December Days 2022 #10: Careful
Dec. 10th, 2022 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[What's December Days this year? Taking a crowdsourced list of adjectives and seeing if I can turn them into saying good things about myself. Or at least good things to talk about.]
The last obsolete definition is the one that jumps out at me first, of course, as I continue to try and work through my issues. It's been a regular part of my life for decades now, so trying to unwind where there has been too much vigilance or unnecessary worries will take time and effort and having to believe that it will be okay if I take the steps to do it.
If you are a person who believes in the efficacy of astrology, or that our star charts gives insight into our personalities or actions, then knowing that I am a Cancer, the Cardinal Water Sign, gives you some insight into me. According to those placemats in specific types of Chinese restaurants, I end up being water element in the cycle as well, so I have that association in multiple ways and places. Water-element is supposed to be someone who is in touch with their emotional state / more ruled by their emotions. What that often translates to is someone who's a good friend if you can get past the outer layers, and that once you're a friend, you tend to stay one unless you do something that causes a break. On the less positive side, though, it means that I can carry a grudge for a very long time, regardless of whether it's a good idea to keep that much salt. (And that you may have to do more work than you think to get on my good side if I've observed things about you that make me suspicious or wary of you.)
In a world where Jo Rowling's transphobia wasn't so thoroughly interweaved with her and her stories that we could pull Death of the Author on her and merrily spirit away with the good bits (which, if that's you, by all means, keep interrogating the text from the wrong perspective), I'd probably talk about the Sorting Hat and the fact that I consistently test to one house, even if it seems like I might have been in another. But that part gets sunk because Jo Rowling is transmisic to her core, and I await the day in which the fans can reappropriate and reinterpret her work for ourselves without giving her publicity or money. Because I care.
Conscientious comes back to say hello in one of these definitions, but it's the first definition that many of these personality quiz type items work with, and the one that careful would bring to mind. There's good careful, which is checking to see if something might be offensive, or using best practices for referring to others, being welcoming and accepting of many things (and contemptuous of those things that do not deserve a welcome). It's content warnings and image descriptions, subtitles and alt tags, accessibility, respecting someone's allergies, gender identity, and wishes regarding physical contact when they tell them to you, and using sensible defaults and inquiries when you don't completely know. Careful is respecting the warning labels and following the care directions. A significant amount of good careful is taught as courtesy, manners, maintenance, and/or basic respect for other entities, living or nonliving.
Then there's bad careful, the one that's overly concerned about causing offense, that manifests in shyness, indecision, observing rather than participating, and a constant nervousness that something that you are doing is causing offense to someone and they will either explosively confront you about it or ignore it and never give you the opportunity to change, because they think you're not worth the effort. Or the kind of careful that tries to never show a vulnerability or weakness around another person, and definitely does not want to fail in public, because others might make fun of you for it. (Do I know they're going to do that? No. But if they are the kind of person that does it, it'll be terrible. Best not to risk it.) Bad careful doesn't sing karaoke, because I don't know if I sing well enough and I don't know if others will like it or not. (Where the point is less about singing to some sort of arbitrary musical standard and much more about enjoying yourself.)
Bad careful can sometimes be overcome if there are roles assigned, and if those roles have specific actions that go with them. Bad careful can also sometimes be overcome if I know there's a hook going in. If I can ask "So, how about that local sports team?" and know there will be fruitful responses, that diinishes the effects of bad careful, because there's already something to talk about while making assessments about whether this is a good place to keep hanging out at. If I can say "I like your shoelaces!" and be reasonably confident that someone in the space will respond with "Thanks! I stole them from the president!," that helps. If everyone's at con, then there's almost always something to chat with line-waiters with. Usually about their cosplay, honestly, because there's so much good cosplay!
