeup. It was that she’d alleviated my boredom, she’d awakened my curiosity. And at Panera Bread, no less--a place so insistently normal it makes my skin crawl.  

Her weirdness was unobtrusive in a way but she’d also managed to make herself look like a new variant on the human species, which is not an easy thing to do, unobtrusively. 

Of course, what I thought was: Damn! I wish I had my camera! But I don’t own a camera.  

My next thought was: What, you think you are Diane Arbus now? 

Diane Arbus is a help to weirdo-lovers everywhere. She didn’t just take pictures of the world’s weirdos, with love. She shows how everyone was, in some sense, a weirdo. She managed to show the weirdness that lies within most of us, to blur that false separation between the weird and the not-weird. 

What is a weirdo exactly? Weirdness is hard to define. The main thing about weirdos is not just that they do things a bit different than everyone else. There is that, but we also tend to assume that weirdos don’t know what it is that is expected of them. We think they are making some fundamental social mistake. 

To be honest, I can’t say I’m sure what makes someone a weirdo. You know it when you see it. Does anyone else know?  

We assume weirdos don’t know what is expected. But it is equally likely that weirdos are acting with great courage and deliberately defying what is expected of them. Also, what the harmless weirdo defies are the trivial things that bind us, that we think we aren’t free to defy and that we also fear not complying with—possibly because, on some level, we fear being weirdos. 

Mostly, this is: How we look, our conversational mode--the more trivial rules of human interaction--and how we present our possessions. 

The effort we put into these things. Is it worth all that effort? It is, because everyone else is doing it and it could be trouble for us not to. Sometimes, weirdo trouble.  

But what if we all just…stopped? 

We try to make these things—our clothes, our houses-- ours but when we follow the rules, it is doubtful that they are truly ours. We find some cluster of rules to follow and we work within that. Then, we sometimes worry that we haven’t quite followed the rules carefully enough or else we haven’t made whatever it is ours. Or that it won’t be recognized as ours or our unique contribution won’t be appreciated.  

Not that there’s no room for variation, even when we stay on the reservation and don’t stray into full-blown weirdness. But about the weirdo there can be no doubt: They have made these aspects of self-presentation their own, fully their own.  

The guy who paints his house pink makes a statement. I’m glad for that guy. But the guy who writes his own aphorisms, covers them in plastic and puts them all over the front of his house? What about THAT guy? 

OK, we are scared of him.  

Should we be? Weirdos trouble us. But maybe it is good for us to be troubled sometimes. 

Weirdos can seem scary. There are some actually scary weirdos but usually, we are unnecessarily afraid of the weirdo.  

One reason for being afraid of the weirdo is that the weirdo is unpredictable. If they are unpredictable in their home décor or their footwear, God knows what else they might do. Another reason for being afraid of the weirdo is that the weirdo challenges the conventions we live by. I think that’s what we need the weirdo for, that’s the gift of the weirdo, a gift we should embrace.  

We might fear the weirdo because we fear being weird ourselves.  

We are used to this effort so we don’t notice it but we do put in, and have always put in, a fair amount of effort to avoid being the weirdo.  

Consider though, that it is usually not weirdos that do the most damage in the world. Dick Cheney is a bit of a weirdo, yes. But we would not have Dick Cheney without George Bush. George Bush is the normal guy. The normal guy is not necessarily safer either.  

At least the weirdo alerts you to his presence, the weirdo engages you, the weirdo usually can’t hide and doesn’t try.  

The other day I was trying to imagine what the world will be like when I’m enlightened. One thought I had is that when I’m enlightened, I will stop making the discrimination about people that is attached to social norms. I saw a pretty woman on the subway platform, with a lovely tan skirt and a pristine cream-colored scarf fetchingly wrapped around her neck. I saw another woman with a truly atrocious haircut, a faded blue linen skirt with a distressingly unmatching blue XXL t-shirt on top advertising a performance of ‘Iolanthe.’ [Iolanthe—gotta put that in the baby name bank next to ‘Iseult.’]   

Also, Birkenstocks. 

She had a very slight hunchback. I wanted to hug her. 

When I am enlightened, which I’m sure will happen any day now, I will.

