It's December Days time again. This year, I have decided that I'm going to talk about skills and applications thereof, if for no other reason than because I am prone to both the fixed mindset and the downplaying of any skills that I might have obtained as not "real" skills because they do not fit some form of ideal.

06: The Bar

I regularly have people tell me that I have optimistic expectations of people. Especially when I'm boggled at some act or statement or thing that happens in the world, and I cannot possibly fathom why someone would do such a thing, because it is immediate and clear to me that the thing they are doing, or the opeining they are aiming for, or the choice in pick-up material, is so very much not going to work, and is also going to produce some impressive backlash.

The Internet, of course, never fails to produce as many examples as you would like of bad behavior from people of all places, creeds, political orientations, wealth levels, and attitudes. Some, yes, more thatn others, because some of those things do tend to make someone more prone to making terrible decisions. (Some of those things also make it easier to avoid the consequences of those decisions, as well.)

News accounts of these behaviors tend toward either a position that abstracts away some of the terrible behavior or spins it in such a way as to present the behavior as positive or a position that leans very hard into the salaciousness of the behavior and how terrible the person must be that's making that decision. Which doesn't do a whole lot of centering a question on the behavior itself. Less refined accounts, such as one might find on social media, Reddit, or Ask A Manager, are usually better about describing the behaviors in detail, and letting the reader come to any conclusions they would like to about the moral compass of the person involved.

Now, I admit that I don't actually go to those kinds of places on the Internet, because, well, I already get enough of those incidences and their accounts in my current life and places that I look on the blogs, and with enough explanation to know right from the beginning that they're often the kinds of things that contain psychic damage and a whole lot of people behaving poorly. To seek them out would suggest that I'm looking for opportunities to feel better than other people, and that's usually a sign that I'm not doing well at all.

Even with not actively trying to seek them, though, there are times where I look at an account and want to know "why?" Or, I can understand, as the narrative progresses, how deeply in trouble the person will be when they meet Consequences. Because, apparently, I not only have standards, I have trouble understanding why people would behave in ways that are underneath those standards. An awful lot of those times, it's something like "My mother taught me better than that." Or "I have heard and read enough stories about what this person is doing that I know it's not going to end well. Surely they have done so as well, with as much time and experience in the world they have?" Or even "This does not sound like something that would advance the cause of this person is championing."

This is not because I have some kind of special insight, or great experience, or any other similar such thing. I spent my teenage years mostly playing single-player video games and being a student, either in required schooling or at university. This was probably a good thing for me, since I probably wouldn't have known what to do with a relationship if I had one, much as I believed I was interested in having one. (On the flip side, it's possible that if I had had a few relationships by the time I got to the one offered to me that was terrible, I would have recognized it as such and refused, or recognized it as such sooner and bailed before it did as much damage as it did to me.) Even now, with browsing my social feeds and the like, someone had boosted into my timeline a thing that was just "[finger pointing at you] YOU deserve love and happiness" and my first reaction to it was "You don't know me, how could you be so sure about that?" Yes, I realize that's not the usual reaction to such things, but I've spent a lot of my life convinced that this is not the case. (It's still somewhat of a wonder, honestly, that I didn't fall into the spaces that now are grouped under "manosphere," and that I didn't need someone pulling me out of that space to get me right with the world.)

And furthermore, I'm about as perceptive as a brick when it comes to recognizing that people are flirting with me or interested in me. If it's not spelled out in front of me, or someone says something obvious and explicit, I'm not usually inclined to believe that someone is flirting with me. I have not spent a lot of time being admired for my physical capabilities, at least, not in my hearing range. And my "technique," such that it is, seems to be "be a friendly person who contributes meaningfully to a discussion, who listens to what is being said to them, and who doesn't treat other people like they're puzzles to be unlocked, prizes to be won, or characters that you just have to set the right relationship flags with and everything will just naturally happen." There's no mystique to it at all, and I mostly think of this as the base standard by which everyone clearly operates from.

About the time that I articulate a thought of "this thing should be table stakes for interactions with other people, regardless of whether you have pantsfeels for them or not," just about everyone else at the table laughs. Not in a cruel way, but in the way of "never lose that spirit of optimism you have there." Because the lived experience of just about everyone else that I might be articulating this thought in the presence of says that the lowest setting of the bar is not where I think it is, it's several notches lower, if not actively being driven even further into the ground. I know that I only learn by proxy on these matters, not having had any of the experiences that then are shown to me to demonstrate just how far under my minimum acceptable standard behaviors can go. I'm not saying I disbelieve those experiences, far from it, but I'm usually appalled at the behavior that's been captured, because it feels like I'm studying a completely different species at times. There's a visceral wrongness to a lot of it, and especially so when there's persistence in error, or when it's clear to me that someone is approaching the situation with a mindset that is completely different than how I would do it. It's understandable, if I really put some effort into it, but it's not desirable, admirable, or something that I want to emulate in any way at all.

