gaudior

On Fighting AND Feeding Our Enemies

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 14:49:16 GMT

I've seen this pattern lately in my (Unitarian Universalist) church, but I'm sure it's elsewhere, too:

2016

Straight White Liberals: Oh my God, we have to fight!

Marginalized Groups: Yes.

Straight White Liberals: (do some reading.)
SWL: Oh my God, this is not an isolated incident-- there's a whole history of systemic oppression that led us to here!

MG: ...yes.

SWL: We have to fight it!

MG: ...YES!

2020 Election: (happens)

SWL: YAY! WE WON!

MG: ... yes.*

SWL: Hurrah! Now is the time for healing!

MG: ...but... the systemic oppression?

SWL: HEALING.

MG: ...
MG: (sigh)

( more thoughts, less snark )

comments

On Peace and Safety

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 17:19:47 GMT

( Politics, anxiety, religion. But maybe in a helpful way? )

comments

Hope

Mon, 12 Oct 2020 16:59:47 GMT

My wife has written a really cool essay about video games, frustration, and hope.

I do not have nearly as much to say, but I did spend the morning planting crocus and daffodil bulbs in the front yard of our building, which in previous springs sprouted only wood chips, cigarette butts, and dog shit. I don't know that any of these flowers will come up this spring (despite the fertilizer I added the soil quality is, as you might imagine, terrible) any more than I know our horrifying political situation or the pandemic will be any closer to better by then.

But I planted the bulbs, and people walking by smiled at me under their masks. And now I'm gonna go phonebank for a bit.

<3
R

comments

Plague

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 19:37:46 GMT

I realized that I could list all of the physical places I've been in the past six months.

That is not normally what my life is like.

( A distressingly short and thorough list. )

...wow.

I have spent the past six months within a 30 mile radius from home. Mostly within a three mile radius. And while I may have forgotten one or two places, I think that with only slightly more work I can list every single location I've been to since the end of February.*

I realize that for most people for much of human history, this was fairly normal.

I... do not care for it.

:(

--R

*I realize that there are many people who spend the pandemic going to far fewer places than these, and dear gods.

comments

White Anger

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 15:11:57 GMT

I've realized something liberating: I don't feel guilty about being white.

I feel angry about being white.*

Make no mistake: I'm not the person who has the right to the most anger about whiteness. Whiteness is a system for stealing the power, safety, labor, resources, land, lives, bodies, and respect from people of color in order to give it to white people.** It harms people of color (in America, especially Black people) far more than it has ever harmed me. I got the "good" side of this deal.

But even the good side is shitty. Being white means that I am part of an unjust system, a system that causes untold suffering-- untold because the system works hard to interfere with everyone who isn't white being able to tell and widely distribute their stories. It means that people will treat me unfairly-- to my advantage, but that's not right, and I know it.

Whiteness also takes from me, though, not just in a moral injury way. It made my ancestors a deal: you can be white, but you need to give up your culture. Your language, your food, your stories, your fashion, all the outward signs of practicing your religion-- you can keep them in private, but if you want rights and resources, then you need to adhere to this bland sampling of a few parts of European culture. You have to speak an English language, listen to German music, work inside Italian architecture, and have a very French ideology about the superiority of your nation. These are the "classical" things to like, and if you want to have any access to wealth or power, you'd better own them, know them, and prefer them.

It's not just "white culture," though-- it's white supremacy culture. One of the most interesting ideas I ran across recently was Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun's description of these characteristic values of White Supremacy Culture:

1) Perfectionism
2) Sense of Urgency ("get 'er done!")
3) Defensiveness (don't question the system, this is just the way it is)
4) Quantity over Quality ("measurable goals")
5) Worship of the Written Word ("documentation or it didn't happen")
6) Only One Right Way
7) Paternalism (I would call this "hierarchy")
8) Either/Or thinking ("Black and white thinking")
9) Power Hoarding ("America is a meritocracy, and I'll have my father's bodyguards throw you out if you disagree.")
10) Fear of Open Conflict ("unpleasantness")
11) Individualism
12) Progress is Bigger, More ("constant growth is definitely a sustainable and reasonable way to run an economy.")
13) Objectivity ("there is an objective reality, and I know what it is better than you do.")
14) Right to Comfort ("you using that tone to say I'm standing on your foot makes me feel very unsafe, and if you don't stop, I'm going to cry.")