I Started A Link Blog

Ozma Links

But typepad's gone all wonky on me.

No...time...to fix...the typepad.

Also, no time to do links.

I resisted Twitter for TWO YEARS and now it is ruining my life. Why did I not abide by that original wisdom.

But come be a Twit with me, if you so desire:  Iamozma on Twitter.

God, someone stop me. How did this all happen? 

Finger on the Pulse, People. Finger On The Pulse.

NYT Science Blog! You read my mind.

People ARE crazy monkeys!

“We evolved as social primates who hardly ever encountered strangers in prehistory,” Dr. Miller says. “So we instinctively treat all strangers as if they’re potential mates or friends or enemies. But your happiness and survival today don’t depend on your relationships with strangers. It doesn’t matter whether you get a nanosecond of deference from a shopkeeper or a stranger in an airport.”

In other words: I don't need a new pair of jeans. I can wear my crummy jeans until they fall apart.

I had good jeans that fell apart. Now I'm down to cruddy jeans. And hey, what difference does it make? Sometimes I feel ashamed around those who will evaluate me.

But they might not even like me anyway. Also, I have a mate.I am fully mated. Hence, the explanation for mom jeans. It's not like you are unaware of fashion. It is that mating season is over for you.

(My jeans are not exactly mom jeans. Well, they are like the jeans my mom wore in 1973 when she weighed 100 lbs. and I don't weigh anything even remotely close to 100 lbs. They are just wrong those jeans. They are box store jeans that someone probably bought on sale 10 years ago and then sold on ebay, where I bought them.)

I mean, really, what's the good of having low social status and having ended one's mating period if it doesn't save you money on jeans?

The Crazy

Insanity. Dr. Mama's comment got me thinking about insanity and my relationship to it.

I do wonder if insanity is a kind of choice. Not entirely, not for everyone. There's this very complex problem about responsibility that I've been trying to work out, and fail to. On the one hand, we humans show such an ability to choose our lives that it would seem kind of incorrect to say of any person who takes any stance to life, 'they can't choose anything else than to be what they are right now.' On the other hand, it sometimes seems like this is true.

For that reason, I sometimes think it possible for even a very severely mentally ill person (a person with an organic disorder) to become sane, in a sense. To strive for sanity, to choose the sanity that is possible for her. I think everyone has met a mentally ill person who is this way--who has some wisdom or something in their struggle. Who manages to go beyond those limits placed on them.

On the other hand there is this bizarre problem of where you are going to choose from. For some people in my family, for example, who are so desperately unhappy, it is almost like there isn't anyone there who could choose anything other than the approach to life that makes them so unhappy.

The strange thing is that another person, living a quite similar life to relative x (or y or z...or b through q--I have a lot of crazy relatives) is living, might actually manage to be happy. This is what relative x does not see but my gut feeling is that they can't see this. They can't see the option, the path out of misery. If you can't see the option, you really aren't free to choose. And I don't think they are choosing not to see it--they really cannot see it.

I'm very confused about this. Very rarely will anyone say about the situation they are in 'I chose this. I am fully responsible for this.'  There's a way that's never true because your options are often chosen for you and your options can be narrow. But within those narrow options, there's a way that we make our path. But we don't make ourselves.

And even though we don't make ourselves, we can sometimes choose who or what to be--again, within some kinds of narrow boundaries.

Think about it for a minute and consider whether there is not a sense in which you are responsible for absolutely everything in your life and yet you try to evade this responsibility constantly. A sense that most people never see themselves as genuinely in charge of their lives. Well, that's just my theory. My theory is that, in a way, almost everything is our own doing (in a limited way) but this fact is constantly eluding us.

And, on the other hand, almost nothing is your own doing. Everything you could do, everything that was possible depended on something and the presence of that thing in your life that you needed to do what you did was very arbitrary. So it's all luck, in a way.  It's like one of those weird things that comes in the Cracker Jack box that looks different however you turn it. What the hell are those things called? They are like holograms but not holograms. The Jesus's eye blinking things?

It is often the seeing what is possible that is the problem. We do not see the alternatives. They are not real to us. They are often there, though. I don't think it's a willful not seeing either. I think most of us live with a lot of blindness that's not our own doing. Some is caused by fear but much by something else I haven't yet put my finger on.

