clevermanka | Scattershot

Entry tags:

Scattershot

Shit is going down in Kiev, y'all. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK. Thanks to

redheadfae for the heads-up on this.

I don't like the phrase "I want to be him/her when I grow up." I'm going to write a blog post about that when I have the time. Right now things are still a little busy at the day job and I'm dealing with a stupid, tiny, non-split/non-ergonomic keyboard because I spilled tea in my ancient and beloved Microsoft Natural Pro keyboard that saw me through nearly TEN YEARS of typing. You guys, WE WERE REALLY CLOSE and I am grieving for it.

A new keyboard is on order because honestly, typing on this current piece of crap is horrible, but I am worried about the inevitable getting-to-know-you period. Just, ugh. WHY WITH THE SPILLED TEA. WHY.

The idea of "Do What You Love" needs to die in a fire (also thanks to

redheadfae for that one). Because seriously. FUCK THAT. I can't even say it's a nice idea because it's based in such utter discrimination and privilege. I mean, nice work if you can get it, bro, but don't tell people to Follow Their Bliss when they can't even be sure they're going to be able to pay for rent and groceries in a given month.

I've got a week left on my Whole30. NGL, I am looking forward to my glass of wine on February 1. Pretty sure that's gonna be my only indulgence, though. I played around with the idea of doing regular Whole30s through the year, thirty days on, one day off, thirty days on, wash, rinse, repeat, but I'm not sure how that's gonna play with all the travel I've got on the menu this year. I might just declare that I'm Strict Paleo-ing except when I don't want to and call it good.

Holy wow, this fanvid. Some vague spoilers for Sherlock season 3.

The East Wind: A Sherlock AU trailer. What if there was no Fall? With John's help Sherlock is tracking down Moriarty's Web; but you can't expose the secrets without exposing yourself to the world's only consulting criminal who is determined to burn your heart out.

I've already picked up a few super cool folks from the Friending Frenzy I mentioned last night. HEY THERE NEW PEOPLE! Looking at the content of this post, it's pretty much a perfect representation of how I post and what I post about so if you're backing away slowly at this point, feel free to bail early. No hard feelings.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think I hear where you're coming from on the strict-Paleo-unless-I-don't-want-to strategy.

I've mentioned how FionaPie (the seventh-grade child) is gluten-free and lactose-free, right? Well, it came up in some discussions with soccer teammates and their parents, as some girls were brainstorming sleepover ideas, because somebody suggested pancakes. Fiona asked if there would also be bacon and eggs, and asked if she could bring her own pancake mix.* One of the parents said, meaning well, "That must be so hard." Fiona replied, "Not really...what's hard is feeling sick all the time. Making choices about what I eat is easy." Man, I wish I could cultivate her perspective more often.

*Most of the time, we simply don't buy stuff that's specifically manufactured to be "gluten-free," in favor of Actual Foodz. But pancakes, to her, are IMPORTANT. She will also elect (once or twice a year so far) to eat a Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut, in the tiniest of bites, over the course of two or three days.

what's hard is feeling sick all the time. Making choices about what I eat is easy

BRILLIANT CHILD.

She has stated a career goal of robot sciences (or something like that). Since inventing "glute-aid" (like Lactaid, but for gluten) doesn't seem to be a viable solution (since it's not a digestive reaction but an auto-immune response, she says she wants to develop injectable nanobots that can clear things out of one's system to prevent what she calls "crazy immunity mistakes." So we'll see. When I was 12, I still wanted to be a ballerina.

mckitterick and I have discussed nano health care at length. On multiple occasions. Because yep, restructuring DNA via nanos is the only way to actually cure an autoimmune disease. GO FIONAPIE!

Thank you for the creds, luv. I'm really sorry about the keyboard.. I hate ruining things with spills!!

And I'm really sad about the Ukraine, in that strange "I don't even know much about this situation yet, but my visceral love for the peoples and place that makes no sense to me logically because I've never actually BEEN there" is in full bloom. I want to see it before it is ruined, walk the Odessa Catacombs, hear the music. STUPID HUMANS IN POWER.

