Preview...

Last night was the State of the Union address and the republican response. As is typical two years into the first term of a presidency the SotU also marks the start of the election season. Which sucks. I mean so much. It sucks because it's two years away and it's too much. I wish we had a really limited campaign time period. Like three months maybe. But the toe in the water starts to the primaries then the general it's all so much. 

It also sucks because we got the preview last night of how the campaigning from the two sides will at least start. 

And it's going to be ugly. Just like 2016 and 2020. We thought 2008 and 2012 were ugly but they were sweetness and light comparatively. This is not going to be sweetness and light. 

And it sucks because it's all so predictable, at least from the republican side. See they are doing this thing they do, and have always done, where the take the talking points of the democrats or the progressives and warp them around into something else. 

Feminism. It's not actually the desire for equality among men and women it's actually something designed by ugly women to emasculate men and denigrate mothers. Then when just saying feminist stopped having the same scare Limbaugh changed it to Feminazi and made even more brazen claims about how bad it was. Generations of women don't call themselves feminists because they have been steeped in this negativity around the word their whole lives. I used to be one of them. That shit is constant.

Political correctness used to be a positive thing. It was a way of making sure you didn't say things that were impolitic. Not a word you get much these days but it basically means don't be an asshole. That what you are about to say is likely to be offensive to the person you are saying it to. PC, practicing courtesy, but instead it became shorthand for a bad thing. Oh everyone is so PC these days! Which always seemed to boil down to I can't tell racist jokes anymore without people telling me they aren't funny.

Antifa. Is antifa in the room with us right now? Well, yeah, okay it is. Because I'm Antifa. Anti fascist. That's antifa. Always has been. It's not an organization. People identify themselves as being antifa, but it's not a group. Like Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer... Shall I go on? Blaming Antifa is still used by a certain circle but it got harder to do once the other groups stormed the capitol on live television. I mean they still tried their hardest to say it was Antifa setting them up but when the leaders of those other groups start getting convicted it's hard to keep it up. 

So they moved to WOKE MOB!  Being woke isn't a new thing. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned that people needed to stay awake, to be aware, to not get complacent. To not sleep through the chance for revolution. It got turned to shorthand, someone was woke when they became more aware of the systems around them. Then it made the jump from the black community into the progressive community as a whole and a bit of the nuance was lost, but still not a bad thing to be woke. To be aware. To not ignore things just because they aren't comfortable to you.

But the woke mob is super scary. They insist on being PC! Calling people by their names! Studying history! CRT!! Oh no! Not that! I mean, if you ask them what exactly CRT is they often don't really know. As evidenced by the fact that they ban teaching it in elementary school and it's a college level class. But critical race theory is their catch all phrase for anything they think is critical to the white race. You can't make white kids feel badly about being white. That's their rallying cry. Well nobody wants to make white kids feed badly about being white. What people want is all kids to understand the full depth and breadth of our country's history and what we still are working on correcting to ensure that we live up to that everybody is created equal premise. 

And then last night we saw Governor Huckabee hit "normal vs. crazy" a few times. This election is about normal vs. crazy. Does that sound familiar? That was exactly what democrats ran on in 2020. A return to normal, boring, steady politics after the unhinged four years of Trumpism. But now, it seems that Biden is the unhinged one. Beholden to the woke mob. Which she's not sure he actually believes in all of that, but he is still beholden to it. The nod to that even they know casting Biden as some sort of freewheeling progressive isn't going to stick in 2024 any more than it did in 2020.

So for the next two years we are going to get a whole barrage of how republicans are the normal ones. How it's just crazy to want equality for everyone. Which is the foundation of the culture wars they insist they don't want to fight. I don't want to fight a culture war. I don't know why they are even considered culture wars. I just don't want you to be able to discriminate against people. You can go to your church and pray to your god and raise your kids to follow a set of rules laid out by your holy books. I'm fine with that. But I don't think you should get to apply those rules to those of use who don't agree with either your interpretation of that book, for those that read the same book but take away different lessons, or the fact that some of us don't believe in that book at all. 