So, about my own self-description as insane--there's a lot to it. First, I could easily go waaaaay further than this because if I wanted to, I could easily get a very firm and set in stone diagnosis. I've had those, and resisted them. Diagnoses are very fishy things, when it comes to the mind.  So I'm not embracing insanity. I could get the kind of diagnosis that is accompanied by a kind of disability/illness model--simply because I've had it applied to me several times and talked the various doctors out of it.  This was surprisingly easy.

Sometimes though, I do get an image of myself as that and then everything I've managed to do looks like some kind of bizarre miracle. How does someone who wants to kill herself every single day do what I've done?

It's not, though. It's completely ordinary for something like that to happen. We just have the wrong idea of insanity and that's what makes it look more remarkable than it is.

I prefer the general moniker of insane and resist a very specific and detailed account of what insanity I have. Now, one reason I prefer is that I probably think that it is the human condition to be insane. I have recently been on this kick that it is actually possible to overcome this part of the human condition but of course, being sort of perverse, I have imagined that it is exceedingly hard to do--like some kind of 30 years in a Buddhist monastery thing.

I have a pretty wide view of what 'insanity' is, in the end. I need to be more selective probably. I think my view of insanity probably covers about 90% of people's tendencies. I'm getting even worse. I'm starting to think things like: 'It's insane to want a really nice car...It's insane to care what anyone thinks about you unless they can directly affect your life. It's insane to feel guilty for most of the things people feel guilty for.' I'm kind of going overboard on what I think is insane.

I think people are very driven by impulses that have their bases in unnecessary fears and yearnings and I think I'm starting to include everything that is driven by these impulses into the 'insane' category--kind of unconsciously...not so much because I've thought about it enough.

One thing I have thought about before: It needs to be pointed out more how insane all the people are who are not in any way seeking professional help. There are a lot of normal and successful people who seem totally insane to me. Re: The asshole list. There are all these people going around who yell and scream at other people (other adults) but who are counted as sane. How is that sane? It's sane only because they are powerful.

Also, it should be noted how deeply sane some people are who are entirely dependent on psychiatric care for their functioning.

So, dang. What is my definition of sanity/insanity?

I very much need to stop thinking of myself as a very fucked up person. One thing I've never mentioned (or have I? I repeat myself alot) is that I hide my fucked-upness like a mofo.  Except for the people at work who have hacked into my computer and might read this blog, NO ONE but NO ONE has any hard evidence that I think of myself as fucked up. I mean, this stuff is deeply, deeply buried in my life. None of this here is any part of my public persona. I think one thing that that has happened recently is that it's started to get hard--having a public persona and having to conceal so much of myself. It makes me much weirder in private. As if the effort to appear so collosally normal (and cheerful! I'm ALWAYS cheerful!) at work makes me twice as bizarre in my little secret internet life.

I'm not saying a little bit of my weirdness doesn't peek out. But you would not BELIEVE the cheerful.

What's Your 'Fuck It All To Hell' List?

I was sitting there writing my mental to-do list and realizing it was so bizarre in its combination of the monumental, the ill-advised choice and the trivial that I should post it for all to see.

Then I found this: Savia's Fuck It List.

I guess she borrowed this from the ol' Schmutzburger, the Schmutzaroony...ya know...mayor of Schmutziville in the land of Schmutzatchewan.

OMG Schmutzatchewan doesn't flag as needing spell check...there really is a Schmutzachewan?

Nothing on google. I love it that it says 'do you mean Schmutz Satchewan'?  And I'm hopeful...like 'hey! Schmutzachewan exists?

And Google is all: 'FACE! No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found. '

I was realizing that there's another list I really need to do which is the "Aw, Fuck It" list--which is basically, you know, when you just decide to let something go.

This is kind of a 'oh well, what the fuck' list. Isn't that what one of the guys in Catch-22 says before he drives his plane into the mountain?  I think he might have said 'oh well, what the hell?'

That's not what I mean exactly. Actually, this is merely a 'to do' list.  It requires 'fuck it' only because...well, I'm not sure exactly.

1. My husband and I have plans to move to Canada. Should I explain this? Well, I cannot. I've had this yen to go to this certain place in Canada for a very long time.

