Sense, Nonsense, and Not-Sense

sonia talked about doing things that your earlier self would be delighted and astonished in. This should be a simple enough exercise, right?

Weeeeeeeelllllllll…

( It's not. )

The closest thing I might have to my younger self being very happy about where my older self is now might very well be that my younger self would look at the flaming wreckage of what happened between then and now and go "We survived this? Well done, us." Possibly with a fistbump.

Feel free to tell me if there are things you would think my younger self would be much more agog about, or what the things are that your younger self would be delighted or astonished about?

Successful writer asks in advice column whether or not they should give up writing because they're not wildly successful. They're moderately successful, but people around them are doing gangbusters, some of those people ones the letter-writer would never have imagined doing so well, and it seems like that success will be denied them.

Exhibit A: Librarian, out of college, enjoying successes at programming and other aspects of their job, but not enjoying nationwide, statewide, or localwide acclaim, and reading articles, blogs, and the accounts of others that make their library careers seem better than what this librarian is up to.

Librarian is aware of the duck problem, and often uses it to try and gain perspective that what they see is a small segment of the best things about the profession, and that there are articles out there about avoiding burnout by not trying to be that high-level all the time, and also critiques of the idea that some librarians are Rockstars and deserve adulation from everyone, while others are not.

Similarities: many.

Advice from column about whether or not the writer should continue: If you are writing with the expectation that you will write a book that will make you millions of dollars, and at that point you will be happy, you are chasing bullshit.

More specifically:

[...]the whole idea of "breaking through" is such a crock of shit. If you do nothing else, build a religion around this one fact. Beyond the ability to feed yourself, it doesn't fucking matter if a million people love you or five people do. It doesn't matter if you're 25 or 75. You cannot pollute your life with this fixation. You can feel relevant, you can imagine that you somehow matter in the larger scheme of things, you can commit to being a force in the world, without hitting some arbitrary high score or crossing some imaginary threshold of popularity. I am drawn to the flame of Twitter for some great reasons and for some reasons that spring from some slow, sick, sucking part of me, to quote Pavement like the old fucker I am. But you can't construct your life around these equations. You can't try to "reach" some imagined mob of dipshits, molding your work to match their dipshitty tastes. Be a lovely odd duck instead, one who hardly notices if people are booing or cheering.
[...]
We are a wild, weird species, complex and quizzical, fierce and fragile. Honor that. Stop pressing your face to the glass of someone else's party. Enjoy the party unfolding around you.

What does the future hold for you or me or for any other writer? Uncertainty. Almost all books tank. Every freelance writer alive struggles to make ends meet and has dry spells. All editors ignore almost everyone. Let's not sit around watching the same four or five authors talk about their enormous successes for the next four decades. Let's not fear the brand-new dewy-faced ingenues making cool shit and then making big stacks of money. Let's not let our initial enthusiasm for them curdle into envy. There are always more to envy, coming up behind the last batch.

This strikes a chord for me, as a "should" - one of those things where you look at it, you go, "Well, no shit.", and you resolve to do that thing because clearly you should be able to do that. It's simple enough - reconnect with your passion, tell the haters, including your own brainweasels, to fuck off, and live in that very Hufflepuff style of life that says if the passion is there, and the work needs doing, then fulfillment comes from doing the work, regardless of how appreciated it is by others.

Actual people, as we know, do not always do what they should, or "should".

It's not that simple, I find, to switch over to a new mode from the old one that seemed to work so well. At my best, perhaps, I can be okay with Hufflepuff as the house, and all that entails, and even write posts about it, but those steps can be smashed horribly by staring a life-changing event in the face. Like a family member getting married.

A large amount of childhood and adolescence involves external motivation - "Do this because I said so or because I will reward or punish you for doing/not doing it." Grades are external motivation. Praise is, too. And if you're particularly good at working the system of external motivation (says the librarian with two degrees, many pins and medals, and an undergraduate thesis along with excellent grades and praise from teachers), that period of time where you "should" separate yourself and start getting internal motivation might not set particularly strongly. In some ways, it did - I love a lot of the things about my work and the people there, and I think going into the profession was a good fit for me.

Truthfully, though, the first major jarring that external motivation might not be good enough was after graduation and looking for a job - after the first few rejections, you have to discover some inner strength and motivation to keep trying, and you realize that all the grades and praise you got in school aren't actually going to help. It didn't help that the school leaned heavily on the idea that all of its graduates would find jobs in places where they could wield influence. Once the job is obtained, it's easy to stay externally motivated - money to pay off debts, staying in the good graces of the boss(es) (which turns out to be a strong motivation, since my first boss tried to get me fired), and trying to accumulate praise and rewards and wield that promised influence.