I refuse to think it's normal to be okay with a kid committing suicide but not with calling them by a different name. 

I refuse to think it's normal to ignore our history and insist that it has nothing to do with our present. 

I refuse to think it's normal to ban books that talk about ideas you don't like and couch it in protecting the children when it's really you that you are protecting. You having to explain to your kids that not everyone lives the same way you do.

I refuse to think it's normal to brag about the statues of the Little Rock 9 while also preventing kids from learning why there are statues. What they went through. Why it was significant that the doors were held open for them in the dedication ceremony. You have to learn about them being barred shut before them being open means anything.

I refuse to think it's normal to be terrified of Drag Queens. 

I refuse to accept that "define a woman" rhetoric is anything other than transphobia. 

This is the vicious last gasp of an ideology that is cornered. They have seen with gay rights that once the needle starts moving, once people come out of the closet and live openly, once you get to know that nice couple down the street, that it become unpalatable to discriminate against them. So they have to stop that from continuing to happen. They want to force people back into the closet. They want to make sure you don't get to know any trans people because then they become people not scapegoats. They want to make you go back to blaming someone else for your problems, LGBTQIA+, women, black, brown, immigrant, whoever they can pin it on so you don't look at the accumulation of wealth upwardly that had happened. The hoarding of resources UP, not the sharing of them down that has made your life harder. 

If they can keep the culture wars humming (Steve Bannon talked about this as a strategy back in 2016) then they think they can win. Fear is a motivator. Fear isn't rational. Fear is all passion and energy and can move on to hate very quickly and that can also be aimed and used. 

We got our preview for the next election cycle last night. 

Buckle up. 

Help Yourself #2...

Finished my Self Help book for February. This one was Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Dr. Julie Smith. It was promoted as a practical self help book with tools that you could use to improve your mental health. 

Full disclosure I used to read psychology books for fun. I entertained the idea of going back to school and becoming a psychologist for a long time. My mother in law did do that and worked as a counselor. She also shared books with me that she thought I'd find interesting. Or that she thought I might figure out what was wrong with me and fix it, I was never exactly sure which one. Probably a little of both. 

Anyway...

A review I saw of this was one sentence, "Somebody has." And that sort of fit my take away. There wasn't anything new for me. But there was A LOT in there. It was sort of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Dummies. Really simplified chapters with overviews of fairly complex issues. But with actual things you can do to help yourself as well. It was kind of like being hit with a firehose of information, but the soaking came from a LOT of mist instead of a blast of water. If that makes sense to you.

There were a lot of chapters and subchapters around different issues, which would be handy if say you were looking for help with anxiety but didn't have issues with your relationships. But the chapters and information built on each other and referenced each other so you couldn't really skip around. So you were left reading a lot of information that might or might not be useful to you.

In my 20s I would have found it all pretty interesting because it would have been the first time I was introduced to concepts like your breathing is tied to your emotional state and because I wouldn't have been reading it to help me with an actual problem I was having taking in all of that information would have been good. The sampler platter of cognitive health practices. 

However if you are someone who wanted help with something, some specific issue you were having, it would be a lot to try and wade through. I especially felt badly for anyone with anxiety reading the book. Reading all of the other issues and trying to absorb all of the information she was continually pushing out would have made it so much worse I would think. It would have been really overwhelming around chapter 30 if not before that.

The only thing that kept it from being a DNF was my personal goal challenge. And trying to keep in mind that I was trying to compare what 20 something me would get out of it vs. 54 year old me. I didn't feel like saying 20 something me would find it fascinating I think but 54 year old me found something else to do. Though that's pretty accurate. Instead I powered through. 

It wasn't a bad book, and if you are interested in how CBT works it might be a good choice. But if you are looking for actual help with an issue I would suggest finding an actual CBT therapist and going that route. Even with a few weeks of visits it would probably be quicker than powering through the book. 

Hopefully next month's choice will be more interesting to me. Or if not more interesting than at least shorter? 

You'd Never Believe It...

When you are writing characters one of the harder things to do is creating personalities. It's really easy to fall into the trap of making someone a caricature instead of fleshing them out a bit more. We use shorthand in fiction a lot to let you know who you are dealing with. Who is the good witch and who is the bad witch. But it's easy to get sloppy and go over the top. 