You know me and my immediate, overpowering fear of invasive government and lack of free speech. The Kiev situation is pushing all my buttons in a Really Serious Way. Terrifying.

I'm especially scared of the fact that I know Americans do not have the courage of conviction to behave in a similar revolutionary manner if/when this sort of thing happens here.

YES to all of this. I can't watch the videos at the office, but the dude in his little spaghetti strainer helmet has me very worried.

*Some* Americans *used to* have this sort of courage, those with absolute civil rights to gain, rather than reaction to gov't. I'm old enough and was locally close enough to remember the DC riots of the mid 60s.. my mum being frightened to go to work at NASA.
But, I also think as you do. Could we dare to hope that after looking at how much has happened in the past couple of years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_the_United_States#2010s)compared to the last decade, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_the_United_States#2000s) maybe? Or do we all have too much to lose now?

(I have not had time to sort out how much of these are soccer-style sports hooliganism yet.)

I think we have too much to lose and also we are a culture of LAZY and complacent.

I have an acquaintance in Kiev and am waiting to hear from him if he's okay and his take on what's going on.

I look forward to hearing from you on that.

I remember coming across an article on a military news site talking about a deployment last year to Kosovo and Belarus again, and I remember thinking at the time that was strange. Their focus? Riot control.

Edited 2014-01-24 17:24 (UTC)

I'm especially scared of the fact that I know Americans do not have the courage of conviction to behave in a similar revolutionary manner if/when this sort of thing happens here.

Yep. You're damn right about that.

I, too, really fucking hate that follow your bliss/do what you love NONSENSE. It is simply not possible for everyone. Privilege is KEY to merely having the option. Success in life is most certainly NOT "all about choices," because there is much, much more to it than that. This shit makes me fucking RAGECRAZY. These are thought-terminating cliches, IMNSHO. Let's throw them into my Wall of Fuckfire.

Well that is terrifying.

Sorry about the tragic demise of the ergonomic keyboard.

YES, FUCK THAT IDEA SO MUCH. Doing "what I love" (which is really more, "gosh I hope this wasn't a big mistake") involved seven years of higher ed, crushing amounts of debt, and a lot of financial support from my family. It is not something I would have been able to do without the immense headstart I got by being raised in a white upper middle class family, and I appreciate this.

luv the gif SO MUCH!!

As always, feel free to yoink it and use at your leisure!

If I followed my bliss I would living under the Burnside Bridge, which is, itself, not very blissful.

Basically, I carved out a way to not sell my soul to the devil so that I can have a little bliss on the side. See? it all works out.

sorry 'bout your keyboard. :(

Having a little bliss on the side is really important.

I don't like the phrase "I want to be him/her when I grow up."

There is a story I like that Dita Von Teese tells about how when she was first getting into burlesque and the fetish scene and long before she was famous herself, she was trying her very damnedest to look like Bettie Page. She had perfected Bettie's look, was a dead ringer. And one day, she went to a meet-and-greet with her favorite pin-up artist, Olivia de Berardinis. Dita asked Olivia, very nearly begged her, to paint her. To which Olivia replied, "But I already did. I painted you when I painted Bettie."

And that was when Dita realized she should aspire to be her own persona and not a shadow of someone else's. And she did and then Olivia painted her.

You go, Olivia.

That work article was interesting. I think, given that "middle class" is generally defined by education as opposed to money, it is sort of a self-perpetuating thing.

Now I actually have to get back to work.

At least it's Friday!

This be true. What is it about short weeks that are so much more work??

It's like a vacation day. Great while it lasts, but always bites you in the ass when it's over.

Don't forget about that Texas hospital that is trying to incubate a fetus in a rotting corpse (http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/01/23/marlise_munoz_case_the_fetus_of_a_brain_dead_texas_woman_is_said_to_be_distinctly.html) and that kangaroo court (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-25855325) in India that "sentenced" a local woman to violent sexual abuse following the discovery of her engagement to a man not from their village.

