August 27, 2023
Anti-inspiration porn
I think most people are familiar at this point with the concept of “inspiration porn,” or the tendency to treat disabled people with disproportionate admiration or praise for accomplishing fairly mundane things or going about their lives with a disability. I’m going to try something here I’m calling, for the moment, “anti-inspiration porn.”
*
This thing happens to me now and again where someone–usually younger than me but sometimes not–will get like really disproportionately admiring or awestruck at stuff I’ve done or stuff I can do. I’m not talking about, like, occasional compliments or telling me something is cool or congratulating me for something that by any measure was actually a huge achievement…but truly disproportionate praise for stuff like the books I’ve read, the things I’ve written, the hiking I’ve done, the places I’ve been, my clothes, my food, the stuff I know, etc. etc. etc. etc., with this edge of “oh, I could never” or “you’re so much cooler than me/your life is so much more impressive than mine…”
(And sometimes part of what I think is going on might be that people are mistaking me for someone closer to their own age, when…the reason I have the experience or knowledge of someone 10-15 years older than they are, is because I am.)
And from the bottom of my heart…
Almost none of this is out of your own reach.
It really isn’t. And absolutely none of it is magic. Admittedly some of it is a lot easier if you don’t have kids. You just have to do stuff. You get more skilled and comfortable at doing stuff the more you do stuff.
Do stuff you want to do. Try stuff you want to try.
Fuck what Yoda says, honestly; there is try.
Do stuff and try stuff and keep doing stuff you like doing.
That’s truly all this is.
*
If you want to be a person who’s read books, you have to read them. If you want to have written stuff, you have to write. If you want to have gone places, you have to get on a train and go there.
If you want to try that restaurant? Try it.
Want to take good pictures? Go out and take pictures.
Want to get better at cooking? Cook.
Wear clothes you like. If you don’t know what you like, figure out what you like. Take a stroll. Go window shopping.
If you want to like poetry? You have to read it. If you want to write it, you have to write it.
There’s no special virtue to any of this–I really am out here just doing stuff and trying stuff.
Pay attention to things you care about. Be willing to be bad at stuff the first time you try. Be willing to do stuff that can seem really tedious. So, like, I do a lot of hand sewing while I watch TV. I listen to baseball or listen to podcasts and cook.
I’m good at the job I do because I have been doing it for over half my life. I have done a lot of making mistakes at it and fucking up at it and wishing I’d handled something better than I did, and just…internalized those lessons and kept doing it.
I’ve had a blog for 13 years because I just kept using it…for writing practice and for things I couldn’t get published somewhere else but mostly just as an outlet so that I do not annoy the people around me with strong opinions they did not ask for constantly. That’s it. That’s all. Thirteen years later, I’ve had a blog for thirteen years.
This person is right about not weeding your parsnips too soon.
My favorite singer/songwriter has written some great posts about making a plan to do things you want to do, and letting envy drive you instead of discourage you. I saw a Tumblr post once about how it’s okay to write STUPIDEST VERSION at the top of your page, just to allow yourself to get words on the page without worrying if they’re good enough, and since I read that, it’s not just how I write; I go through life with STUPIDEST VERSION written across my brain now, pretty much constantly (not when it really counts that I do as good a job as possible, but when I’m trying something for the first time, or trying something just to try it).
It’s a lot of fun, and it’s a great antidote to both inertia and to the kind of anxiety and perfectionism probably drilled into a lot of us as G&T kids with undiagnosed neurological disabilities. Not only do you not have to get something right or do it perfectly the very first time you try, to develop genuine, lasting, talent at something pretty much requires embracing the fact that you will not!
And there are people who are probably going to accuse me of being dismissive or ignorant about disability or financial limitations, but… I am autistic. I suffer from a lot of inertia and anxiety, I am very clumsy, and my job is erratic and often leaves me exhausted. I spend a lot of time frustrated at the amount of time it takes me to do normal things, and what I can’t do that it seems like other people just can. A whole lot of me being this capable at what I’m capable of has involved accepting what I am just flatly not capable of, and therefore not giving undue energy to it.
It is okay to start small.
But just start.
Laura Hersey said “You get proud by practicing,” and unfortunately, you also get good at other shit by practicing.
August 14, 2023
I don’t feel like I got anywhere near enough of a summer this year, but I love when the colors outside start to just slightly foreshadow the coming of fall.
August 10, 2023
Cognitive dissonance and dishonesty about pronouns
Here’s a little thought experiment.
Suppose that you meet a new person, who tells you that its pronouns are it/it/its.
