Posts tagged Introspection

Just Writing it Down

September 13, 2012 · Filed under Just... Life · Tagged , ,

One of the great things about blogging?

Writing stuff down.

Then getting other people’s feedback on it…

Then re-reading it in light of the experience of others…

Then realizing that really?  It’s not such a big deal after all.

So thanks, guys, for reminding me that YES!  Blog land is a real community.

Friends do not have to be in the same city as you.

Pen Pals are awesome! (OK, yes, I totally just dated myself there).

Not that I don’t still want to make a few more friends here.  And try to feel like I am “rooted”…

I am really, quite seriously closed off…  I am afraid to let slip (in person) anything that could be construed as negative.  Mostly because I don’t want people thinking I am miserable.

Huh – maybe it’s because I listen to my sister complain sooooo much about her life (you remember the depression)… I don’t want to be that person.  Plus people have all kinds of “Advice” when you do that.

But sometimes I guess you do have to say when things bother you.

I also have a hard time with that – I don’t like conflict or hurt feelings.

Like – Even though I did completely come to the conclusion on my own that any kind of full-on “witchy” immersion is not the path for me.  I resented the hell out of my Dad for point blank telling me I was wrong and stupid for looking at it.  But did I tell him that?  No… I just let him “win” by saying I wasn’t going to the pagan festival.  But I like to keep the peace.

Of course – my penchant for keeping it all inside tends to lock down the good with the bad.  I don’t talk about feelings, period.

Anyway.

Looking a little more broadly at my idea of what constitutes a community, friendship, relationships, etc.

I am 2 years away from 40… I would like to put some cracks in this shell.

Work in progress!

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Community – It’s Not Just a TV Show

September 12, 2012 · Filed under Just... Life · Tagged , ,

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I wrote this yesterday, for posting today and now that it’s later…

Update – yes, I know this is all very whiny… please feel free to skip it.  It comes of sounding like I am unhappy…  I am not.  I am perfectly happy with my life… but even perfectly happy sometimes can do with a tune-up.

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My friend Lauren posted a blog recently that really kinda hit home.  I could have written quite a bit of it myself.  I have been mulling it over since she posted it.  Read it 5 or 6 times…  sometimes having someone else say something that you are thinking is a great way to push you towards more thinking.

She wrote on her blog about being surrounded by community, but also being lonely.

My situation is different than hers…  I am not “lonely”, per se… but I think this all feeds into the sense of “searching” for something that I have been having lately.

I have always been jealous of people “of faith”…  there’s a few reasons for that.  I always thought it must be nice to have a belief in something bigger than you.  Something that was permanent.  Something watching out for you.  And, now that I examine it… it’s also that people of faith “belong” somewhere.  And maybe that’s really more it.  Because I don’t think that I long to have a deity watching out for me.  I am rolling around to the idea of believing in a universal force of some kind…  but, like gravity, I am not sure it’s a personal thing. (prolly more on this in a later post).  But people who “belong” to a church, or a spiritual group or, hell, even a book club… they have this sense of connection to the wider world.  And I think that’s something I feel a lack of. My world is fairly small.

I had been part of the roller derby “community” here for three years.  But that community is a hard one to be in for a long time.  It kinda sucks the life out of you…  you give to it.  There’s not much “giving back” other than the joy of playing, and if you aren’t playing, as I was not at the end, it’s basically a job.

“Community” in general has always been hard for me.  We moved every couple of years when I was young.  To me, “friends” are something that you have in your life briefly and then they or you go away and that’s it.  The only people I have known my whole life are related to me.  Some of you reading this blog have had a “relationship” with me longer than most of my friendships in the real world.  So I tend not to get close to people, because they are just going to go away (or turn on you … but childhood trauma of being the unpopular-new-smart-fat kid is another topic).

The SB also moved a lot as a kid – although he does have some friends he’s known for a while.  But he is very outgoing… he is  “friends” with everyone in the world almost the second he meets them.   I’m not good at that.  I am not “social”… I can’t strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger because my base level assumption is that they are not interested. It takes me time and a lot of effort for me to open up to people, and I can be easily dissuaded by the tiniest stumbling block to just go back into myself and hide.  (Weirdly, this does not apply to blogging… only real life).

All this sense lately of trying to find a “connection” – maybe it’s all going back to the fact that I have been in this one place for years now, but I still feel like it’s not “home”…  I don’t feel connected to this city in any particular way.  I could easily move at a moment’s notice to some other place. who / what would miss me?