I suppose this kind of thing, this inability to understand without effort the kinds of things that people do and think are okay, makes me someone who is okay to be around? This has also been brought to my attention by others, about who is present when I'm there and who isn't when I'm not, because, again, clueless. (Clueless to the point of "if someone says they're interested in a person with my name, I assume it's the other person with my name in the space.") And other people do say that they value my input on things, and they talk to me about subjects that they might not with others, because I at least understand it (if only by proxy). These are all things that are intellectually understood but not viscerally felt, because my self-image still tends to be "I'm a nobody with no knowledge or understanding of the experiences of others, why would anyone think of me as anything worthwhile?" Which is why this series came into existence, so I could talk about the things that I do well, even if they're not things that I think I do well. I need the practice of acknowledging that that feeling of knowing nothing and being uninteresting to people exists, and that it's wrong.

Because, I suspect, I'm actually getting over the bar a lot more than I think I am.

It's December Days time again. This year, I have decided that I'm going to talk about skills and applications thereof, if for no other reason than because I am prone to both the fixed mindset and the downplaying of any skills that I might have obtained as not "real" skills because they do not fit some form of ideal.

05: Capitalism

As soon as I decided that I was going to let other people into my life and have them partake of my resources, I failed at capitalism. This is offered not simply as a trite observation or a tautology, but as a condemnation of the system itself, because capitalism as a system is about hoarding and always trying to have your resources be used in a way that produces advantage to you, and usually, it demands that the advantage be financial in some manner. The person with the biggest bank account wins at capitalism, and therefore it can't be anything other than the height of folly to willingly share your resources with other people without expectation of being repaid or otherwise reimbursed for such a thing.

It's why we have corporations that allow humans to evade responsibility and accountability for actions intended to reinforce greed, hoarding, and scarcity, with bad results to everyone else who is caught in this amoral situation.

If I had, instead of taking up with the idea that I might want to have companionship in my life, decided that I was only going to live alone, with my books and my poetry to protect me, then I would not have encountered so many of the expenses that I have in this world, regarding vehicles, and mortgages, and repairs, and replacements, and so many other things. I would probably have a much more comfortable retirement position, and savings, and possibly be wistfully wishing that I could afford a mortgage on a house of my own, but for the entire and complete bubbling of real estate right after the last bubble exploded. Or I might be aggravated about the rent and the presence of all the condos driving the rent up further. Who knows. It certainly would seem like I would be in a far better position with regard to capital and the use thereof if I hadn't embarked upon the choices that I did.

It's possible I could have some of those things to myself at this point if I hadn't made the choices that I did about trying to make a bad relationship work, because I wanted to make it work and ignored signs that it wasn't doing so. And because, as the entries so far have hinted at, I'm not exactly brimming with self-confidence in any domain outside of a space that I have both expertise and a firm understanding of the problem. Except, I guess, in some places where I have the confidence of a mediocre white man and don't notice that I'm outside of my expertise. So, I made bad choices and then continued to suffer from them for a significant amount of time. My failures at capitalism are numerous.

But even before that point, I'd definitely been failing at capitalism before. I decided to go into a profession that requires graduate schooling and that doesn't pay for shit, because it's a profession that's been heavily feminized and therefore discounted and devalued. I took on significant debt for something that wasn't going to give me great returns from it. (And that has an entire awe section about how crass it is to expect to be properly compensated for the job that you do, because if you are in it for money, then you lack the passion and devotion to the profession and should go somewhere else.)

Even before that, of course, I was also making bad decisions at capitalism, choosing to go to the more expensive and prestigious university that had the graduate school I eventually wanted to go to, rather than taking the scholarship offer to a different school for my undergraduate experience and then to go into graduate school with the grades from there and have saved significant money along the way.

It's not hard to set my life up, at least from a certain point, as a series of failures of capitalism and making poor decisions about money and therefore, if I am in a situation where money is tight, stretched, or otherwise a source of stress for me, then it's completely my fault because I made poor decisions. This is the mode that I generally operate on in my life, because I've also internalized the belief that I am the only thing I can control and change in my life, and used it as a way of making sure that I blame myself for everything that happens that may be negative. Other people may have contributed to this, and some of them may, to outside observers, hold significant or even primary responsibility for the situation, but that's not usually something that I will admit to, because to do so would be to let go of the belief that I have total and complete control over my situation and therefore I can simply will myself into a better situation. This is the curse of being brought up in a society that believes I, by privilege of my assigned gender at birth and the membership I have in whiteness, should be the unquestioned ruler of everything around me that is neither my assigned gender at birth and/or those who are not permitted entry into whiteness. It then encourages me, through media accounts, advertisements, and other means to blame those people who are not me and not part of my group as the cause of my unhappiness and lack of comfort. From there, I'm supposed to either vote in politicians who promise to hurt them for having the gall to try and exist or take some part of the resource share that is rightfully mine or to engage in direct action to dominate, control, or remove resources from those other people who have been taking from me through their mere act of existence, or who have been "taking" from me because my government is redistributing my tax dollars to the "undeserving," instead of refunding them back to me to that I can use them more effectively and efficiently on myself.