(And in case you haven’t encountered this before, yes, there very much are people in the world who use and prefer those pronouns.)
Do you feel absolutely nothing about that? Or would you possibly feel some slight discomfort or confusion at this request?
Would you feel that your convictions about calling people what they ask to be called were even slightly at odds with what you know to be true about common use and understanding of what the word “it” means?
I mean, you know how to use the word “it” in a sentence, right, so what’s your problem?
Does it have something to do with the fact that we typically, in English, use “it” to refer to a non-human subject—to an animal or an object or something presumed non-sentient? Does it therefore feel more than a little bit wrong or demeaning to use “it” to refer to a person? That what most people mean when they deliberately call a human “it” isn’t good—it’s done to objectify and dehumanize?
We tend not to even use “it” to refer to animals who are familiar to us, like pets or working animals, rather than “he” or “she.” Or even wild animals that are presumed sentient, like elephants, wolves, and whales. It’s not a rule, exactly…it’s a convention. It’s a thing that’s not done.
So if you feel a twinge of resistance at being asked to call a sentient human “it,” there’s a good reason.
(I would still try to do it, if someone were sincerely asking me to.)
Bringing me to this meme.
Yes, yes I do know how to use the singular-they in a sentence, thank you very much.
But that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with why I think many people are uncomfortable with singular-they as a chosen personal pronoun. Which is that there is a longstanding convention that most of us have used and heard used our entire lives without actually having it explained to us: that singular-they is usually used to refer to a person who is unknown to the speaker, or to a hypothetical subject, and that this convention would seem to contravene using it to refer to an actual individual who is personally known to you.
This is what I suspect most people are grasping at trying to articulate when they object to singular-they personal pronouns with “but grammar!” It’s not a grammatical rule, but it’s a commonplace convention, which is never exactly, explicitly taught to us.
Like, remember this? About the great green dragons and this absolutely bonkers unwritten rule of English that nobody teaches you, but everyone knows, and you know it’s true when you try to alter that word order even one little bit, because it feels unhinged?
Okay! Same thing here, only nowhere near as convoluted.
When someone previously known to me asks me to call them “they,” it feels like they are asking me to consider them less known to me than they are. It feels like being asked to disavow prior familiarity.
It feels depersonalizing. No matter how much I believe the person about it being what they want. Because there is a convention for use of the word “they” as a singular pronoun…usually for people not identified or personally known to us.
So you are not dumb or bad for feeling cognitive dissonance, for perceiving that you’re uncomfortable being asked to call someone who is known to you “they,” but not being able to articulate exactly why. You are perceiving something accurately that this person either does not, or is deliberately trying to obfuscate.
“But singular-they is older than singular-you!” many exclaim. Examples of this from as early as the 1300’s abound, and occasionally make their way around social media as well.
But every single instance of this I’ve ever seen cited as evidence, like the one above, is not of singular-they as a personal pronoun for an individual known to the speaker, rather than to refer to a subject whose identity is unknown to the author.
And I still don’t even know that singular-they-as-personal-pronoun hasn’t existed for that long. It might’ve; I’m nowhere near enough of a scholar of Middle- or Early Modern English to know off the top of my head. If it did, I’d actually be interested to know. But no one’s ever been able to show me an example when I point out that what they’re showing me isn’t the same thing.
And even if it didn’t—that doesn’t say anything about whether or not singular-they as personal pronoun is a valid, defensible usage or not! Of course it is! If people can choose the pronoun “it” (or ze or sie or hy) and deserve to have it respected, surely “they” is no exception. Language can change and evolve! We use lots of words differently now from how we once did. Including seemingly straightforward ones like “man,” and “girl.” You can use “they” differently from how people are accustomed to using it. You can claim it as a personal pronoun, and I’ll do my best to honor that because I believe in calling people what they want to be called, to the limit of my ability.
But I resent very much when people try to trick me or entrap me about language just to point and laugh, particularly when they are being disingenuous, or possibly just very, very smug about their own ignorance.
Do I have to explain why that’s true?
You do not have to trust or listen to someone who’s trying to trick you or shame you into sublimating your correct and accurate perceptions. I loathe this meme. I loathe it truly, madly, and deeply.
I still think calling people what they want to be called is the right thing to do.
August 9, 2023
I’ve always had a thing about cover songs, and I’ve loved Dire Straits since I was a teenager, but I I did not know this cover of “Romeo and Juliet,” as I was shocked to discover recently.
I like the Indigo Girls’ cover of it, too, but this one for some reason sends chills down my spine.
Chavisory's Notebook 