Reading about a slew of things former President Trump did over the years this morning and was reminded of the number of times I would preface a news article that I linked with, "You wouldn't believe me if I wrote him this way."

Because that's the biggest part of fiction, right? You know I'm making it up. You know I'm lying to you the whole way. BUT you have to believe it for it to work. You have to agree to suspend disbelief and act like I'm telling you something that happened. And as soon as my character becomes a caricature you're out of there. 

It's a struggle. Because it's just easier to give you all the short hand clues as to who someone is. To get around it I generally paint really light strokes of personality on my people. You get flashes of who they are with what they are doing. But they tend to talk a lot and do less. (Hmm...I wonder why?)

I also like to tell stories that don't go the way you expect them to all of the time. For that I have to really be careful not to give too big of a tell in my character's personality. I can't pull the twist ending out of thin air though either. There has to be something there that when you go back and re-read it (if you go back and re-read) you will see, oh there it is. I see now... If I just write a straight up story then take a left turn it doesn't work. You don't believe me. 

Talking to Dana about some research she was doing into the science for a story she's working on and told her that was our biggest difference, she researches and I just "sounds about right" it. She does the science research for the same reasons I was talking about characters. If the science is wrong, and you know it's wrong, you are pulled out of the story and that's that. You have to trust the story, the science, and the path to keep agreeing to believe the lies you are being told. 

It's all a bargain we make. Reader and author. You believe me. I will try not to make the lie really obvious.

And people who read, watch, consume in any way fiction all make that deal. And we are all really willing to go far to make it. I go to musicals. I like musicals. I am fully willing to believe that people break out in song and dance routines to express how much they hate the traffic on the 405. Yup. I'll buy it. I watch some science fiction. I am fully willing to believe that the majority of alien races speak English and are bipedal. Okay. Works for me. I mean, I might just make the excuse that there is a universal translator involved but that actually gets more murky for me when those are introduced. Like how would you get a universal translator that works with an alien race you've never encountered before? That doesn't make sense...and I am out of the story for a moment. Best to not address it and let it just wash over me to not think about until later. 

Because that's the other piece. I can think about something later and still have enjoyed the story while I was in it. 

SPOILER ALERT FOR WAKANDA FOREVER:

The princess goes to the underwater kingdom. She is told she's the first outsider they have ever let be there. So why did they have a dive suit for her? 

It pulled me out of it when Katie and I saw it in the theater and again when Brent and I watched this weekend. But there were other things that didn't bug me at the time that after watching it I thought about and thought, well that doesn't make sense.  But they didn't pull me out of the story at the time. 

BACK OUT OF SPOILER ALERT

You have to be careful with the agreement. 

And that means writing realistic characters. 

What I really need is the republicans to get better at it.

The Tucker Carlsons and Donald Trumps and George Santoses are pulling me out of their story and I just can't buy into the lie they are trying to sell me. 

Not that I have ever agreed to buying in to it, but come on...at least try. 

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder...

 Art

The Crypt Keeper

"Tabby? We got a delivery last night."

"Good timing. I was just making my final notes on what to rotate on to display. Let's see if any of these need to take priority. Who is the artist?"

"Ian."

Tabby smiled. There would almost definitely be a reshuffling of pieces. Ian's things were almost always pushed to the forefront of displays. 

She and her assistant unwrapped the pieces and propped them against the walls to get a first read. He had sent over three paintings this time. If all of them went on display this month she'd have to redo her notes as to which pieces to take down. She had been going to keep one of his older pieces that seemed to be drawing a large crowd, but maybe it was time to rotate that one out? Or maybe one of the 6 new pieces she already had on her list would be bumped to next month. 

"What do you think inspires him? I mean, they are all clearly his work, but they are all so different from each other."

Tabby nodded. That was the essence of Ian's work. Clearly his. Clearly different. Clearly off. Just a touch. There was always something in them that didn't sit right when you looked at it. And it was almost impossible to say why. His work left her patrons off kilter, but fascinated and ready to come back for more. 