Contrast -  The SB loves this place.  It’s HIS city, his home.  He would miss his  places, his people, his favorite waitress and bartender and butcher and bakery lady and mail deliverer.   So maybe I am just looking for a way to shed the transience that sits deep inside me, and connect to something bigger than me.

I can’t join “a church”…  that would be lying.  I really do not believe in the “God with a capital G” revelatory religions.  I can’t.  I have tried.  I just can’t wrap my head around the religions with books.

I don’t really want to join and “alternative” religious group of any kind…  again – while I am leaning more towards “there’s something out there”… I don’t want to have to go through this step and that step and do this thing and that thing according to the rules of whatever they have in place.

I cannot have real relationships with people I work with.  I have always felt that work and personal should be kept separate.  It’s just too messy when work conflicts come up, etc.

I have a couple of friends… but the one I can actually share the most stuff with lives in San Francisco…  And the one here is a dear, sweet, (batty), woman, and she’s great, but one local friend does not a “community” make.  And, really, I am not friends enough with her yet to really be able to open up about anything more serious than derby and Chinese food…  (see above).  Actually, even those two probably know less about me than my blog readers, now that I think about it.

I don’t have a neat bow to wrap this in…it’s just a ramble.

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Glass-o-Rama

September 11, 2012 · Filed under Artsy Craftsy · Tagged , ,

I think I mentioned that I bought a Living Social coupon for a class in fused glass.

I used it on Saturday…

It was… fine.  The process of fusing glass might have been more interesting to me if I liked things like making mosaics or whatnot.  Because basically it’s a process of getting a bunch of pieces of glass and arranging them.  Then – it gets put in a kiln three times and comes out as a little disk after a week.

So Glass fusing is not so much going to be my thing.

BUT!

The glassworks was interesting and I would really like to learn some of the more “hands on” stuff… you know – with the fire ;)

I have come up with what I think is a cunning plan for my interest in art… Jewelry.

I am still looking at this whole “connecting to the mysterious driving force behind the universe” thing.  I’m going to write more about that later, but one of the things I want to have in my life is more shiny rocks.  I really like shiny rocks.

And what’s a great way to have more shiny rocks in your life?

Jewelry!

Additionally, I know that I can’t really do drawing or sketching as my art outlet…  One of my sisters likes to draw and paint.  She suffers from SEVERE depression (since she was born – seriously), PTSD from a heinous marriage, and a bad case of the “everyone else is better than me and I sucks”.

I have mentioned my doodling to her, and I can already see her lining up her need to see herself as less-than…  she was testing the waters last weekend with a nonchalant “so how’s the drawing going?”.

Now – you can’t know someone for 38 years without reading between the lines… so I made sure to (very truthfully) tell her that I really am just doodling around – not like I am drawing pictures or anything.  I am really just making lines and coloring them in… and the next comment was “well maybe one of them will turn into something good”.

Now – this is not an “on purpose” thing she does…  she really does have debilitating clinical depression – she REALLY thinks that she’s the worst of everything… and is also INTENSELY competitive – EVERYTHING is a contest – and she ALWAYS sees herself as the loser – because she is incapable of seeing anything of hers as “good”.  I wish like all hell she’d get medicated, but she doesn’t believe she has depression – because it’s just “the truth” that “she sucks”.

I have to try most of the time to separate myself from this… it makes me really crazy if I get too deep into the reassurance / counseling / etc cycle…  but I can also do my best to not feed the beast… and making drawing or sketching a serious endeavor for me would just be throwing fuel on that fire.  (Also, really, truthfully, I DO like to doodle, but I am never going to draw a fabulous picture – it’s not where my skills lie).

SO!…  I was thinking that Jewelry making was about as far as I could get away from her painting hobby as I could possibly get!  No competition there.

AND I get more shiny rocks in my life.

AND I can go back and work with glass in a more hands on way to make beads for jewelry.

AND I get to work with string / yarn / hemp – which I like – I like fiber crafts like that – but no patience for crochet patterns.

AND, finally, I get more cool jewelry for myself!

So while the class itself was no “home run”… It did inspire me in a new direction that feels like a very good fit for me!  Sweet!

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Just Fit

August 13, 2012 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged ,

There are a lot of very hard core fitness programs out there.

Insanity, P90x, Cross Fit, etc.

I understand that some people are super motivated to do these things and get “ripped” muscles and six pack abs and be super-humanly fit.

