Source: deviantart.com
Brb replacing “I should” with “I have the option/opportunity to” in my internal monologue re: beating myself up over shit that needs doing. Let’s see if that works.
It actually really did help and I did the laundry and cat boxes. Guess I’ll keep trying that one.
THE UNEXPECTED SEQUEL:
“I should go do something useful.”
- The flat statement offers no direction; it does not lead to action, only self-recrimination.
- The implied judgment of yourself as not currently being “useful” is toxic. It tells you that you are being bad and lazy.
- My mom died in 2006, but sometimes it’s like I hear her voice…..
- “Useful” is ill-defined and an easily-moved goalpost.
- The idea of people needing to be “useful” is the voice of oppression. Lots of -isms hide there. Including (Tim Curry voice) capitalism.
- No really, literally this is the voice of everyone who has ever guilt-tripped or browbeaten you for not meeting their standards. Every parent, every boss, every teacher, every gatekeeper. It is the voice that harmed them so much they had to pass it on rather than reckon with it.
“What could I do to help myself out later?”
- Is a dialogue you can engage with. Open-ended.
- Properly frames any action as being helpful to yourself. It is a kindness. Kindness is important.
- Sets you up to appreciate what you did later on when you say “Dang, that folded towel was real nice, made me feel real good pulling it out of the laundry closet. Thanks, past me!” Reinforcement!!!
- Doesn’t put you on the spot right now. You could just as easily ask “What can I do an hour from now to help myself out later?” as “What can I do now?” You can give yourself that beautiful airlock time to mentally prepare.
- Being helpful, even slightly, even to no-one but yourself, is better for the spirit than being “useful”. Capitalism doesn’t give a shit about helpful. It wants to use you, and it teaches you that if you are not being useful, you are by necessity, useless. Our culture, based on capitalism, implants this toxic mindset in us in myriad ways, and we carry it into our private lives where it does not belong and we weaponize it against ourselves. Never think that your value is determined by usefulness. Even when you can’t do anything, you aren’t useless. The concept of usefulness/uselessness is an idea that means a lot when applied to objects. It has zero meaning when applied to human beings. Expunge it from your vocabulary. Do not use it for yourself, or for others. Ever.
- Fuck capitalism. Be a comrade to yourself.
- Don’t be my mom. (Dead but also a bitch.)
Third revelation:
“I have to [blank].”
Not as good as:
“It is important that I [blank].”
“I have the opportunity to [blank]” sometimes isn’t enough for tasks I truly hate and WILL avoid. How to overcome that? Certainly not by making it seem even worse by turning it into something I don’t have a choice about!
I don’t like scooping the cat litter or taking out the trash or brushing my teeth, but it is important that I do. “Have to” is not as helpful to me because it just says I have an obligation. Even if that is true, which it often is, I hate that phrase. “Have to.” Ugh.
“It is important” reminds me of why I am doing it. So my cats have a clean potty. So my kitchen isn’t stinky. So I get a good grade in Teeth.
I thought of this today and came to look and update this post. Now I see a couple people have mentioned something like this in comments. And a lot of folks are talking about the “shoulds” and their therapists and their personal growth or resolutions and it is so validating for me to see that.
I don’t check notes ever, I had no idea this got so many of them. I’m very glad it did and I hope it continues to do so.
For everyone making the change, I’m proud of you.
For everyone who tried and kind of lapsed, here’s your reminder: you can always dust yourself off and go back to applying this as best you can.
Ohara Koson - Crows at full moon (1925-1936)
How do you preserve the food from your garden so it doesn't go bad before you can eat it?
You are wildly underestimating my ability to go fucking feral about fresh produce. I don't think I even brought snap peas into the house last year. Just ate them right off the vine.
Though I did end up freezing the strawberries/blue berries as they ripened, but even those were consumed within the week.
The only tough one was the potatoes, but that was resolved by just foisting potatoes on everyone I knew. Much more welcome than Zucchinis.
Oh this is why every gardening person I know keeps trying to give me the food they grow
That, and we love you. Homegrown produce is a love language.
Unless it's zucchini. Then it's a cry for help.