"I don't know. I'd like to feature him on a First Thursday sometime. Get him to come talk with his fans. But..."

She trailed off. Since they had no idea who he was, or how to contact him that was an impossible dream. She could feature him all she liked, but actually getting him in the gallery? Not likely. 

She took in the new pieces. Her normal way of viewing a new piece was to take it in as a whole. Just let the art loom large. Not focus on any one piece, just the overall feeling. Then she would go back and look at the details. It was the way she had judged what hung on the walls of her gallery since they opened the doors. The initial feeling always let her know if it was going up or going back to the artist, or into the vault waiting to be claimed. It didn't mean she particularly liked the piece or not, it just meant she knew what moved her would move others. And that's what she felt art should be. Does it speak to you in some way? Does it make you feel something? 

It might not be as good of a system as judging the styles, the influences, the line weights or composition or any other long list of things she'd heard art majors talk about in her gallery and in lectures. But it was her system and it was a good one for The Crypt. And she consistently stuck to it. 

Until now. 

The third piece that was propped against her wall was impossible to judge in that way. 

She tried. She stepped back and tried to take in the whole piece but she kept staring at the details. 

She tried to get a feel for the overall piece and how her patrons would react but she couldn't.

Her heart was pounding and her breath was starting to get short. She was hyperventilating. 

"Tabby? Tabby? Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost."

She knelt down in front of the picture and put her hand on it. Feeling the paint under her fingers. It was real. This piece was here. 

She took a slow breath and tried to clear her head. Rocking back on to her ass. Sitting and staring at the painting. "What do you see here?"

Her assistant was used to Tabby asking her opinion on works, but never like this. 

"Umm, it's...well is it a car crash? I'm not sure. There isn't another car, just this one in the corner that is wrecked, but the swirls of dark and red, maybe they are the crash?"

"Tell me about the car. What do you see?"

"It's not really distinctive, except for that bright yellow color. I mean, like I couldn't tell you what kind of car it is, just I know it's a car. I know it's yellow. I know it's been in a wreck at some point because it's dented up here, crinkled. I think he chose yellow because it stands out so starkly against the black and red background. It makes it the first thing your eye is drawn to. Like the painting is about the car. But it's also so small compared to the canvas that it can't be about the car. Like the car is there, but it's not the point."

She watched Tabby to see if she passed. Which was dumb because Tabby had never made anyone feel like they had to pass a quiz on art appreciation, or even ever view a painting the way you were "supposed to" art was to be felt. That was Tabby's only lecture. 

Tabby agreed with everything that her assistant had said, the only difference is her eye was drawn to the car not just because of the bright yellow, but because it had been in her dreams for as long as she could remember. It was her stress nightmare. The car she was always in when she drove off the bridge. When the road ended suddenly in an ocean. When she was on railroad tracks and couldn't get off. When she lost control and crashed into...

This was her recurring nightmare. On a canvas. In her gallery. 

First Thursday

Creative...

I've talked about this before but it's been awhile. 

This morning I was talking to a friend about a craft that she does. And it's amazing. I've got another friend who crochets these incredible quilts (you might have seen the one she did with Tig and Tux on it) and they are amazing. I have another friend who paints incredible pictures when she's not too busy with her horse and her dog. I have another friend who is in art school right now and has had multiple showings in galleries and studios not to mention multiple pieces of her various artistic stylings displayed at Mastenbrook Manor. I have other friends who are cartoonists, and book illustrators, and map makers, and clothing designers and...well a lot of creative endeavors.

It's not just my friends either. My family members paint, create stained glass, weave, arrange flowers, decorate cakes, knit and crochet. 

I...

don't. 

I just wasn't born with that particular skill set. Which can be really frustrating because at times I can see what I would make if I could. I can describe it to you. I can picture it in my head. But I cannot get my hands to make what my mind sees. It's just not my skill set. 