I get the motivation… I spent a good solid year and a half trying to be super-fit myself.

And… I did get some changes from it.  I did a lot (LOT) of work, and for that work, I got a little bit stronger and I got a little more muscle, and I got up to being able to lift a few more pounds of weight if I needed to lift something heavy.

In exchange for what were actually fairly modest gains…

I woke up sore and tired EVERY MORNING OF MY LIFE.

I spent hours and hours exercising and slaving away (seriously – on weekdays I stuck to an hour – that’s fine – but weekends were 2.5 hours Saturday and Sunday mornings, THEN I would have to make sure I did “activities” for the rest of those days to keep “the burn” up.)

I did not get to every enjoy physical activity – it ALWAYS had to be “harder / faster / stronger”… why walk if you can jog?  Why Jog if you can run?  WHY ARE WE NOT MOVING, PEOPLE?!

Now – I ask you – is that any way to live?

Maybe so, maybe not… different people like and do different things.

But for me?  I am taking some time to re-evaluate (lord knows you have heard enough about that) and I do not really see any reason that I need to be “super fit”.

Sometimes something that makes total sense kinda just has to be spelled out for you in different language to get you to see it.  Sometimes people close to you can tell you something, but then if you are exposed to it from an outside source it suddenly “clicks”…

One of the main tenets of the “primal blueprint” – which my changed lifestyle is loosely based on – is that you ought to spend a lot of time doing low-level aerobic activity.  People aren’t meant to push hard all the time…  And low level aerobic activity, plus two strength sessions and one “sprint” workout a week will give you pretty much all the fitness you need.

And I like this, and it makes sense to me.

As long as I am fit enough to do the things I want to do – what’s the point of killing myself to get a little extra?

I just want to be able to hike and play and pick things up when I need to and run around if I want to.

I do not need to be “Cross Fit”…  I only need to be “Just Fit”.

 

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All Systems Normal

August 7, 2012 · Filed under Just... Life · Tagged

One aspect of my personality is that I like to say that I do not care what other people think of me.

I guess that’s really more “aspirational” than always true in fact.

Sometimes it sneaks up on me and I have to take a moment to rethink what it means to “not care what other people think of me.”

This line of thought was prompted by a comment on FaceBook that my new hair color is “Normal”.

And my visceral reaction to that was “Oh No!”

But why?

If I TRULY do not care what other people think of me – I should embrace the parts of me that meet societal expectations AS WELL AS the parts of me that do not.

As you all know (because, damn, I kept TALKING about it here), I went through some trouble with a bit of an identity crisis after leaving Derby.

Because one of the things Derby is, is “cool”.

And somewhere deep inside my “I do not care what other people think of me” attitude, there is clearly a large chunk of “as long as they think I am odd/weird”.

But there’s nothing wrong with doing things that other people do as well.  I LIKE a lot of things that other people like.  I enjoy hiking in the woods.  This is not weird.  I enjoy (now, and new), cooking.  This is not weird.  I enjoy watching “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives”.  This is CLEARLY not weird because it’s on ALL THE TIME, so people must really LOVE IT.

All of these things are awesome.

Does the fact that other people also think they are awesome somehow negate the awesome-tude?

No!

Because if THAT’S my attitude, I might as well just put on my skinny jeans, move to Brooklyn and join the hipsters in  hating anything that becomes the tiniest bit popular because I have to be “different”.

But… if I REALLY don’t care what other people think of me, then I do not have to be either different or the same.

I can, in fact, be anything I like.

I can look like everyone else if I want to.  Or I can look different.

I can put a shirt on and cover up my tattoos, or I can wear a bikini and show them off.

I can enjoy eating foods that other people might consider odd, or I can go out and eat a grilled chicken salad along with half of the rest of the country.

All of these things are OK.

One thing from Buddhism that has always really resonated with me is the idea that desire is the root of unhappiness.

If I desire things I cannot have, this can make me unhappy.  I actually have a kind of nifty way that I approach that.  I have a “shelf” in my head.  And when I see things that are really pretty or cool or in some other way makes me say “WANT”, but it’s not something that, frankly, I need or have room for or the money to acquire… I take that thing and put it on my “mind shelf”… where it is now mine.  But I do not have to pay for it or store it or anything else.

This works very well for “things”…  But I don’t know exactly how well I could make it work for thoughts and feelings.