 Denizens of Canada who read my blog: I am not moving anywhere near your part of Canada. (I think. I'm not too sure where you all live.) Well, the ones where I know where you live, I won't be anywhere near you.

I'm not stalking you, honest. In terms of miles, I'll be further away from you than I am now.

It's just I thought: What things will make me happy if I lose some of the things I'm so invested in? (Things that do not even make me happy, maybe.) Natural beauty. This makes me happy.

So to do #1: Do the application to immigrate to the ultra beautiful place in Canada. By July? Yes, by July.

2. The Canada thing is linked to a plan to become a high school teacher. I'm trying to think of a profession that will allow me to spend some time with my current child and any future children. It is tempting, given my ability to be obsessively driven about intellectually challenging things, to go to law school or make some similarly grueling career choice.

It's such a strange thing to imagine giving up the ultra-grueling. It's so in my nature to pursue it. But high school teaching is a nice compromise. It's somewhat grueling and yet slightly less grueling than what I do. There is job security.

It's probably really hard to get such a job. But not impossible. I have this gut feeling it will be possible, with effort. I have no idea if our moderately snazzy degrees will help us or if our age will hurt us. I looked at the 'immigrate to Canada' website and we pass that thing with flying colors. Alas, we don't know French. We are old and our brains are rusty on that score. This is the one big obstacle. Given my dogged persistence, I think this too is a surmountable hurdle.

I like teaching.

I don't like being around people.

So I will have to learn how to handle being around people more often than I have to now. High school teachers have more people contact than college teachers. Also, the people are (although this seems incredible) sometimes even MORE insane than college teachers. Again, this problem is surmountable. I think, for some reason, it is particularly surmountable if I live in a very, very beautiful place. That does something amazing for my brain, or it has in the past.

So to do #2: Find out (more) about what high school teaching certification takes. I only pick high school teaching because, from the web sites I read, it seems more surmountable than elementary school teaching. I already one requirement, which is a graduate degree.

Which brings me to:

3. Meditating? I am looking for something like this, some practice that quiets the mind...I have this inkling about some kind of thing I could do that frees me from my tendency to overreact to the world. I don't believe in perfect solutions.  I don't think I will become completely free of all lunacy. Just...I am curious to see how much freer from lunacy I might become, with effort.

So to do #3: Find out one new meditation technique and practice this technique at least every other day.

I'll probably pick this if only because they are the first thing that crops up on google and the instructions are simple ones.

This plan actually has to go into effect on Monday. OK, today. Why not today?

4. Less stuff. A LOT less stuff. In the next month, I plan to get rid of substantial amounts of things we don't need. I also need to somehow stop acquiring things I do not really NEED. They seem needed because I'm trying to be presentable to people I'm afraid of, to avoid negative judgments of myself, to look professional and nice, etc.

In other words, a large percentage of what I acquire is driven by insecurity and fear. Some is driven by desires that are very expendable and the rest is driven by pleasure. I think I should take pleasure in what I have acquired and be willing to sometimes acquire things for pleasure but first I should (a) think about the amount of pleasure involved versus the hassle and make a rational judgment (b) make sure there is not some other, better pleasure I am giving up in order for this current pleasure. Etc.

Damn, it is going to be hard to overcome the following two impulses:

(1) What if I need this later? This has caused me to save bras dating back to 1991. My fear of loss and scarcity drives me in so many ways. I don't trust [the universe--oh God what the fuck other word can I use here?] to give me what I need. I mean, this makes sense in a way. The world doesn't give billions of people what they need. The fact is though, that I live in an affluent country where almost everyone is guaranteed of having most of their basic needs met.

But I think, on some level, I freak about this fact about the world. Especially when something else is also driving me nuts. Like when I was re-using bath water right after my child's birth. After my child's birth, I became obsessed about babies generally...poor babies, babies in wars. Oh, forget it, it was too weird to explain.

And there's almost always some bra in Target on sale for 75% off. Of course, my crazy brain, the brain that makes me cry when my husband throws out the 5 year old lentils because the APOCALYPSE! WHAT ABOUT THE APOCALYPSE! cannot process this information correctly. Even before the economic crisis I was thinking: Economic crisis! Environmental crisis! Monetary crisis! Chinese people will stop being horrifically exploited for my $5.99 bra or else the U.S.-Chinese deficit will become so extreme that one will no longer find the $5.99 bra!