For a long time I tried and tried again to find some sort of craft I could do. The last time was knitting then crochet. I made Katie a REALLY long scarf. It was pretty. Ish. Not exactly the neatest thing ever. And like I said really long. Probably way too long to be practical. But I tried. When I taught myself how to knit and then how to crochet I looked at some of the patterned things, and I'm pretty sure Brent could hear the static in my head as it short circuited. I just couldn't make the notations make sense. I watched YouTube videos, I read books, I tried over and over and it just seemed like gibberish. I think it must be what dyslexia feels like. You know you are supposed to be seeing something logical, you know other people are seeing something logical, but you cannot make your head unscramble it. 

Luckily crocheting and knitting aren't as necessary as reading so I could just abandon it. 

And I did. 

I write. I write well. I can describe an art piece in my writing (like the ones hanging in The Crypt) but I cannot physically make them. 

And that used to really bum me out. I would tell people that I'm just not creative. I would focus on all of the things I couldn't do instead of the one I can. I can tell a story. Written or oral. I can weave a picture for you. I can paint a scene. I can color outside the lines and make you see things that don't actually exist. I am creative.

But it took a long time for me to get there. To say those words. Because I had in my head what creative was and it wasn't anything I could do. 

We do that a lot. We focus on the things we are lacking. The pieces we don't have. And then we apply these weird labels to ourselves around those missing pieces. We define ourselves by what we aren't instead of what we are. 

I am not a lot of things. There are so many things that I could be that it makes sense I wouldn't be most of them. 

But I am a lot of things as well. 

I mean, more than one person out there has probably described me as a lot...

One of the Ocean things I want to make sure I'm embracing this year is that feeling of support that I get when I'm floating. I want to wrap myself in the feeling of being enough and the only way to really do that is to not struggle against what I am not. What I am is more important that what I am not. 

It's not always easy to do. The world is constantly banging on about how you need to be something else. Thinner, younger, smarter, prettier, richer, any number of things. But, I kind of like who I am already. Sure I want to be the best version of that. I want to indulge my curiosity. I want to expand my knowledge. I want to embrace my gold stars. But what I choose to do is a reflection of who I already am. Who I am working on being the best version of. 

I'm not creating something new out of whole cloth, but I'm still creating. 

Because I am creative like that. 

(just don't ask me to follow a pattern)

 

Not So Mr. Nice Guy...

Yes, I know, I mine my On This Day for blog ideas A LOT but it's really good for that so I am not sorry...

So anyway, today on my On This Day there were comments from someone who is no longer on my friend list. Honestly they lasted for so much longer than they ever should have because he was an old friend. Like third grade old friend. But he grew up to be an asshole of the highest order. 

There is only so long nostalgia will paper that shit over. 

But seeing that post and discussion and thinking about all of the various ones we'd had before he got tossed got me thinking about our friendship over the years. And I had to say a silent "you were right, thank you" to my teenage self. 

There was a stretch of time my sophomore year where I ate lunch with the chess team. He was on the chess team at the time and so we spent a good amount of time together. I enjoyed my time hanging out with them. They taught me the basics on playing chess and on one memorable occasion with some "creative" help I beat their best player. Technically it was me and the entire rest of the team that beat him, but he couldn't figure out how we were cheating so...

But there was a conversation we had once that really stuck with me. 

He told me that I wouldn't date him because girls never dated nice guys. They only liked the jerks. His example was that I would flirt with one of the guys on the team but not with others. And in a way he was right, but the way this particular guy and I flirted was like 40s movie banter. We quipped at each other. It was fun. And there was no way we were ever going to date because he was a jerk. That was the part that the other boy got wrong. 

I was fine flirting with the jerk, and I know he was able to date a variety of girls (being cute helped) but I wasn't ever going to date him because I knew he was a jerk. But I did have to wonder why I would never considered dating the nice guy. He was also cute, and probably shouldn't have had a hard time getting dates, but...

I didn't like him. Not like that. There was something off with him. That's what I thought. And he pretty much convinced me in that conversation, and others that followed, that it was the fact that he was nice. 