Good careful and bad careful combine in the creation of the personas that I show to the Internet. I'm not usually a person who wades into a discussion right from the start, unless the discussion touches on some part of my expertise, or I feel like I can contribute something helpful in a link or reference to something to bring into the place. Lurking where other people are having discussions and arguments is beneficial to me, because I can gain understanding and insight without having to pay the price of participation and possibly showing either ignorance or unexamined bias/privilege. Being able to lurk while other people talk is great. I try to also be mindful of which of my hats I want to wear if I do participate in a discussion, or indicate my appreciation. Even if there is a fascinating discussion going on about, say, doing image description of your kinky or lewd selfies, my professional account is not going to be one to wade into it, because there are a lot of people who get very pearl-clutchy about the possibility that someone who works with children is an adult and might enjoy discussing age-restricted topics with others. There's those jokes about how children sometimes get completely thrown for a loop when they spot the teacher outside of the school context and everyone has a laugh about how the child thought their teacher lived at school, you know the ones. Well, the shadow side of that is that if you're someone who works with kids, you're always at least a little on professionally in any space where one of your kids might recognize you, even if it's outside of your normal space. (One of those things that the movie Varsity Blues got completely wrong was the idea that a teacher who was also an exotic dancer would dance anywhere near where students or members of the community might recognize her. Those "moral turpitude" clauses will get enforced in the kinds of places that ban books and worship football.) This is part of the reason why the good stories of library work come out at conferences and especially at any conference where the participants are having a meal or some time at the pub.
The interplay between good careful and bad careful is also why I keep some of the people I've hung out with before (and would happily hang out with again) somewhat closer to my chest in the company of others who might be untrustworthy with that knowledge. Not because there's inherently anything shameful about hanging out with people who are overtly furs, queer, kinky, aerialists, anticapitalists, clowns, fanworks creators, people who like talking about sex and relationships, and so forth, but because you don't out people who haven't given permission to be outed to others, and because sometimes you don't want to deal with the headache or worse of someone becoming convinced you're interested in sex with children because you have friends who practice consensual kink, or who have fursonas, or who are unapolegetically queer, or because you read a book once where a character wasn't completely straight, or there might have been a picture of a penis or breasts in it. And then proceeding to try and get your workplace to fire you because you associated with someone that they take offense to. Or you carry books that occasionally acknowledge the existence of sex in your library. There's less risk of that where I am now, but less risk is not zero risk, and I have to be careful about not just myself, but the people who are also part of my life that I want to keep in it.
[There are some other stories here that are illustrative, involving me and my ex and comfort levels and responsibilties and the bad kind of careful that this is exactly the most clear I'm going to be about, but if you know enough about why I'm vagueblogging it, you probably also know how to ask me about it that will get you a response.]
- careful (comparative more careful or carefuller, superlative most careful or carefullest)
- Taking care; attentive to potential danger, error or harm; cautious.
- Conscientious and painstaking; meticulous.
- (obsolete) Full of care or grief; sorrowful, sad.
- (obsolete) Full of cares or anxiety; worried, troubled.
The last obsolete definition is the one that jumps out at me first, of course, as I continue to try and work through my issues. It's been a regular part of my life for decades now, so trying to unwind where there has been too much vigilance or unnecessary worries will take time and effort and having to believe that it will be okay if I take the steps to do it.
If you are a person who believes in the efficacy of astrology, or that our star charts gives insight into our personalities or actions, then knowing that I am a Cancer, the Cardinal Water Sign, gives you some insight into me. According to those placemats in specific types of Chinese restaurants, I end up being water element in the cycle as well, so I have that association in multiple ways and places. Water-element is supposed to be someone who is in touch with their emotional state / more ruled by their emotions. What that often translates to is someone who's a good friend if you can get past the outer layers, and that once you're a friend, you tend to stay one unless you do something that causes a break. On the less positive side, though, it means that I can carry a grudge for a very long time, regardless of whether it's a good idea to keep that much salt. (And that you may have to do more work than you think to get on my good side if I've observed things about you that make me suspicious or wary of you.)
In a world where Jo Rowling's transphobia wasn't so thoroughly interweaved with her and her stories that we could pull Death of the Author on her and merrily spirit away with the good bits (which, if that's you, by all means, keep interrogating the text from the wrong perspective), I'd probably talk about the Sorting Hat and the fact that I consistently test to one house, even if it seems like I might have been in another. But that part gets sunk because Jo Rowling is transmisic to her core, and I await the day in which the fans can reappropriate and reinterpret her work for ourselves without giving her publicity or money. Because I care.
Conscientious comes back to say hello in one of these definitions, but it's the first definition that many of these personality quiz type items work with, and the one that careful would bring to mind. There's good careful, which is checking to see if something might be offensive, or using best practices for referring to others, being welcoming and accepting of many things (and contemptuous of those things that do not deserve a welcome). It's content warnings and image descriptions, subtitles and alt tags, accessibility, respecting someone's allergies, gender identity, and wishes regarding physical contact when they tell them to you, and using sensible defaults and inquiries when you don't completely know. Careful is respecting the warning labels and following the care directions. A significant amount of good careful is taught as courtesy, manners, maintenance, and/or basic respect for other entities, living or nonliving.