At any rate… the concept of “desire”…  I WANT to feel a certain way – and external validation can help with that.   But is that healthy?  Why should I look to any externality to validate me or my choices?  (she says, while she blogs this on the web to get external feedback and validation)…

OK – nobody lives in a vacuum…  we all want approval.  I want the SB to love me and approve of me.  I want my family to love me and (mostly) approve of me. I want friends. 

So obviously I do have to care what people think of me on some level – otherwise I am a hermit in a cave.

I am going to give this more thought.  I think that my basic premise works – but that I might have been misunderstanding my own logic.  I guess it goes more along the lines of “as long as I approve of myself, then the approval of outsiders, while nice, is not necessary for me to go on with my life”.

Maybe that works better…  Then I just need to embrace the parts of me that are not “weird”, which, weirdly, is the harder part.

OK, this has driveled on long enough.  I might revisit at some point, but it’s gotta go back into the brain for cud-chewing at this point.

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Reboot

May 27, 2012 · Filed under Just... Life, Navel Gazing · Tagged ,

So as I was running on Saturday, I worked out this whole awesome blog post where I compared my life to a series of evolving software releases.  The post was super awesome and I had some great metaphors.

But… then trying to go back and recreate all the stuff I had “written” in my head as I was running through the woods… well…  I just got kinda bored.

So you are just going to have to take my word for it how I did such a good job comparing my life evolving to a software project going through upgrades, revisions, hardware platforms, plug ins, etc.  It was also pretty funny.

Anyway, though, the POINT of the post that, sadly, no one but me will ever know, was that it’s time for ANOTHER reboot…

Basically, if you look at my life as a series of revisions… I have…

Release 1.0 – I turn 18 and am a “finished adult product”

Release 1.5 – Marriage was a major revision, but didn’t really make a significant change to the underlying “me”… I was the same person, but now with the SB along with me.

Release 2.0 was me after my “lifestyle change”… Yes – I was thin, and I was sort of fit (not like I am now)… but a lot of my underlying issues with lack of confidence, low self esteem, etc were still there.  I was really that same fat girl – I just looked different.

Version 3.0 came with Derby… and it didn’t all happen at once… but of the course of years of participating in that awesome sport, I gained self confidence, a belief in my own abilities, a lessening of my willingness to take crap, and a general all around feeling (most of the time) that I am pretty darn awesome.

So – anyway… now I am officially retired from derby, and I am fully aware that it’s the correct thing for me to do for a whole host of reasons…

But it does leave something of a gap.

Who am I going to be without the Derby?

What are my interests going to be?  What are my hobbies going to be?

Because as much as I loved Derby – it does eat your whole life..  and now suddenly I find myself (well, once this latest work craziness eases up) with time to do other things, explore other avenues…  do… stuff.

So it’s time for Rachelle version 4.0 and I’m not really sure what that’s going to look like.

I know I want to still stay fit.  I love the feeling that I can do things with my body just because I want to.

But… what does that mean?  I love trail running…  I am toying with the idea of training for a half marathon trail run.

But fitness can’t be all I do.

So.. what do I want to explore?  Art? Music? Travel? What?

I am not sure where to go.

So I am searching, I guess… for what?  Myself?  I mean – I feel like I know “who I am” – but my self image also had a lot to do with Derby, so there’s a gap in that image now… what do I put in that gap?

I dunno.

I guess I’ll find out…

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Mottos!

March 15, 2011 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged

I don’t know if it’s necessarily important for people to have mottos.

I mean, I am sure that there are millions of folks out there who live their whole lives never having had “words to live by”…

But I find that having a couple of simple statements that I can repeat to myself when things are tough really helps me move past problems (well, or sometimes things that I see as problems, because, let’s face it… with all that’s happening in the world today, my “problems” look pretty sweet to a lot of folks out there).

Anyway.

I have two mottos that I pretty much live by.

Illigitimum Non Carburundum

and

Hakuna Matata

The first one… Illigitimum Non Carburundum…  is a fake Latin phrase that, if it were actual Latin, would translate to “Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down”.

I first discovered this phrase when I married the SB… I believe his father was the first mentioner, but I could be wrong, it might have been him.

Either way… 15 years later and I still think it’s the best piece of advice ever.

People are assholes.

Yes, even the ones we know and like, even the ones who are sweet as pie and twice as nice as cake, even me, even you, (sorry if you really aren’t, but I’m generalizing here), we all have the capacity to be assholes at the very least, even if we rarely exercise it.