Also, there may be a catastrophic spandex shortage that we have not yet foreseen.

(2) Just plain old sentimental attachment. TO EVERYTHING. My collection of t-shirts is frightening. Also, I cannot give away any gift that anyone ever gave me nor any object that ties in some way to any past event that is the slightest bit emotionally charged. And there are a whole lot of things that fall into this category.

I mean, how fucking absurd is it that just to clean out my basement I have to become enlightened. To clean out my basement I have to: Live in the now! Cease my attachment to material objects!

I know, you are like: Dude, cleaning out your basement is easy.

Yeah, I can clean out my basement. But if I don't change, it will just amount to re-arranging a lot of the stuff in it.

So uh to do #4: Work on this. Somehow. Be less afraid. Be less attached. Let go.

It's also a matter of valuing oneself in a way that is hard for me. Because this pair of pants is a nice pair of pants but it looks terrible on me. So why can't I just get rid of this horrible looking pair of pants?  How many hundreds of times have a worn those pants? The waste thing--I weird out about waste. If I could take my horrible pair of pants and put them in someone's hands that desperately needs these pants, it would all be so easy.

But as long as no one else will take those damn pants off my hands, I must continue to wear them regularly.

Yes, if people would just come over who needed all my crap, I tell you, my problems would be solved! It's easy to relinquish it all if there is some purpose to that. I know, I know, Goodwill. But Goodwill is so full of items that go astray, that are wasted.

OK, this list is getting stranger and stranger.

Two final things:

#5: Undo as much of the physical damage I have done to myself this year as I possibly can. Start running again, become a vegetarian, fruits/vegetables at every meal, sleep 8 hours a night, no more drinking or nicotine or massive infusions of caffeine.

This also requires enlightenment of some kind, but maybe a minor kind. The only unhealthy food I ever eat is ice cream and butter on popcorn. I like healthy food more than unhealthy food. I LOVE to exercise. The problem for me is coordination, foresight, planning. Salad, steamed spinach and apples--I live on those because I'm not good at planning for anything else.

My problem is an innate tendency toward self destruction and a difficulty feeling that I deserve to sleep. Isn't there something more productive I could be doing?

The sleep plan can't be implemented until August, at the earliest.

#6: Start the adoption process. I know it may look as if someone as desperately neurotic as I am would be a horrible mother but the strangest part is that, if there is one skill I have, it is the love-giving thing. I'm super good at this. I wouldn't say I'm the perfect mother but both my husband and I are infinitely patient with children, attentive, loving, empathetic, knowledgable about how to care for our child in the ways that matters.  I find strangers/acquaintances draining. But never my husband or child. Even before I had a child, this was probably my greatest talent--relating to children. Don't ask me how I ended up being this crazed career-driven person instead of having six kids like Angelina Jolie. And though my work situation is overwhelming, I am fixing that. Also, my husband does not have this issue. So even though people feel very free to give women like me endless shit we aren't any different than the standard thing where one person spends lots of time with the kid and the other person spends more time with the money-making thing.

Adoption plan: June 1st. Papers have to be filled out by June first.

OK, so by today, I have to start meditating.

All this month, cleaning out the house.

June 1st: Filling out the adoption papers

July 1st: Apply to emigrate to Canada.

August 1st: Sleep 7 hours a night. (8 will just freak me out way too much. I haven't done 8 since grade school. 6 would be a major achievement.)

Something's probably going to go horribly awry.

Oh, uh, consider yourself tagged on this meme....

The Internet Is A Mirror

Or a magnifying glass.

Sometimes I think people reveal a bit of their souls on the internet. For example, this person who posts on a professional website reveals so many amazingly unappealing qualities about himself: His narcissism, his utter lack of sympathy toward people, his ability to ignore people's humanity (he ridicules people or attacks his ideological enemies which is probably exquisitely painful when you are just some random professor in Dubuque and the entire profession hears horrible things about you.) This is a very popular website. I keep thinking: Do the other people notice you are being self-aggrandizing or cruel?