These are not necessarily the ways that European people thought a thousand years ago, any more than anyone else in the world did. But they are all ways of thinking that enable and justify colonialism. And, frankly, most of the clients who come to me with anxiety and depression are struggling with at least one of these, often all of them.

Whiteness tells me that all these ideas are correct, and that any time I suffer, it's either because a) I'm not living up to them well enough, or b) some Other person-- probably a person of color-- is wronging me. The more money I have, the more whiteness will tell me it's a rather than b-- though the more money I have, the fewer solvable problems I'm likely to have.

That is such bullshit.

It's all such bullshit, all of this, and I can't get rid of it. No matter how antiracist or progressive or whatever I am, taxi drivers are still going to stop for me rather than the person of color; employers are still going to hire me instead of the person of color unless forcibly stopped; my physical body reflects the nutrition and medical care my family could afford to give me with the wealth that they got from, say, the G.I. Bill which excluded people of color. I benefit from being white in so many ways that I can do nothing about. I don't want it, and that doesn't matter at all.

I'm mad about that.

I'm mad about being raised to be "colorblind" in a racist society in ways that twisted me up in miserable, self-blaming knots of shame whenever I couldn't stop noticing a racial difference in how people lived their lives, and was denied access to the understanding of structural racism that caused that difference.

I'm mad about how being racialized takes a perfectly reasonable aspect of my body and makes it into something I don't want. I love my skin; it's interesting and colorful, it has tattoos I chose and love, it lets in as much Vitamin D as it can, which is pretty crucial at this latitude. It heals itself using a process I can actually watch as it happens, it senses the world around me, and it keeps the rest of me safe inside. It burns pretty easily in the sun, but I can always put on sunscreen. My skin is great. I wouldn't change it if I could. But the meaning that goes with it?

I'm mad that as long as this system exists, it will shape my life, and my child's life, and the life of everyone around me. I'm mad that this system fights hard to defend itself, in part by convincing as many people as it can that it does not exist. I'm mad that for so many years, one defense it used was to paralyze me with guilt and shame about my privilege, because it convinced me that my lot in life is due to my own efforts, so if it's better than other people's, that must be because of something I did, and if that's unjust, then I am to blame for that injustice.

I'm not. I didn't build that, as President Obama pointed out.

Whiteness was done to me. Whiteness was done to everyone I meet, either defining us as belonging to it, or defining them as outside. Whiteness is an assault, and a deep violation.

I am angry about it. And I swear I will do everything I can to bring whiteness down. I will work my ass off to bring about a world where my child may be Jewish and Italian and Irish and German and Lithuanian-- and a light-skinned American-- and none of that will mean that he's supposed to run the world.***

This is bullshit, and I will fight it.

--R

*This is not "white rage," the phenomenon Carol Anderson describes of white people using institutions to react aggressively and destructively whenever people of color (in America, primarily Black people) make any gains in the struggle for equal rights and access to resources. It's kind of the opposite, actually.

**Mostly the white people it considers the most white-- wealthy, Christian, Anglo-Saxon or at very least Western and Northern European.

***Probably not in his lifetime. Possibly not even in his children's lifetime. But, like, I see no reason to expect that my descendants will all be white, so.

comments

On religion and white supremacy and stuff

Sun, 30 Aug 2020 16:29:05 GMT

( Perhaps at some point I will talk about how I'm doing in non-political terms? But not today. )

comments

Thought of a new shorthand to explain privilege

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 15:52:26 GMT

Okay, you remember how life was hard before the pandemic? Like, maybe you had problems with relationships, or money, or health, or career, or raising kids? It wasn't easy. It might not even have been something you felt like you were able to cope with.