So when someone does something asshole-ish.  a) It should come as no particular surprise and b) you really can’t let it bother you.

“Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down”… to me, it’s the best way to say.  Hey… you are going to have to deal with assholes all the time.  Try not to let it bother you too much.  Don’t let it get to you.  Don’t take it personally. Don’t stoop to their level.  Don’t become an asshole to fight against the assholes.

I think you get the idea.

Basically, it’s a reminder that I may not be in control of how other people act.  Scratch that.  I AM NOT in control of how other people act, but I am 100% in control of how I react to them and how I allow them to impact my feelings and emotions.  If I let them grind me down, they win.  If I let them make me act like an asshole, they win. If I react with calm and grace and dignity (and maybe a little passive-aggressive revenge that they will never know came from me), then they do not win.

So I keep that one in mind.

The second one… Hakuna Matata… is probably, I think, more familiar to you, what with the song and all.  And, yes, that movie is the first I ever heard of that phrase, and I liked it then, but I didn’t adopt it as my motto until 2004.

2004 was a pretty bad year.  You know… in life, we have good years, we have bad years, we have normal years… well 2004 was difficult one for me, and that’s when I decided that “Hakuna Matata” was going to be added to my life as a way to get through.

“No Worries”  or “No Problem” is the literal translation, but from the movie, I also think of it as Pumbaa (yes, it’s his voice too) saying in my ear… “You gotta put your behind in the past!”

Because that’s important for me to keep on going.

Stuff that happened has happened.  You can’t do anything about it, you can’t change it, you can’t go back and make it un-happen… so you gotta let it go.

Childhood issues?  Well, I’m not a kid anymore… let them go.  Mean kids in high school? High school is over… let it go.  That first terrible job I had where my bosses set me up for failure then blamed me for failing? I don’t work there anymore… let it go.  Bitch cut me off in traffic?  Well, she’s ahead of me now… let it go.

“Behind in the past” counts for everything… things that happened years ago, and things that happened yesterday.

Now, that’s not saying I don’t want to try to improve things in the future, but dwelling on the past, on things I have no control over, things I can’t change…  well that’s just gonna make me sad and crazy.  So I don’t.  Yesterday is gone, but today and tomorrow I can work with… let’s see what happens.

Those two sayings have helped me do a lot in my life.  Living by them (among all the other things in life, yes) certainly helped me grow from a low self-esteem, negative self talking, down-on-me, generally depressed kind of a person in my 20′s to the person I am today.

I really grew up a lot in my 30′s (so far). I’m not saying it wasn’t work, mentally, and I’m not saying I don’t still have a ways to go on the crazy train.  But I can look at myself today and I actually like me.  I think I’m good at stuff.  I think I am a worthwhile person.  It takes work to get there, but I’m happier now than ever and I think that it’s at least in part due to the adoption of these two mottos.

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The reason this all came up, BTW, is these have now officially gone on the “the list” of tattoo ideas, so I’ve been thinking about it more now than usual.

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Can’t Remember That Girl I Used to Be

February 3, 2011 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged ,

It’s an odd thing when you change your life.

I was looking at the wedding pictures and it got me thinking…  I really, truly, for the first time…  Do not remember how it felt to be that fat girl I used to be.

When I woke up on whatever day that was back in May, 2001…  Fatness had pretty much been a defining characteristic of my entire life.

I was a fat kid, a fat teen, fat adult.

So yeah… it was ingrained.

But it was also the feeling of the body I was living in. The way I moved.  The way I knew how long I could bend over before I had to come up for a breath. The way I plotted a course through a room based on what I could squeeze by.

After I lost that weight… it was still there in my head.

I still felt like the same old person.  I still tended to make sure a passageway could hold the old me before I walked through.  The feelings were not different.

It was, literally, 7 or 8 years before I could even think of myself as “not fat” without having to do a double take to check to make sure it was true.

Maybe the ten year mark is what did it, or maybe it was the tummy tuck that changed things, or maybe it’s that in the last year or so I have really been working on being FIT… not just “not fat”.

But looking at those wedding pictures… for the first time, I honestly can’t remember the feeling of taking up that much space.  I can’t remember how living in that body felt.  When I think of “me”… I think of this me, not that me.  And that’s a very recent thing.

It’s just weird, after so long, I thought I’d always be that girl in my head… and then I turned around one day after not thinking about it for a while, and she’s gone.

