Updates, thoughts and how I talk better than I write.

Updates:

I'm in my new place and it's lovely. I'm writing this from the sofa on my back porch with coffee and watery sunlight, the rain has stopped now. The best friend's cat likes to sleep on me in the mornings and I can't tell you how much I've missed having feline love in my life. His name is Sam and he's lovely and old and crotchety. As the Boy says, he sounds like an old man cat. He really does. *loves*

I'm now almost officially bankrupt. My car was repo'd by the bank and I have nearly nothing to my name. The rest I'm sorting through to sell this weekend at the garage sale and a lot of my fannish stuff I've put up to give away on my other lj, frahulettaes. If you live locally and you want a metric ton of printed fiction in the SG1, X-files, TPM or TS fandoms, ping me and let me know. I'll happily give them to you.

All of this is part of my simplicity campaign. And I have to say, it's amazingly freeing and confusing and sad. I find that it's one thing to say I don't want all this STUFF. It's quite another to just open my hand and let go when someone offers to take it. I am not my stuff. Except, maybe I sort of am. And now, I have to find out who I am without my stuff. Oh, authenticity, why must you be so difficult? Sigh.

I've managed to cut my phone to just outgoing and incoming calls for emergency calls. No voicemail so if you have my number and try to call, I'll actually have to be LOOKING at the phone in order to get your call. I turned the ringer off during the time of nasty credit calls and I find that not being pavlov's dog about being reached has made me so much happier. I never realized how anxious my phone made me. Okay, there's probably a whole post on that sometime in my future.

Work is work. More thoughts on that later.

I think I may have posted on this before, but I actually talk much more effectively than I write. I was an early talker as a child and a very late typer. I never was a journal writer nor a written storyteller until fandom, that is. I've always been an oral processor. I usually have to talk through every aspect of an idea before I feel I've gotten a grasp on what I actually want to think about it or feel about it and this has driven lots of my friends to distraction or just away. Burned bridges is my personal specialty. If I feel I've over talked or been to intimate with someone, I'll most often just let them go, too guilty to say anything else or too self-conscious to try and make amends. It's not a healthy coping mechanism, but there it is. I do it and I'm trying to change it.

In this latest phase of my life, what with simplifying and divorcing and going bankrupt and all, I haven't really been talking to anyone. I don't have a therapist right now. No insurance to speak of, thank god for county med and their perscription program without which I might not actually be here. So I've been spending a LOT of time in my head, which is, by past experience, the WORST place for me to sort things out. So it was with intense relief that I finally had a phone call with my excellent friend jenlev about Racefail and life and the betterment of things in general. That conversation reminded me that I really really do have to talk to someone. Everyday. Be it Mom, friends or a therapist. I keep trying to learn the skill of working things our in my head without it and failing spectacularly.

I wrote a long essay about racefail and asked Jen if she'd look at it for me. I wanted to post my thoughts with pants on instead of going off what was going on in my head. I'm very glad I did. See, I'm so used to talking with fans about everything. Every little detail of the show or boys or slash. Every I dotted, every T crossed. Down to the littlest detail or across the grandest meta. So I was frustrated to see my friends and friends of friends and other non-fan related people not talking about racism and privilege and if not racism, at least privilege. There are two parts of that for me, one of which is, listening and being quiet is being asked of many. And rightly so. But also, standing up and not being silent is also being asked. This is a quandry. A catch 22 if you will.

I was silent for long time, two months. But during those two months I read posts and primers and considerate essays. I get that being silent isn't only about doing nothing. It can be about learning how to do something in a less hurtful way. Because no matter how well intentioned my enthusiasm for the conversation is, I come from privilege and whiteness. I am racist. And I am White. And that is where I must start from. As Iyangar said of yoga, start where you are, not where you think you are.

And I made mistakes just like the primer on being part of the privilege discussion warns about. I called people out rudely. I was on a mission. I was right! Sigh. I'm still looking at being right as part of privilege. I'm still reading about that and learning.

I have been furious at recent failures on the part of people I thought were doing okay. I have been saddened to see people leave lj completely in light of what's happened. For reasons I don't know and can't know. I want to give the benefit of the doubt. And sometimes, that benefit is earned and sometimes I question and can't decide. And sometimes, dammit, I'm angry that people would rather run away than do the work they've been engaged in. And I've defriended or unsubscribed from people who've been outright dismissive and unapologetic in their dismissal. Scalzi, I'm looking at you. And I'm also furious at the sheer amount of educating there is to do. As an ally, it's my job to call my white fellows on their privilege. That's part of what being an ally is. But, omg. Seriously? Metric Ton does not describe it. Privilege is like a black hole with a galaxy around it full of stars and planets of defensive dismissiveness. I just...I don't know how you all do it. I don't.

I sympathize. I cannot empathize, but I do sympathize. Sincerely.

ETA: Tablesaw brilliantly encapsulates the timeline Linked with permission.

ETA2: Continuing to call Racefail 'wank' is a derailment. It is a derailment of the 'tone' variety. If all you have to say is that it's wank and you don't have to listen, why post? Why comment? I mean, seriously, Painful and emotional conversations are painful and emotional. Change isn't easy or painless. Calling it wank dismisses the pain. Stop doing that please. (this is directed to comments elsewhere but for politeness, I brought it to my own journal rather than butting in to others personal space)