And I am uncomfortable around people who are REALLY nice. I've talked before about meeting Brent's cousin for the first time and not being really sure she wasn't putting us on. Katie had met her first and told her father that she couldn't wait until I met her because Katie was sure I wouldn't know how to handle her. And I totally didn't. She's so nice I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the joke to reveal itself. NOBODY could be that nice. But she is. She is midwest nice. She is practicing her religion the way you are supposed to nice. She is lost her father at a young age and understands that life is short and capricious and you would do well to let the people you love feel all of that love all the time nice. I got used to her, but in the beginning I wasn't sure I trusted that level of nice. 

So he might have been right in a way that I wouldn't date him because he was nice. Maybe that was what was putting me off. That he was just too nice. That I wasn't really nice so it wouldn't be a good fit. 

But that wasn't it. I wasn't comfortable around him. I never felt like I should relax. There was always part of me that was on guard. Now, I don't trust people as a whole, so this is not unusual. But it was there. I just didn't like him like that. Ever. No matter how much he tried to goad me into it by saying that I would never date him because he was nice. Daring me to prove him wrong. 

Looking back now I think it was just good instincts. Because I did date a few really nice guys. But not the type who tell you how nice there are and that they deserve a date because of it. Because that doesn't make you nice at all. I dated my share of jerks as well. But a lot of nice guys. Married a nice guy.  

So to teenage me, who already knew to steer clear of the Not Actually a Nice Guy, thanks. He grew up to be a giant asshole, but I think you knew he already was. 

Oh Stop It...

Last week a friend posted one of those "Which person are you?" things. This one was four pictures of a bed. Fully made with pillows, hospital corners, comforter pulled up but not really straight and completely unmade. It was just a silly little thing. For the record I would be a hospital corners, but Brent hates a tight sheet across his feet so it's a loose sheet tuck with the fully made and pillows. 

It was just that sort of silly thing. Nothing really earth shattering about it. Just a "hey how do you do this thing we all do every day?"

But what I kept seeing is the response from people who don't make the bed that "they are too busy for that" or have "more important things to do with their day" than make their bed. Excuse me? Your life is so busy you can't take five minutes max to make a bed? I mean, how are your teeth doing because that's around 2 -3 minutes out of your apparently jam packed schedule. 

It was just so weird to me. If you don't want to make your bed, don't make your bed. But don't try and act like it makes you a superior person because of it. Like all of the bed makers out there are just frivolous time wasters who couldn't hang with your action packed life. Just say it's not something you care about and move along. No need to try and shame other people because you are sloppy. (I'm kidding, I'm not really shaming you either, it's your bed, do what makes you comfortable)

I see that sort of messaging over and over again. People can't just like something or dislike something without slamming other people's choices. And often it's a sideways slam. A, I see you are doing this but I'm just too busy, wonderful, intelligent for it myself, you simpleton...Okay.

It doesn't make your choice more valid to slam someone else's. Especially when it's pretty clearly a defensive thing. Like those non bed making people. They have spent their lives with someone telling them to make their beds and instead of just saying no, they feel the need to disparage those of us who do. 

And I've fallen into the trap before. The whole, who has time for that? Whatever the that is. Maybe edging a lawn or dusting baseboards every week or whatever task brings them comfort in how nice it looks, that I can recognize, wow that looks nice, but I have no urge to do. So instead of saying, yeah, I don't want to do that, I feel the need to claim it as a waste of time. 

Or I have in the past.

I try really hard not to do that anymore. To make sure I just say, that's not for me. To remind myself how pissed off I get when someone tells me I have too much time on my hands, or I need to get a hobby when I'm talking about something extra that I do. 

I don't watch certain TV shows, but it's not because I'm just too smart for them, it's because I don't prefer them. I don't read certain books, not because they are a waste of time but because I don't like the storylines. (SHE DOESN'T READ, DANA! <though I might be growing to like her more which is pissing me off even more>) I don't go to certain movies, I don't see certain plays, I don't watch certain sports...all of them just because they aren't my cup of tea. Not because I'm just too busy, intelligent, precious to do them. 

Like what you like. Own it. Love it. Share about it. But don't feel like you have to get defensive about it, or about what other people like. It's just not for you. And that's okay. 

Oh, and for sure take the two minutes to brush your teeth. Really. Nobody is that busy.