In better news, the Viking apocalypse is due in less than a month (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2507778/Will-world-end-100-days-Sounding-ancient-trumpet-York-warns-Viking-apocalypse-22-February-2014.html), but I'll believe it when I'm cradling my own entrails in the rubble of civilization shattered.

I saw both those articles on

ontd_political and I can't even deal with that right now. I just...

The only reason I wouldn't welcome an apocalypse at this point is I finally got my new boots this week (the last delayed xmas present from

mckitterick) and I would like to have more than a couple months to wear them.

I feel your pain about the keyboard. You should have heard the ribbing my brothers gave me for my poor typing on a flat keyboard. Ugh. I was so happy to get the new computer home and put a PROPER keyboard on it.

FUCK YES PROPER KEYBOARDS

It's taking me, like, twice as long to get anything written with this stupid rinky-dink thing.

My exwife was, at every turn in her life I think, told to "follow her bliss." In reality she ended up following what got her the best reactions (including things she'd lie about.)

"I'm majoring in pre-med, cell molecular biology." She was addicted to the shocked, uber-impressed faces. You know, until she failed out because she wasn't good at math or science. (I guess Women's Studies is serving her well on the police force now? I don't know...)

Thankfully in my current job I can speak VERY PLAINLY with students. "Yeah, that's never going to happen."

I actually started the 21DSD (or at least what-I-imagine it is, I didn't read through, just cut out everything sugar besides sweet potatoes because mama needs to fuel a workout here) on January 1 - the sugar (maple syrup) had creeped in quite a bit between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'd developed my own molasses cookie recipe and used paleOMG's pumpkin chai bread as a treat at parties and events we went to. I needed to get that all out of my system. I'm not much of a drinker...but I realize that sugar? Traps me.

My exwife was, at every turn in her life I think, told to "follow her bliss." In reality she ended up following what got her the best reactions (including things she'd lie about.)

Yikes.

Sugar is a HUGE trigger for me. I'm a recovering binge/obsessive-compulsive eater and doughnuts were always my drug of choice. I let myself have a honey-sweetened treat every once in a while (I made these incredible things (http://eatdrinkpaleo.com.au/chocolate-brownies-that-blew-me-away/) for a holiday treat this year and OH MY GOD), but I gotta be super careful to not swan-dive back into old habits. Also, refined sugar is super inflammatory which is something I have to watch like a hawk.

I say that not as the bitter ex...just...outstanding concerns throughout our relationship. :)

I'm going to need some time alone in a quiet room with those pictures on that brownie recipe. I...can't...imagine how amazing those must taste.

I think Elana's blondie recipe is probably one of my FAVORITE recipe for sweet treats, but I can only make them when I'm going to take them somewhere. I'd much rather have gluten-foods in the house (our roommate likes cake and cookies and so on) - I know I'm sick immediately if I eat those. But yeah.

Part of me is sad to see such a big section of the Paleo blog-community so big on "sweet treats." Mostly because of how...our brains are just wired for sugar, even the lower glycemic stuff. You know? But I'm NO Paleo Police person...especially since my parents went Paleo 18 months ago and my mom's biggest complaint was that she couldn't find a dessert she liked. "I'm in my 50s and I want dessert." Well, okay.

100% with you on that last paragraph. This is why I love Melissa Joulwan (www.theclothesmakethegirl.com) so much. The closest she comes to treats are some date-nut roll things and she straight out calls them CANDY.

The brownies were fucking amazing and I have vowed to make them only once a year because JESUS.

Hello! I had one of those split ergonomic keyboards and I loved it so!! Sadly, I had to leave it behind when I switched jobs and now I'm stuck on a Mac with a weird "normal" keyboard. DO NOT WANT! Ugh.

Nah, I think I'll stick around for a while :) I'm looking forward to getting to know you :)

Ugh. A normal keyboard and a Mac? I think I would file an HR complaint for Hostile Work Environment.

YAY for getting to know each other!