The choices that I have made that are not according to the dictates of capitalism have had many other benefits for me, of course. As, presumably, they have for you. The decision to go to the more expensive university also came with several years of participation in campus life, including the marching band (where my face was on national television for a brief moment as I marched in a parade), intramural sport and refereeing such sport, which may have further cemented my interesting in the Olympic program, and in several of the things that are charmingly referred to as "non revenue-generating sports" that are equally as excellent to watch, if you have the opportunity), and it likely expedited the process of acceptance into graduate school (as well as giving me the opportunity to understand whether I could function at that level) by making it so that the reviewers were comparing the grades of their own institution, rather than trying to decide whether the other institution has sufficient academic rigor for them to believe that my good grades really do mean that I can hack it at that level.

Choosing the profession that I have, even knowing that the money wouldn't be great, has resulted, all the same, in plenty of opportunities for my mental health to stay good (as well as several opportunities for it to be regularly trashed). Doing programming for tinies is still a thing to look forward to and enjoy. Helping people find things and showing them that we have access to the materials they're interested in is helpful, and sometimes there's a fair amount of appreciation expressed for it. There's something satisfying about being able to help people work through their various issues regarding technology and using it for their purposes, even if there's also sometimes a fair amount of frustration expressed at various entities because they made things obtuse, or because they dumped a device on someone, made some statement about it being intuitive and not needing any learning, and then skipped town instead of supporting the device they had just thrust on someone. Sometimes we get back a little bit of our teens who have gone on to other situations and parts of their lives, and they come back and appreciate what we were trying to do with them, now that they're adults who have to deal with the life outside. And there are always people who use the resources and appreciate that we're still here, even as they are themselves confronting capitalism's failures of them. And doing the work I've done has had me met all kinds of wonderful people and attempt all kinds of things that I might not otherwise do, like practicing my art skills, or penning articles for publication, or presenting at various conferences about the intersections of my profession and the professions and careers of others. Often in a "we should be able to work better together" way, but that working together is often curtailed by lack of resources and by the often aggravating, but very true assertion that a public library that has to be heavily involved in making sure people have basic needs met is not able to sustain more complex and more interesting programming for the majority of their users. (Much as it would be cool to do some of those things.)

The decisions I have made about relationships and about wanting human companionship in my life have resulted in having a house that I can then use to help other people have a house and companionship in their lives. And in pets, who are often yell, but routinely are also love. They have proven to me that there are friends that I still had outside of a bad relationship, and that the worst things that I think about myself are often not as terrible as I might otherwise believe they are, or that what I think about myself is the shadow on the wall being cast by something much smaller and less terrible.

And that some things are forgivable. And that others can be worked through, or around, or with, in a way that results in the thing getting done, instead of a way that results in the thing getting done and me feeling terrible about my failure to be a normal human being who can do all the things that normal human beings do without needing additional assistance from outside sources. Or without building structures and systems of reminders and pathways so that whatever the last mistake is, it won't be made again, making sure that all the mistakes of the future are novel ones. So long, of course, as the system performs flawlessly and I remember to engage it at every juncture that I'm supposed to.

Having other people around can mean articulating to them the secret fears that you have, or the ways that things used to go in other situations, so that they understand why you are expecting them to do one thing, or that you want them to do one thing, because if they do that thing, that will signal to you that there are no further things that will be sprung upon you later.

And, despite all of those things that I have done capitalism wrong with…I keep surviving. I keep finding ways to make the money work, even if it makes me fret a lot about whether or not the whole enterprise is going to hold together long enough to succeed. To me, this seems like standard operations, but to others, it might suggest that there's some sort of financial wizardry involved in here, to keep rolling with life and still managing to stay afloat, even with all the things that have been in my way. To me, it's mostly just persistence and sometimes a fair amount of denying myself anything that might be fun.

The persistence part is probably to good one. The long bouts of self-denial, probably not. But, there's another way in which I'm failing at capitalism, by not choosing to extend myself out to as far on the margins as I can, either in hope of a great payoff or because money is meant for my happiness, and so I should spend it profligately.