Tomato (June) - I think highly of you; treasured friend
Tomato (September) - you are a warm body that is nearby
Fresh new asparagus - romantic love
Artichoke - fondness
New rhubarb with leaves removed - flirtatious potential
Rhubarb with leaves left on - the bloom is gone
Swiss chard - I have made mistakes
Perpetual spinach - declaration of animosity between our houses
White-fleshed potato - you are a neighbor
Blue or red fleshed potato - as above, but with overtones of camaraderie/affection
Kale - you are a person who was nearby when I had kale
Raspberries - you are a person I admire
Strawberries - you are a treasure
Onion - I am confused
Young French beans or young peas - I thought of you especially
Runner beans - mild criticism; familial ties; gift from parent to child
Pumpkins - overt romantic, sexual or childhood-bestie interest; highest declaration of loyalty
Prettily coloured popping corn, I.e. glass gem - let this seal the breach between our houses
Zucchini/courgette - cry for help, resignation
Novelty pumpkins - marriage proposal
This old man. He played four
He man door hand hook car door
With a knick knack paddywhack, give a dog a bone
My dad’s dead then who was phone
got to hang out with some 25 year olds this week as part of a conference (Networking!)
them after mentioning that i still have a tumblr:
me:
Found this very cool thing with a millipede in it. The sphere thing has the most interesting texture to it. Do you know what this is? We found a second smaller one.
This is what's known in nature as a "kinder egg surprise"
That's a moulting chamber - the millipede makes a chamber (usually out of materials like mud and frass) to protect themselves when they moult. Freshly peeled angel.
Luckily they seem to have completed their molt before they were disturbed. Could use some more time to harden up though, looks like. Hopefully they were carefully placed back where they were found! Beautifully formed molting chamber btw, I hope they can feel my appreciation.
“Something Behind” Riccardo Bettazzoni (muff_is_hot)
Reading a thing about rabbits vs hares ( @gallusrostromegalus‘s conversation) and I kept coming back to the forest. Back in the day of the 80s and 90s my family moved a lot from farm to farm while my father worked a job in a nearby city. For eight years we lived in Lanark County, Ontario. There is a reason, I believe, so much of Charles DeLint’s early work is centred there. Let’s just say… mushroom rings? Don’t step inside. But across the road from where my family lived was a large lot that had been a farm with a house and everything, converted into a pine farm. Trees in rows. Rust coloured needles covering the ground, giving the interior a look of a floor with endless pillars. Already, you see, you know things feel weird. The first tree in the forest was a massive maple sitting at the edge of one of lots of trees. Big twisting, writhing limbs with leaves and bark you could lose a hand in. Only. Every spring when I walked by it would be filled with green and… clicking. I was told later it’s not common or something but someone needs to go find that tree and tell all the porcupines in it that they’re unusual. Because like spikey rattling fruit of owies and musk, they filled that tree. Silence but the sound of their quills (which at sufficient numbers is just… eerie as all hell). They’d watch you. Fill a tree and watch you. I once counted to twenty before I stopped. I don’t even know where they came from or where they went. But apparently porcupines grow on trees. And then there was The Tree. As I said in monocultures like a planted pine forest there’s a kind of weird sense that you know This Isn’t Natural. But this one block of trees older by a little bit and more established. It was darker with only random spears of light hitting the rust or blood (after a rain) needled ground. Except. There was an apple tree. It had long limbs that grew in gnarled curves and clutching branches parallel to the ground, spreading out more than up. Enough so it created a break in the canopy and light would spotlight it. Only. For the few leaves and the command of a clearing of it’s own, with a few sickly saplings that would try to grow from under it.. the bark of this apple tree was black. Like jet black. So, again. A forest of lines stretching out of sight. Floor of rust and blood needles, level as if made. Bone-white needles still on branches except. Where a black apple tree snarled and gnarled and twisted limb to throttle a patch of light from the forest. And it was always a kind of dim light. Like it should’ve been brighter but it never was. While the forest around it was pitch. Every single time I approached it all I could think is. We aren’t the only things that have gods. And demons. And beings from Outside. I was always convinced in the forest with the porcupine moot, where a black apple tree grows untouched, trees have their gods and I’d met one. I’m not at all sure it was kind. But I bet it was fair.
There's kinda more, and other forms of locomotion.
absolutely batshit insane to me that omegaverse porn is an effective data poisoning method against gpt-based products. predatory language models getting tripped up by wolf dick was not on my 2023 bingo card but here we are i guess.
i want us all to take a minute and just. contemplate the possibilities.