Tell me about it! I miss that keyboard so much! I'm up for a new one in April (YES!! *fistpump*) so I'm hoping to finagle a PC and a new split keyboard. I do work for the state though so who knows if I'll be able to manage it :S

The idea of "Do What You Love" needs to die in a fire (also thanks to redheadfae for that one). Because seriously. FUCK THAT. I can't even say it's a nice idea because it's based in such utter discrimination and privilege. I mean, nice work if you can get it, bro, but don't tell people to Follow Their Bliss when they can't even be sure they're going to be able to pay for rent and groceries in a given month.

It should be followed up by "And I hope you can learn to love garbage collecting/changing bedpans/sewing shirts all day, because somebody gotta do it." (In my grade ten Career Studies class, I think, there was among the supplementary materials an interview with a garbage collector who actually did claim to like her job a lot: it's a quiet night drive, and the garbage doesn't yell at you.)

Shit is going down in Kiev, y'all. WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK.

Looks like the equivalent of the Arab Spring will blow very soon. Maybe not this time, but the more they crush them down, the more the people will rise up the next time. And honestly, I've been expecting this for a while, in Ukraine and Belarus and the Central Asian republics. Class inequality + rampant corruption + restrictions on natural resources + added conflict as to whether to go with EU (and apparently the terms Ukraine would have to meet to enter the EU were a nasty kettle of fish in themselves) or go with Russia = powder keg.

I don't like the phrase "I want to be him/her when I grow up." I'm going to write a blog post about that when I have the time.

[George Gershwin] was forever seeking lessons from anyone he felt might improve his technical skills. ...In Hollywood he became a friend and tennis partner of Schoenberg's and duly asked the older composer to accept him as a pupil. Schoenberg refused. "I would only make you a bad Schoenberg," he said, "and you're such a good Gershwin already."
- The Book of Musical Anecdotes

I've been expecting this for a while, in Ukraine and Belarus and the Central Asian republics.

D'you have any relatives (well, ones you're in contact with) over there?

My father had a very old family friend in Kiev, but I never managed to meet said friend when we went back in 2004, and I wouldn't even recognize his face. Since he would be pushing seventy by now, I doubt he is protesting on the streets.

I have complicated thoughts on "Do what you love."

It is a great big privilege marker. It is unrealistic to assume anyone but the very wealthy can just decide to do whatever they want without worrying about whether you can keep the lights on until it becomes profitable, and it trivializes the importance of the everyday work of getting unglamorous shit done.

But it's also a goal worth striving for. I want to do what I love. Right now, at my skill and exposure level, I can't make a living that way, but I'm working on building my skills and then I'll work on building my exposure, and then I'll see what happens.

If I can find a way to work towards that being a living, then I would never consider what I did 'work', and I would be happy and fulfilled in ways my current job does not accomplish. So, I pin 'do what I love and love what I do' on the wall to look at when I get up to go to the day job.

In the meantime, I go to the day job. I do the work that doesn't always feed my soul. I don't love what I do, but I like it well enough, and I can use it to pay the bills and keep the lights on while I look for ways to make the rest of it pay off. And all the while, I give what energy and savings I can hoard to the dream; even if that's twenty bucks a month and half an hour a week, it's *something*. When things were really bad, monetarily, I couldn't even manage that, but what I could manage was slowly digging myself out of the hole to get to where I had that little bit of time or money.

If you're born without the advantages I have, you don't really have the choices I have, but you do have some choices, and one of those is to keep that dream of doing what you love tacked up on the wall to look at before you go spend ten hours in a coal mine, or cleaning office buildings, or repairing sewage pipes. You should be looking for a way to get at least a little bit closer to the dream, and we as a community should be looking at you, looking at that dream, and saying, "Hey, it sure looks like you could use a college education, or a small business loan, or health insurance to cover your mother's insulin, or a vocational program, to give you a step up to that."

One of the reasons I'm a huge supporter of the ACA is that I know lots of creative people, with amazing dreams, who cannot give their dreams energy because the day job is needed for the insurance. A kid has asthma, a wife has cancer, a husband is diabetic, so they spend their energy forty hours a week to qualify for the insurance. They could make a living doing what they love, without that chain. Every last one of them has greeted the ACA with, "God, finally, I can get insurance for my family for less than our house payment, and I can start my business."

