(Seems a more apt description of the construct, from my perspective…)
Can somebody explain to me how a people can be considered free if their labor can be extracted from them through a collaboration of corporate coerced consent and government decree?
The rail worker’s requests are not unreasonable.
This dystopian future is so much weirder than I imagined…
Some of you may know me from the content I used to create within a particular niche subculture of TikTok involving adult extracurricular activities & communication skills.
Once upon a time, there was a website that sold communication workbooks which I designed to help consenting adults communicate their needs, desires, and boundaries.
I wasn’t making enough money to compensate myself for my labor, let alone renew my domain subscription for the commerce site. As such, these workbooks sort of disappeared off of the internet… UNTIL NOW!
Since they weren’t making much money anyways, I decided to make them available FOR FREE!
Do yourself a favor and watch this ~12 minute video. Put it on 1.5x speed if you have to. Watch it while you do trudge your way through a low-dopamine care task. Just LISTEN.
If you are neurodivergent AF, (or just generally have shame surrounding struggles with housework / parenting / adulting…)
KC Davis ‘s book “How to Keep House While Drowning” is a game changer. A true life saver. Check her out!
Step One: Hyperfocus on choosing a template & choosing your domain.
Step Two: Experience Rejection Sensitivity when the launch doesn’t immediately garner a mass following.
Step Three: Start an Accelerated Master’s Program that you totally have bandwidth for.
Step Four: Forget the blog exists.
Step Five: Get married.
Step Six: Achieve a 4.0 GPA in the first term of Grad School.
Step Seven: Start the second term & discover that the new professors missed the memo about the dangers of overloading students with too much homework.
Step Eight: Neglect your child for half a week in an attempt to convince yourself that you can totally manage a workload of 7 chapters of textbook reading + an entire book + two papers + discussion posts — half of which is due by Wednesday.
Step Nine: Have an emotional meltdown tinged with self-loathing over the fact that you have failed to keep of the metaphorical balls in the air.
Step Ten: Withdraw from the program before you get billed for the second term.
Step Eleven: Lament the fact that you just spent several hundreds of dollars on text books that you can’t use.
Step Twelve: Get billed for the second term anyways.
Step Thirteen: Convince yourself you’ll finish the program once your son is in elementary school.
Step Fourteen: Become consumed by managing an array of medical specialist appointments & therapies.
Step Fifteen: Catch up on all of the household duties that fell to shit when you were trying to convince yourself that you could totally handle Grad School right now.
Step Sixteen: Remember you started a blog, consider coming back with a post about how difficult it is to complete bureaucratic tasks such as a legal name change during the pandemic that never ends.
Step Seventeen: Make 4 trips to the DMV, two to the (Closed) local Social Security office, and half-a-dozen calls to various Social Security Branches in fruitless attempts to legally change your name & track down the marriage license that is being held hostage by Vogons.
Step Eighteen: Receive marriage license back in the mail — without any notation of explanation… let alone the replacement social security card you applied for.
Step Nineteen: Thanos your own Discord Server.
Step Twenty: Return to the blog, masking your embarrassment behind a tongue-in-cheek listicle post that pokes fun at the way your neurodivergence makes it challenging to start and complete tasks — despite the fact that your brain is constantly churning out new ideas at a zillion miles per minute.
A fun thing about being an AFAB who has a Race Car brain with Unicycle brakes, is the part where you overcommit yourself on “good brain days” only to find yourself struggling and wondering why the hell you did this to yourself two weeks later.
Should I have started this blog?
Yes. Writing is good for me.
Can I commit to writing regularly?
No.
I’m learning to be ok with deprioritizing when my bandwidth starts running low. There used to be a ton of shame associated with this. I’d be lying if I said that I’ve completely overcome that shame.
In my Grad School program, we’re discussing the history of education in America. This country built its standards of excellence around a student’s ability to behave like a good little assembly line factory worker. Embarrassingly, we’ve failed to innovate those practices in the face of an automated workforce.
I’m trying to remind myself that the standards I have been conditioned to hold myself to were rooted in patriarchal colonizer capitalist bullshit, and that those standards have become functionally obsolete.
I’m trying to remind myself that organic creativity is a skill that is difficult to automate, and that my zoomy brain is more of an asset than a liability in this changing world.
I will update when I can, but my priorities are as follows:
Tiny Human Care / Protection
Mental Health
Partner Care
Grad School
Housework
Discord Community
Side Biz Obligations
Blogging
I guess what I’m trying to say is, you should probably subscribe if you want updates.