There’s that old question that is supposed to help you get at what it is in life you really want to be doing. You know the one: What would you do if money were not a problem? There’s a variation on it where success is guaranteed.
A few years ago, I came across another question: What would you do even if you knew you would never succeed? This was a good one for me. My mind tried to reject it and persisted in resisting it. Why do anything if you can’t be successful at it?
I’ve been reading a lot about productivity lately. I spent the winter beating myself up about not getting through as much as I wanted to personally and professionally, all while being exhausted from the demands of my professional life plus generalized winter lethargy. Once I recognized the self-flagellation, I took to the internet. If I want to be more productive, maybe I should not try to reinvent the wheel. The internet did not disappoint. There are so many articles and apps and tests and planners and blogposts and studies to send you on your way to being your most productive self. Great! Except in reading and trying and testing a plethora of suggestions, I discovered that the framework in which people discuss productivity isn’t quite right. Continue reading “Productivity is an ecosystem “
I’m going to make an assumption here about dudes who run: most of y’all ain’t trying to scare the shit outta women who run. But maybe you didn’t realize that some of the shit you do is fucking scary. This post is for you.
First, don’t be moving around like your feet are wading through drying concrete and then suddenly (!) pick up your pace to a normal run as a lone female jogger is crossing a short but unlit bridge.
Second, when said jogger picks up her pace because she fucking hears you behind her, don’t pick up your pace exactly that much.
Third, when she crosses the bridge and into a street so the 1 to 2 people around and any potential cars see her (and your fucking ass), don’t wait until those people are gone to FUCKING PACE HER JUST OUT OF HER PERIPHERAL VISION!
Finally, when she yells at you to fucking pass her, don’t fucking give her that look. The cornered animal here is her, and she is ready to do whatever damage she needs to do to survive (and she ready because she has been through this or something like this so. many. times. She is practiced. You will not be ready.)
tl;dr: Women exist in a world differently than you do. Learn it. Pay attention. Don’t be an asshole.
Twenty sixteen has been a nightmare of passings. We have been in shock over the loss of our artists, of our journalists, of our heroes. And then the Brexit. And then election. The fucking election.
After it was over and the results were called, I sprinted out of my comfortable existence, understanding in my skin that I was no longer safe. I was searching desperately for the thing I could to do to fix this. The country that had given me some relative sense of security (subject to exceptions based on gender and sexuality) was not the country in which I actually lived. America had revealed her true self to us.
People of color – specifically Black people – have been telling us about America for decades. They are the Scooby Squad unmasking the kyriarchical ghost to reveal that it was America all along, over and over and over again. And we White people have been fooled by the mask, over and over and over again.
The mask is off, and it ain’t going back on. Any belief that we had that the arc of the moral universe magically bent toward justice, instead of having to be forged by the fire and lives of multitudes who refuse to let it bend back, has to be set aside now.
My logic brain knows this.
And yet, I mourn.
I mourn the America that elected and reelected a Black man to the White House. I mourn the America that found its way to marriage equality. I mourn the America that looked ready to elect an imperfect White woman as president. I desperately mourn for the America of possibility, where our national ethos of all people being created equal, equal in rights and equal in dignity, was more than a pipe dream.
I believed in that America. I – a very imperfect White woman – lived and worked for that reality. And right now, all of those dreams and all that work has gone to shit.
America, my America, the one that I have been intensely privileged to have, is dead. She died on November 9, 2016. Something of me died with her, and my grief has been unfathomable.
I want to end this post with a call to action. With a rousing cry that we will not let America the Beautiful rest in peace, that we will revive her and fight for her and make her better than my naïve experience of her ever was.
I want to, and I’ll get there, but not now. My sprint has ended, and I have to catch my breath. One foot in front of the other, I am traveling down a road I cannot see and have no idea how or where it ends. It is dark and I am terrified, but we have miles to go before we sleep and stopping is not an option.
We all saw it. That Facebook post. The one where people cite to things that look legal-ish and where it says to copy and paste – don’t forward! – in order to protect yourself. It shows up just about every time Facebook updates its terms and conditions or privacy policies or what-have-you.
I would bet good money that shit was started by a lawyer or a law student and is perpetuated by more lawyers or law students when a new change happens. This time, my favorite legal-blog-to-ignore-most-of-the-time decided to revive its holier-than-thou 2012 post, which I will summarize for you:
How do you not magically understand the law, you stupid non-lawyer?
Because what’s really important, what we should all be using these hard-earned, over-priced law degrees for is shaming people that don’t know the law.* Continue reading “I’m so sick of lawyers, I could vomit”
Hello! You’re still here! I hope you haven’t been waiting around for me for… Yeah. Three years. Or at least maybe you went out and had a coffee or something between posts.
A few lifetimes have happened since I’ve been away! I gotten a JD, got barred (almost a year now!), traveled through/to seven or eight (nine?) different countries, started writing fiction, became an aunt again, and again, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something important on this list.
I’m back and ready to see what this space can become.
So… hello! Shall we go on an adventure?
Because this blog says so much better what I would want to say:
I’m sorry. This is really long.
Okay, so, there was a time when in the mornings, after checking the headlines on the New York Times, I would head over to Jezebel and see what was happening in the world of women, as represented by feminists (some of them not so much) on Gawker’s payroll. It was a pretty good way to keep up on all the happenings surrounding that Susan G. Komen debacle, gave me a link to an amazing speech by Sandra Fluke, and strengthened my extreme dislike for Donald Trump (I previously hadn’t thought that particular strain of dislike could be strengthened but there you have it). In the last few months, however, I have found myself, for reasons I could not quite pinpoint, abandoning my daily visits to Jezebel. Maybe it was because of those damn “thighlights” that I found both hypocritical and gender-normative, maybe…
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Did you know that if laws or executive orders happen that you disagree with then that means the US is a tyranny? It’s true! At least according to my wall on Facebook. I have some thoughts on this, so come along with me on a rant that is a product of my over-educated, luckily traveled background! Continue reading “Tyranny: I do not think it means what you think it means”
