Spent Some Time This Afternoon Attempting To Restart The Sock Project I Ragequit In March, Which Was

made it to the transfer station before it closed (task i have been failing at for a week) AND nothing leaked in the car on the way over (despite decomposition of compostables very definitely having commenced) AND there was a hot butch there (presumably my reward from a sometimes-benevolent universe) 👍

ordered a cheap wearable timer¹ that has a 'buzz every [multiple of 5 you select] minutes and repeat by default until deactivated' function and have been experimenting with it as a source of gentle non-judgmental 'do i still want to be doing what i'm doing at this time' queries that i can choose whether to ignore or respond to

anyway it's only been like a day and a half but so far it seems like a helpful tool to have in my toolkit—like it hasn't magically turned me into a go-getter or anything but it has meant i did a bit of crafting² today and went for a tiny little run which is like. usually i'm pleased with myself if i scrape together enough executive function to initiate one enrichment thing superfluous to subsistence, so

we'll see how repeatable the results are but in any event: some little wins today :)

⸻ ¹ yes i could probably also have just used my phone but (1) while you can of course get the built-in timer to repeat it doesn't default to that, which was an important part of the concept (2) i was also working from a vague notion that, while i'm not as fussed about my phone dependence as i know some people have gotten, maybe it would be good not to actively reinforce it, lol ² and yes i do mean my tiny little mends from earlier but like. sewing's a craft (zie says defiantly)

the biggest epistemological gap between me & 95% the rest of the world is literally just how much i love to look things up on the internet and how much it baffles me when other people don't like to do this. we live in the information age. like i'll google anything i'll read this bmj paper on the toilet i'll look up words i don't know i'll append pdf free to any possible phrase. i don't know how anybody is voluntarily turning this down. sometimes i get so tired of searchinf for something physically inside a store i pull out my phone and google like silken tofu aldi what fucking aisle while im standing right there. otherwise what is even the point

continuing my research into "what is the most bullshit thing you can call a 'book'", i present: one sheet of paper and three pinback buttons.

pretty excited by these, i've wanted to do a turkish map fold zine for a while and the little case is cut from the same sheet of paper so the whole zine can be printed on one 8.5x11 page. i'll have these at seattle art book fair at washington hall next weekend!

Weevil (Pachyrhynchus congestus), family Curculionidae, Philippines

photograph by Frank Deschandol

[frustrated? that] i can't seem to encounter comments/attitudes that feel weirdbad* to me without feeling a need to seek reassurance that i'm being reasonable in finding them weirdbad

like yet again this is presumably a leftover artifact of the incessant messaging i got growing up that none of my re/actions were ever reasonable

but it's like. well. (a) it feels like weakness of character to me. like. why can't i just have the courage of my own convictions without needing someone else to reinforce them. (see previous para.) (b) even if we accept that this is an understandable ['if undesirable,' i immediately mentally add, but. table that question for now ig.] urge in the abstract, in practice it's like. well. my social situation lately is such that the various people towards whom i tend to direct bids of this kind will reject them at least half the time. so whether or not it's understandable: it's not viable

plus then of course it also feels like. why do i have to be SO quick to shrug off whatever the weirdbad opinion is, instead of just. sitting calmly with it for a little while. experiencing it. practicing some calm curiosity instead of agitated rejection, like that one post suggested.

unfortunately i think a lot of this stuff is like. well it's about how unsafe and insecure i feel all the time. like it's a bit idiotic to be sitting here going 'huh why am i acting so anxious when. my most crucial social bonds are as attenuated as they are and my current situation doesn't remotely lend itself to forming more.' like. obvious answer is obvious and also quite frankly i'm correct to be anxious about that!! if i were more securely socially enmeshed i could probably Practice Chillness better because these interactions would take up only the tiny fraction of my mental social map they ought to be taking up, instead of looming enormously large in a barren landscape and becoming disproportionately high-stakes as a result!

so like. diagnosing myself with shit life syndrome ig, lol

⸻ * using this as a very broad catchall term for a range of things that spans, like, 'actual bigotry' on the one end and 'someone being imo-too-flippant abt something in a way that makes me wonder if they realize i'm personally impacted by it' on the other end

little pig made of glass and his brother, little pig made of glass made of paint

The Battle of the Frogs and Mice, from Up One Pair of Stairs of My Bookhouse by Willy Pogany (1920)

it really is true, i think, that no matter where you fall on a moral spectrum you'll be shocked at some things other people are willing to condone, and will seem sanctimonious to them if you disclose as much; and that in turn other people will be shocked at some things you're willing to condone, and will seem sanctimonious to you ditto… 

for context this post is brought to you by my genuine (and unexpressed, ftr, except here!) startlement at seeing a blogger i've historically considered conscientious admit to not recycling their cat food cans

the thing about this post is that, in my experience, people don't complain about so-called smith college problems (which was always itself an awfully snide coinage) because they don't understand that they're localized problems; they complain about smith college problems because said problems are cropping up like caltrops in a subcultural space to which they belong, and rendering it hostile to them.

and obviously one can come up with examples of this dynamic it's very easy to portray as ridiculous and entitled, like the first two in this reblog: 'support women who shave their legs and wear makeup every day' and 'let's hear it for masculine men.' absurd! but the thing is, it's also very easy to imagine the sort of subcultural toxicity that would produce complaints like that: criticism of compulsory femininity, while hella justified, can very easily tip over into an anti-femininity that's liable to leave a lot of femmes feeling as though they're being sneered at, because, well, they are! similarly, a lot of this website is sufficiently misandrist¹ that it leaves very little room for eg trans men looking to lean into a masculinity that broader society tried to deny them. and then there's this reblog of the smith college problems post, that rolls its eyes at bisexuals who object to other-gender attraction being framed as necessarily straight, and the first reply to the more recent post, that says snidely 'normalize not transitioning,' as if there weren't plenty of queer spaces in which sneering at 'bihets' and 'theyfabs' is a nastily common pastime.

i don't, personally, think it's an accident that all these examples affect groups who exist in a liminal space between hegemonic acceptance and outgroup acceptance, and in practice end up feeling alienated by both types of space. and personally, i think we can and should do better; i think we have to disarm broader societal inequality by working towards actual equality, for everyone, and firmly refusing to indulge this persistent, pernicious urge to revenge that wants, so very badly, to just tilt the social seesaw in the opposite direction…

⸻ ¹ no, misandry does not per se count as oppression. it does, however, combine with other axes of oppression like Blackness, transness, queerness, &c, in complex ways. it's also just tar pit behavior, imo, when indulged in with any serious frequency.