And then wait for the house of cards to collapse in the face of something very real, the depression and anxiety that are the payload of the bomb of time brought on by the realization that you have spent a lot of time chasing external validation and there isn't enough of it, or any of it, to answer the question of whether what you are doing is enough to be called a good or fulfilling life. (Belief systems help provide criteria. They do not always provide answers.)

Getting to that point where I can be okay with being an odd duck, with taking joy in wearing pajama pants for story time (hee!) occasionally flitting about with a tall, seeing happy looks on faces as they find the information or books they need, sharing professional development information with others, and things away from work that help me feel skilled at things, that takes time. And gratitude. And possibly tada lists and pride posts and active practice at finding things that went well in any given day. And one of these days, one of those events that will crash a house of cards will happen, and instead of picking up the pieces, I'll realize that there's a solid structure in place that can handle it.

May you all get there before I'm supposed to.

[Thinky-Thoughts, especially on sensitive subjects, are in a perpetual beta, because I can't think of everything. Comments are always welcome, because they expand perspective and provide necessary context.]

A lot of very profound people have talked about an article mentioning that trigger warnings are not effective at their intended task, may cause self-censorship, and prop up an illusion that a safe space is possible anywhere in the world, digital or otherwise. A strong reaction to the idea (and that is public) comes from eumelia that each person individually needs or doesn't need warnings - making universals out of your own experience is not good - and that the reprieve granted through the use of the triggers is a way of showing compassion to those who do suffer. I can see both sides - wanting people to be able to confront that reality does not provide them with accomodation, but also the revulsion I usually have to a Randroid saying that individualism is the only true virtue and that cooperation only breeds dependence and disappointment.

Then comes the stories. And more stories. And television writers start making stories that do things to women for the purpose of making the men better, without understanding what those things would do to the women, even though some of those women come through it stronger. And Oh, gods, the stories, even of the ones that don't end in assault. And have some more stories about Rape Culture and assaults. Did we also mention how it creeps into popular literature and widely-popular literature, and that it's really fucking hard not to victim-blame, especially in situations where the Fridge Logic of victim-blaming becomes Insane Troll Logic because victim-blaming requires ignoring reality and context at the same time?

At that point, the weight of the evidence tips the scales - reality already takes care of reminding people, repeatedly and viciously, that it does not care about their triggers, or about their experiences, and that most people will not understand nor make space for them to have a breather. And this is tough because when you're me, you've been steeped in the privilege blindness that says "Well, so long as you're a good person and don't do any of those things, then you don't really have to care about the wider picture." And that if your intentions are reasonably virtuous, then surely you can't be held responsible for the things that you do that creep the absolute fuck out of others, right? Certainly it's not your personal fault that people are withdrawing from blogging because the trolling is incessant?

A Guide For Men With Good Intentions, so that you can see where good intentions can have disastrous results, and the person pointing this out to you believes that you can change your behavior so as not to continue making bad results out of good intentions. Also, good things come from being able to appreciate your partner(s) for what they want to be known for, and then wanting to be more like them because they're better at good things than you are.

It can be disconcerting to find that the shadows on the wall that you thought were reality were, in fact, shadows that dissipate in the bright light of day. We get that. It's easier to go back inside the cave and go back to the familiar. There's also the realization that enlightenment sucks for the self-esteem (at least in the short term) when you notice that the Thing in your past that you thought was just a case of bad timing was, in fact, more than just bad timing - it was bad timing and being a creep. And then, you can look back in on what you didn't think about before and see a lot of things there that are quite evil and ugly. It's like (and here we make a Piers Anthony reference, which is a bit fun to do in this context (and also helps you figure out which book is beign referenced)) having the seeing glasses that let you show that the souls in Hell are gorging themselves on garbage, that the roulette wheel is rigged to always win, and that all the splendors of the tour are not anything like the reality.

What to do from there? Go back into the cave and bring people out. Utilize your "skillful means" to get people out of the burning house. (No mistakes there, it is a burning house and it will collapse at some point.) Trigger warnings are one way of going about this. Not being That Guy, The Nice Guy, or The Creep, which involves mindfulness about what you are doing and thinking in new ways and perspectives. It'll be hard to start with. You'll screw up. (I already have. Repeatedly.) But the end product will be better, because it allows you to examine yourself and say, "Y'know, I shouldn't be mad at Isabella Swan for Mike Newton's behavior. I shouldn't blithely assume that the person walking from their workplace to the parking lot where their car is will get there safely, even if it is a well-lit area and there are lots of people around."

It shouldn't take a crushing amount of evidence and weight to trigger the spark of self-inquiry and enlightenment. But when the illusion is as good as out modern life is...well, sometimes you have to have raw data to make it all work out. And then the compassion and humanity to decide that you do want to help and are willing to accept that the terms of how you can help aren't going to be dictated by you, but (more often than not) to you. There's no shame in letting someone with more experience take the lead and give direction, so long as you're ready to learn and grow from it.