The internet is a strange space where morality is, in some ways, weaker. But also where people bash each other over the head with faux morality. People will be much crueler, much more self-aggrandizing than they might dare to be elsewhere. But in some ways, it is easier to enforce morality if you have the right kind of power on the internet. For example, if someone is being a bastard, you can publicize this fact in ways that it is impossible to do outside the internet. You can hold them up for scrutiny. But only if people listen to you.

It seems odd that there is power here. The power here sometimes extends beyond the internet and sometimes it is fascinatingly completely contained by the internet-- but the power here is real.

I value this possibility so much that the internet gives--the possibility to see something I would not see otherwise. I hate the internet in one way but in another way it gives you knowledge you would never have without it.  I keep thinking that if writing on the internet is a magnifying glass that reveals people, then what does this reveal about me?

Besides that I am morose and self-absorbed? Or maybe that's just it, and that's all. It feels like there must be worse things. I'm touchy. Also somewhat self-pitying. Do I know myself or don't I?  It would take a perceptive and brave reader to tell me.

I'm curious then about the internet and the reactions it prompts in me.  I mentioned envy earlier. This envy shows me something interestingly pathetic about myself. For example, the thing that I tend to envy is what seems to be the person's sense that they personally matter in the world, to the world. Another peculiar kind of envy I have sometimes is envying someone who wasn't abused by their parents (or doesn't seem to have been--one never knows). I envy people who had a childhood and I envy people who have happy memories of their youth. Or who had what seems to me like a real youth, whatever the hell that is. I don't strongly envy people for being richer than me. I admit--I do wonder where everyone gets their money. And what I'm doing wrong because I never seem to have any. But I don't have strong feelings when it comes to that kind of thing.

I stumbled across this amazing and horrible website that I think is mainly populated by women attacking other women bloggers. It's clearly prompted by envy but also a kind of moral outrage. It's not like the critiques have no basis--but that's the amazing thing about envy: Take a human, any human. There's always something wrong, isn't there? There's always one or two unsavory things about all humans. Most of the criticisms are of that kind. But if you put them in context, if you put a spin on them, you make people sound awful for very non-awful things.

What purpose could this possibly serve? I can only think that there is something disturbing about the idea that someone might be better than yourself and there is a desire to refute this possibility.

I never really get that far with my envy--where I need to continually knock down the hapless object of my envy. My envy usually takes the form of twinges and then sort of peters out quickly. I'm never really very motivated to get the envied object and tear it down. Although, I guess I can see why someone might want to.

I wonder what purpose this serves socially, actually. Not just 'vicious gossip' which sounds like it is telling stories but peering in to people's character and then finding their foibles and dragging them very, very unsympathetically into the light.  It solidifies social ties between people to have someone else to attack. It creates a bond between those who mutually engage in it. I can see how this could be useful for creating social bonds and also for personal psychological reassurance about your own value.

There has to be some shame involved. Don't make me explain this.

 It's kind of weirdly satisfying to us to do this kind of thing--bash other people Or maybe that's just some people. I actually don't do it much anymore but I have found it very satisfying in the past. That's actually something I wonder about. Do you know why it is satisfying? (Assuming you've got the right target--there are a lot of people I could never, ever enjoy bashing. Most people, in fact.) I can't figure out what makes this activity enjoyable.

(Note: I would never be the target of this website as far as I could see. I'm not enviable. I'm just curious about the general phenomenon the website represents.)

Gawker really exemplified envy in action for a few years. A fascinating self-righteousness too. It was an envy village.

I need to work on my absurd compulsion to psychoanalyze people. According to my husband, the wounded narcissists don't like me because they can just tell somehow that I know they are wounded narcissists. This would make sense but of course, there is no way in hell that they know they are wounded narcissists. But maybe they are guessing I've secretely diagnosed them and nobody likes to be diagnosed.

So I might be a bit more of a peerer-in than others. I might be always trying to look under all the rocks. It's not dissimilar to what these women on this blog do to other women. I don't think I do it because of envy. I think I do it because I feel threatened. I'm scared what these people are going to do to me.