Then there's bad careful, the one that's overly concerned about causing offense, that manifests in shyness, indecision, observing rather than participating, and a constant nervousness that something that you are doing is causing offense to someone and they will either explosively confront you about it or ignore it and never give you the opportunity to change, because they think you're not worth the effort. Or the kind of careful that tries to never show a vulnerability or weakness around another person, and definitely does not want to fail in public, because others might make fun of you for it. (Do I know they're going to do that? No. But if they are the kind of person that does it, it'll be terrible. Best not to risk it.) Bad careful doesn't sing karaoke, because I don't know if I sing well enough and I don't know if others will like it or not. (Where the point is less about singing to some sort of arbitrary musical standard and much more about enjoying yourself.)
Bad careful can sometimes be overcome if there are roles assigned, and if those roles have specific actions that go with them. Bad careful can also sometimes be overcome if I know there's a hook going in. If I can ask "So, how about that local sports team?" and know there will be fruitful responses, that diinishes the effects of bad careful, because there's already something to talk about while making assessments about whether this is a good place to keep hanging out at. If I can say "I like your shoelaces!" and be reasonably confident that someone in the space will respond with "Thanks! I stole them from the president!," that helps. If everyone's at con, then there's almost always something to chat with line-waiters with. Usually about their cosplay, honestly, because there's so much good cosplay!
Good careful and bad careful combine in the creation of the personas that I show to the Internet. I'm not usually a person who wades into a discussion right from the start, unless the discussion touches on some part of my expertise, or I feel like I can contribute something helpful in a link or reference to something to bring into the place. Lurking where other people are having discussions and arguments is beneficial to me, because I can gain understanding and insight without having to pay the price of participation and possibly showing either ignorance or unexamined bias/privilege. Being able to lurk while other people talk is great. I try to also be mindful of which of my hats I want to wear if I do participate in a discussion, or indicate my appreciation. Even if there is a fascinating discussion going on about, say, doing image description of your kinky or lewd selfies, my professional account is not going to be one to wade into it, because there are a lot of people who get very pearl-clutchy about the possibility that someone who works with children is an adult and might enjoy discussing age-restricted topics with others. There's those jokes about how children sometimes get completely thrown for a loop when they spot the teacher outside of the school context and everyone has a laugh about how the child thought their teacher lived at school, you know the ones. Well, the shadow side of that is that if you're someone who works with kids, you're always at least a little on professionally in any space where one of your kids might recognize you, even if it's outside of your normal space. (One of those things that the movie Varsity Blues got completely wrong was the idea that a teacher who was also an exotic dancer would dance anywhere near where students or members of the community might recognize her. Those "moral turpitude" clauses will get enforced in the kinds of places that ban books and worship football.) This is part of the reason why the good stories of library work come out at conferences and especially at any conference where the participants are having a meal or some time at the pub.
The interplay between good careful and bad careful is also why I keep some of the people I've hung out with before (and would happily hang out with again) somewhat closer to my chest in the company of others who might be untrustworthy with that knowledge. Not because there's inherently anything shameful about hanging out with people who are overtly furs, queer, kinky, aerialists, anticapitalists, clowns, fanworks creators, people who like talking about sex and relationships, and so forth, but because you don't out people who haven't given permission to be outed to others, and because sometimes you don't want to deal with the headache or worse of someone becoming convinced you're interested in sex with children because you have friends who practice consensual kink, or who have fursonas, or who are unapolegetically queer, or because you read a book once where a character wasn't completely straight, or there might have been a picture of a penis or breasts in it. And then proceeding to try and get your workplace to fire you because you associated with someone that they take offense to. Or you carry books that occasionally acknowledge the existence of sex in your library. There's less risk of that where I am now, but less risk is not zero risk, and I have to be careful about not just myself, but the people who are also part of my life that I want to keep in it.
[There are some other stories here that are illustrative, involving me and my ex and comfort levels and responsibilties and the bad kind of careful that this is exactly the most clear I'm going to be about, but if you know enough about why I'm vagueblogging it, you probably also know how to ask me about it that will get you a response.]