It’s kinda like looking at a picture of someone else, when I know that it’s really me.

Very strange.

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“Perfect” – Well, no…

January 26, 2011 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged ,

I have mentioned (I assume) that I have begun doing yoga.

Things I love about yoga…  building strength and flexibility without pounding workouts…  calm, relaxed environment, the non-competitiveness of it – you only do what you are capable of doing.

Things I don’t love about yoga…  the frou frou “bonding with the universe” stuff.

But… it’s OK, I can deal with it.  It’s not that I find it offensive, just a little silly.

So in yesterday’s yoga class, which was deep stretch, we were holding a pose for a long time, which, if you have ever done it, you understand can provide quite a lot of sensation (pain!) after a while.  And the teacher was talking, as she is wont to do, and telling us to let the thoughts and feelings in and let them go, etc.  Which, I think is good advice in general for things… people should let go of more stuff, in my opinion.

But then she said something about all the negative thoughts that we build up over time and how (I’m paraphrasing here) we all need to come to the realization that we are all perfect exactly as we are.

That one kind of stuck in my brain… and I started noodling it around (because I’m not really good at the whole “empty your mind” thing).  And I realized that “Perfect the way you are” is exactly what I DO NOT want to be thinking.

I am not in any way shape or form “perfect”.

As someone who does not believe in a life after death scenario, I think that I have only one shot on this earth… one trip through to make it right.

As such, I am constantly trying to better myself.  Be more loving, accepting, patient, calm, wise, healthy, etc.   When I cash in my chips, I hope that I will feel good about the person that I have been during my time on this planet.

So to be telling everyone that they are “perfect just the way they are”…  well… no.

People are full of anger, and hatred and bile and are self absorbed and selfish.  (no, not all people)…  Those people are not perfect…  they need work!

I have all those traits too… I work a lot on trying to keep their expression to a minimum.

So I was thinking about what it really means to be “perfect just the way you are” and I think a much better way to express that sentiment is that everyone is worthy…

I am worthy of being a better person.  I am worthy of trying my best to resist anger and hatred.  I am worthy of taking care of my body and health in the best fashion I know how.  I am, simply by the act of my existence, worthy of the effort.

Every human being… no matter how vile they might seem… is worthy of the chance to become better than they are.

It makes me sad when people say they are worthless or useless.  Because they are not.  No one is.  IF they feel like they are not living up to their potential, well that’s the time when they are MOST WORTHY of making the effort to be what they want to be!

I have done the self-loathing thing.  I have had low self esteem.  I have been miserable and sure that I was worth nothing and no one could ever love me – especially I could not love myself!

I’m not sure exactly when that turned around… but I have to be honest… it’s been YEARS since I have thought bad things about myself.  I mean, sure, I acknowledge that I could always be better… but that doesn’t make the place I am in now bad.

And this, my friends, is what happens when you sit for five minutes holding on to your feet with your face pressed into your knees.  All this stuff comes up… and sometimes, it’s good!

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Blog Activism Burnout

November 10, 2010 · Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged

So for a long time now I have been immersed in the “Body acceptance” blog-o-sphere.  I was subscribed to blog feeds and news feeds and read all this stuff every day.  I was a contributor to a group blog that talked about fat and fat issues in this country.I had another blog where I talked a lot about weight topics, etc. I spent a lot of time reading and writing about these things.

And I quit.

I dumped the feeds.  I resigned from the group blog.  I set that other blog to private.

I just couldn’t take it any more.

Day after day of horrifying stories of how we supposedly civilized people treat each other just based solely on physical appearance.

Did it make me feel outraged and want to change things?  Well… yes… but.

I’ve seen how slowly change happens.  Social Justice is hard, hard work.  So mostly, instead of outrage, I ended up feeling fear.  Fear and worry about how I can try to keep those things from happening to me. Yeah… don’t get mad at the system… figure out how you can conform to the system to keep from being mocked and humiliated.  Way to go, social activist!

Plus, that’s a lot of reading… all those blogs.  I got to the point where I was barely reading any blogs at all.. mostly skimming, hardly ever commenting.  Kinda defeats the whole purpose of blogging.

So, as I said, I quit.

Dumped the feeds.

Went back to just my original core blogs.  Hey – I’ve even managed to have time to comment here and there this week!

So, yeah, fine… maybe I’ll never be a “good activist”, but sometimes you just gotta pick your battles, and maybe I’m just not cut our for battling.

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