I see a lot of people really hating on 'do what you love' as a concept, both with the nuanced complexity of this article and with the simplistic "That's just dumb and racist and giving people unrealistic hope is cruel," approach. I don't think the problem is telling people to find what they love and then find a way to make it pay. The problem is telling people to find what they really love, and giving them no tools to make it pay. If what you love is making classic science fiction costumes to sell to other enthusiasts, and what you need to make it pay is a college scholarship to get a costuming and design degree, and a small business loan to cover your first two years of materials and overhead, then I want us to give you that, so you can put in your ten thousand hours, become a master at your art, and share it with the world.

In the short term, it's important to call out the privilege and classism of 'do what you love and the money will follow'. In the long term, though, I really don't want us to lose sight of that as a goal, because the two most common words for someone who makes a success out of working his or her ass off at what he or she loves are 'artist' and 'entrepreneur', and I like those a lot and think we need more of them.

So, yeah, complicated.

Much love,
Rowan

I hear you and I think this is a positive idea, but it still doesn't sit well with me. We would be much better served, I think, to give up the notion of certain jobs being bad or undesirable. Ditch the "you want fries with that" jokes because you know? SOMEONE'S gotta serve that fast food (even though I wish they didn't but that's a completely different topic).

I think you have very good points, Rowan. And I'd add that what we need to sort out is that there are two factors involved in whether a job is one's bliss: whether one is suited to the job, and whether the environment is actually conducive to bliss. As Clevermanka points out, somebody needs to do the fast food/garbage collecting etc. And there ARE actually people out there who love working in retail, if all the other conditions are met: they love meeting people and making them happy by giving them food/goods/etc. They would not be as happy as artists or entrepreneurs.

The problem is that our society assumes that some jobs are inherently unblissful, and abandons them to their fate instead of improving them via legal and social pressures. The people I knew who loved working in retail (and the happy garbage collector I mentioned in my comment above) were in a country with a livable minimum wage and health insurance for everyone. So people who are happy in retail could actually be happy at their retail jobs for many years. (Think also of the teachers who follow their bliss because the lightbulb blazing up in a kid's head when she finally groks quadratic equations IS their bliss --- and find that they are constantly struggling against lack of funding and a terrible bureaucracy.)

On the contrary, there are jobs, and I've quit one of them, where the right temperament of person would be blissfully happy there: I had great pay, great health insurance, nice coworkers and general respect for what I did and where I worked. That was my privilege that made me better off than the waitress, the health care aide, and the sex worker -- through no real superiority of my own.

Basically, our society is saying "Follow your bliss" AND "But your bliss can't be this; because we've made these necessary jobs crap."

"The problem is that our society assumes that some jobs are inherently unblissful, and abandons them to their fate instead of improving them via legal and social pressures."

This is very true. And then on top of this, we conflate personal value and worth with financial compensation, and decide anyone who is working in a lower-paid job is, accordingly, less intelligent than someone working in a higher-paid position. This drives me crazy.

I do what I love, and I am not from a particularly privileged background (grew up in a wealthy area but wasn't wealthy myself, had two mentally-ill parents, no money for college, worked through high school, went to the most affordable college I could, got a partial academic scholarship and worked retail through college to pay the remainder, after college worked a ton of "not my bliss" jobs while going to grad school) but my good job fortune was due to a hell of a lot of random good luck. Mostly I was in the right places at the right times and found myself with the right people too. Yeah, I'm smart, yeah, I made the most of what I could, but I know well that if not for accidentally meeting this or that right person wholly by chance, I would still be carrying bags of fertilizer to people's cars at the local garden center. Which wasn't that bad, except for the smell, honestly.

I might just declare that I'm Strict Paleo-ing except when I don't want to and call it good.

During those times you can make a face and stick your tongue out at it, too.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Scattershot

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject