I'd like it to be the year 2020 already.
While looking over my blog yesterday, I clicked the button "new post" while brainstorming what to write about. Did I possibly want to write a follow-up to 'A Wedding, a Grudge and Miss Havisham' after being interrogated by a friend who was clearly judging me and hoping I'd want to mend things with my ex-friend Goldie? By the way, I am looking at that part of my past differently.
But as I tried to think of how to start the piece, I kept procrastinating, avidly reading and watching the news. I'm gobbling up stuff about progress in environmental science and about President-elect Trump's official Cabinet choices. There are simply far more important things than my inconsequential past.
While looking over my blog yesterday, I clicked the button "new post" while brainstorming what to write about. Did I possibly want to write a follow-up to 'A Wedding, a Grudge and Miss Havisham' after being interrogated by a friend who was clearly judging me and hoping I'd want to mend things with my ex-friend Goldie? By the way, I am looking at that part of my past differently.
But as I tried to think of how to start the piece, I kept procrastinating, avidly reading and watching the news. I'm gobbling up stuff about progress in environmental science and about President-elect Trump's official Cabinet choices. There are simply far more important things than my inconsequential past.
Part of my hunt for knowledge is watching insightful interviews in the hope of either learning a philosophy or hearing the title of a documentary I should see. Maybe there's a journalist whose work I should read or watch. The latter is what happened when I turned on the show 'Chelsea' on Netflix a few days ago. I had already known about journalist Jorge Ramos, but his interview with Chelsea Handler introduced me to his film Hate Rising, where I got a better idea of how there are people in this country who've always been passionately racist, maybe even quite angry, and the election of a certain orange creature with tiny hands has possibly made those people feel validated and therefor more comfortable with making their opinions public. I watched Hate Rising, and seeing a boy talk about one of his loved ones having to leave the country, his lovely little boy eyes watering, really was a heart-seizing moment. I wanted to put an arm around him and magically make all talk of "the wall" go away.
Also, Trump is very sexist, which countless residents of Earth have known for years. Being a woman, and, furthermore, a woman who is not drop-dead, conventionally gorgeous, I am aware that I could have two strikes against me in Trump's point of view. I know that even if our next President were someone I liked for the job, they wouldn't know or care who I was, and in the case of this particular person, I really don't matter, because for as long as he's been a TV personality, he has been very self-centered and thin-skinned. I've read compelling op-eds over the course of 2016 calling him a "narcissist". In my opinion, Donald Trump is too inexperienced and quick-tempered and self-obsessed to run a nation. I don't expect that he would pay any thoughtful, fair attention to the LGBTQ community or the middle class or people of color or women or the impoverished, etc., etc.
I don't believe Trump cares and I struggle with the idea that he may have ever actually wanted to be President, when he might have only craved the attention that the campaign drew to his brand.
I'm at a new place in my life. The desire to think of and work to help more people than just myself and immediate loved ones has been a desire of mine for years, but I now have more ideas for ways to do that, as well as more research under my belt and more maturity. It's important to me that I help others and focus on sociopolitical things that mean a lot to me, but do so in a way that allows me to feel safe. I don't know how involved I want to be, but I cannot have tunnel vision, thinking of just having fun and surviving and taking care of myself. Changes that have happened or will are just too important to ignore because they affect me, they affect people I care about, and I have to make myself aware of them, sometimes speaking out in protest. Admiring Margaret Cho includes asking myself what kinds of risks she is likely taking when it comes to bullies on social media or people who could recognize her on the street and confront her for speaking out against certain things they care a lot about. I have to work on my voice, y' know? I feel the need to speak out, but I also want to learn how to be smart and classy about it and protect my treasured privacy.
I hope there are plenty of ordinary (by that, I mean not-filmed or not-famous) people who take a similar stance to my own and speak up for our rights if any people in government power attempt to stomp on them. We should help ourselves and each other.
I'm at a new place in my life. The desire to think of and work to help more people than just myself and immediate loved ones has been a desire of mine for years, but I now have more ideas for ways to do that, as well as more research under my belt and more maturity. It's important to me that I help others and focus on sociopolitical things that mean a lot to me, but do so in a way that allows me to feel safe. I don't know how involved I want to be, but I cannot have tunnel vision, thinking of just having fun and surviving and taking care of myself. Changes that have happened or will are just too important to ignore because they affect me, they affect people I care about, and I have to make myself aware of them, sometimes speaking out in protest. Admiring Margaret Cho includes asking myself what kinds of risks she is likely taking when it comes to bullies on social media or people who could recognize her on the street and confront her for speaking out against certain things they care a lot about. I have to work on my voice, y' know? I feel the need to speak out, but I also want to learn how to be smart and classy about it and protect my treasured privacy.
I hope there are plenty of ordinary (by that, I mean not-filmed or not-famous) people who take a similar stance to my own and speak up for our rights if any people in government power attempt to stomp on them. We should help ourselves and each other.