I don't hold people's run of the mill narcissism against them. Every blog has a bit of ordinary narcissism. Every life has a bit of ordinary narcissism. We are there to be viewed. That is what we create ourselves for, in many ways. This is how we live, as social creatures. So that isn't a big deal.

Come to think of it, I don't even really hold people's virulent narcissism against them. I do get annoyed at the damage such people do sometimes. And I become a little frightened, I admit--because there's something more than a little out of control about people with such a gaping chasm of needs. But mostly, this is no big deal. They don't do all that much and it's probably wise to remember that's it is kind of pointless to continually fear them simply because they might (and they will...at some point).

One of the things that I know but that I keep getting reminded of again and again is just how remarkably arbitrary most standards are and most of the things we care about. I think there are some non-arbitrary things. For example, prizing the love of others and the good of others is non-arbitrary.

But many of the things we live by and the codes we enforce and the reactions we have to people are really just ourselves projected outwards in an arbitrary way. Our horror at people's ugly furniture or our disapproval of their diet. Or our discomfort with that little flash of conceit or what have you.

These judgments--when we are subject to them--make us feel incredibly ashamed of ourselves, though. They are so powerful.

We've all heard the thing before, when others criticize us: 'It's about them. It's not about you.'  But what I'm realizing recently is that this goes all the way down. It's possibly the most true thing we can say about human interaction. And that practically everything is like this. There are dozens or maybe hundreds of thoughts I have about the world that are just 'about me' and not just arbitrary but unnecessary.

Among the more unwieldly part of these is: the  reactions.

You don't have the slightest fucking idea what I'm talking about, do you. I probably don't either.

I've had this strange revelation how one could be liberated--from others but more importantly from oneself--by a kind of detached compassion towards everything and everyone. But I can't explain that anymore than I am here. Because so far, it almost eludes my understanding. What this would involve is a kind of acceptance of things as they are. And of people as they are.

It's not that you wouldn't notice assholery. Not that you would not oppose evil. But you'd sort of do that without the reaction--fear, anger, rage, annoyance, resentment, etc. The rest of it--the non-evil things--you'd just let go. Evil you'd fight but without become all crazy about it.

I can't quite explain how to do this since I have absolutely no idea and rather doubt this is even possible for me. I don't have the 30 years to spend in a Buddhist monastery or do whatever it would take. I don't even know what it would take. But I crave it, because I think otherwise, I live in a kind of permanently deluded state. And I don't like that.

I really don't think I'm going to be at the point I can do this until I actually live with less of everything. Much, much less of everything.

5% More Sanity

I don't want to die. And I haven't wanted to die for months.

Doesn't this sound like progress?

For me, it is very strange.

One problem: I'm killing myself more than I ever have before. So while I have a renewed commitment to not dying, I think I just took 20 years off my life in the last semester.

I mentioned before many of the drawbacks and benefits of wanting to die.

For example:

Drawback: Extreme irresponsibility with respect to the future. (Main reason this is a drawback is that, although you are going to die, you don't quite die quick enough.)

Benefit: Not being afraid of dying.

But the drawback of wanting to live is obviously the reverse of that. Now I'm scared to die. Also, I have to face the consequences of every stupid thing I did when I wanted to die. Well, all the ways I did not plan for the future. And all the mistakes I made because basically, I wasn't that interested in continuing to live.

I take that back. I'm not exactly scared to die. I simply want to live. I want to go on. I want to see my daughter make it through college or Jedi Knight training or whatever it is she is going to do, have babies, meet my grandchildren, have them get to know me, see them live a little bit and fall asleep in the garden chair in my late '90s, in the warm sunshine. (Also, it would be good if my husband and I could die at the exact same time...or I assume so. Maybe he wants to get a little 95 year old action. I should ask him whether he could live without me before I go including his death in my wishes.)

Not wanting to die means that I essentially have to face every goddamn thing life brings, from now on. No matter what it is. (Almost. Maybe?)

Of course, that's been the case since I got pregnant. I remember when this dawned on me during pregnancy. I was like, 'oh shit.'  I was crossing the street and realizing I didn't want the cars to hit me like I usually do.

It's always been the case. The difference now is that I know I have to face every goddamn thing. I always had to live. Previously, with my death wish, I got to be in more denial about that.

It's hard to know what to do about the fact that I'm actually killing myself.  I have seriously damaged my health from overwork. I am killing myself, in a sense, shortening my life. But shit! Now I don't want to die! Maybe this is because it's as if some other people are making me die because they want me to work this much. That was always one of the interesting things about wanting to die--I always wanted it to be an accident. I never liked the idea of dying at someone else's behest.

Here's a problem: I'm dying for absolutely nothing. I'm going to die at a much earlier age than I would have. So that I could work. And my work accomplishes absolutely nothing.

I realize some denizens of the internet will give me shit for exaggerating. I'm not in the process of dying, I've just ruined my health. What does happen to the body when you average three hours of sleep a night and continually pour toxic substances into it during midlife?  Doesn't it just sort of give out on you in revenge a few years later? All sorts of bizarre things are already happening to me.

What have I done to myself in other words? And why?

You want to know why? So that I could make a pathetic lower-level professional salary. A salary I probably could have made dozens of other ways, with jobs that allowed sleep and normal social interaction.

Was that it? Gee, that doesn't sound very plausible. I don't even know why. What was the actual reason?

Well there was that 'not failing' thing. I overwork or otherwise I fail. For me, this is the only way not to fail. I tried the other way and I started to fail and I tried this way and I started to succeed. I've tested it and yes, this work, this stress, all this--it is necessary. When I slept 8 hours a night, I did not get done what I must do to not fail.

It's not worth it. Yet I can't stop myself. Something just takes over. The 'I must never fail' program is activated.  The 'I must never fail' program has been killing me all along.  Since I wanted to die, this wasn't a big issue.

However, the wanting to die thing might have simply been a means of failure avoidance.

These are the problems that 5% more sanity will bring. Why I suddenly became 5% more sane I can't say exactly. I think it was the yoga. 5% more sanity shines a new light on my life.  It seems like a nice thing to have, in theory but it was a little nice to be in the dark.

Oh, but in recent years, I've become happy. In a miserable way. I'm a happy person who is also miserable. I started to become a tormented and yet happy person when my daughter was born. My daughter's birth also brough with it a fraction of sanity. As she grows, so does my sanity. Pretty soon I'm going to realize--well, I'm already realizing now--that everything I've based my life on was entirely idiotic. That's what sanity does sometimes. Makes you realize you're a fool.

Speechless

Although I am generally capable of generating pointless blather at the drop of a hat, I've noticed this odd thing where whenever I am personally affected by a post, or think it is profound or amazing or it makes me love the writer (an odd thing, but it happens) I find myself unable to comment on it.

Eden Kennedy is one of those people that can write rings around me.  Because I have to write for a living and because that writing is so crucial and fraught with insecurity--my whole identity depends on what I write in my work--I admit I don't put much into the writing here, either in time and emotion.  I am so invested in the other thing. I suppose I could get invested in this thing but I don't want to. It would wreck it. So when I say that she's a better writer than me, I'm not saying this an envious way.

Now people's lives. That's another story. Of course, I horribly envy other bloggers their lives. Is their life better than mine? Do they get more love? Are they better looking? Richer?  Actually, they are so often richer! Why the hell is everyone so much richer than I am?

But it's OK if they are smarter. I'm so tired of wanting to be smarter sometimes.

I think I'll save the envy about that for people in my own profession.

This is one of those posts of Eden Kennedy's that made me speechless.

And I just ruined this post by saying something on Eden's post. OK, I was speechless for a time. But it was such a good post! I had to say something. 

Schmutzie's also posted a few of these posts that render me speechless. Well, kind of. I had to write her an email.

I'm sitting here right now covered in pee. I'm sitting her in a skirt and sweater that is moderately pee-soaked because I fell asleep in my kid's bed and she came in and fell asleep next to me and, as she does most nights around 2:30 A.M., she peed in the bed. And me. Sometimes she pees on me.

This is what it has come to. My house has reached critical mass in terms of mess. It's unspeakable. I know people say this. But truly, in my case--we're heading into DSS territory. And now my clothes are urine-soaked. And I have been in them for a few hours at this point.

But at least I'm loved.

No, really, I'm heading for the shower right now. Just a bit of inertia, here. A bit of pee-covered inertia.