And then there was a pandemic. And on top of that, everything was suddenly much harder?

Being in an oppressed group is like being in a pandemic. Your experience depends a lot on other aspects of your life, and some people might have it much better or worse than others. Some people's lives in a pandemic are even comparatively easier than other people's lives not in a pandemic! But the pandemic is still something that overlies all sorts of areas of your life, and affects them, and makes them harder than they would be if there were no pandemic.

Having privilege doesn't mean your life is easy, or that everyone who has it is better off than everyone who doesn't. It just means... you're not in a pandemic. You don't have this other huge thing to deal with on top of the things you're already dealing with.

--R

comments

On Mask-Wearing, and Why People Don't Want To

Sun, 19 Jul 2020 17:25:08 GMT

I have started reading Mary Trump's biography of her uncle, and this led to me and nineweaving having a very excited conversation in the kitchen about politics in general, and the thinking of the maybe 30-40% of the population still enthusiastic about following that asshole in the White House off a pandemic cliff.

We put into words something I haven't before, which is about this idea of individualism: many Americans want to believe that they, and they alone, can protect and take care of themselves. Wearing a mask-- which doesn't protect you, but does protect people around you-- doesn't make any sense, from that perspective. If masks are really what keep people safe, then you have to rely on people around you for your safety. You are defenseless when around other people (you can wash your hands and not touch your face, but you can't stop someone else from coughing), and the only thing that can help you is everyone else caring about you enough to protect you by inconveniencing themselves.

If you already believe that we are connected by a web of interdependence, then wearing a mask to take care of other people makes sense. You're already fine with paying taxes to pay for other people's children's educations and firefighters to rescue them, with obeying traffic signals to protect other people's lives, with getting vaccinations to promote herd immunity, with being part of a union to help everyone involved get better treatment, with recycling and avoiding fossil fuels to fight climate change affecting people half a planet away. You already know that "you didn't build that," whatever "that" your daily life and comfort depend on, and that you live in debt to people around you and before you. You probably find that comforting, to know that you don't have to do absolutely everything yourself, that you can be a small part of a larger effort.

But if you believe that you, and you alone*, make your destiny? Then this makes no sense. A mask won't protect you from illness. So the illness itself had better not be real, had better not matter-- because if it is, then you are at the mercy of the people around you. And so many of the Republican policies show exactly how little mercy they have for the people around them, so it seems hard to imagine that they would trust that other people would have more.

So: we are paying for the cult of individuality, which makes people believe that they should be able to solve any problem for themselves, and if they can't-- well, then either a) they are miserable failures who should blame themselves, or b) someone must be lying about the problem. B is a lot easier to have angry protests about.

I... fucking hate this, have I mentioned? :(

--R

*It was never "you alone," though. It was a man who was at the head of a team of other people-- a wife, children, servants/slaves/employees from whose labor he could benefit. People need other people to accomplish anything big. But if you think of that wife, children, and workers as yours, as really more your property than as real people who matter in and of themselves... well, then you can do all kinds of things as "just one man."

comments

Tax-doing Tip

Sat, 11 Jul 2020 16:01:40 GMT

So, I have realized a thing that makes doing taxes way more fun:

1) Figure out how much money you owe the government.
2) Pay it.
3) Figure out how many of the following adorable animals at the National Zoo you just fed.

Like, I am saying, based on a very very very approximate dividing of the National Zoo's national budget by their number of animals that you can feed one of them for a day for every $26 you paid in taxes. This is not accurate at all, because they also spend money on a ton of education and worldwide conservation efforts. But it is a way of making concrete how paying taxes serves the public good, and you are part of the public, and so you are, in fact, paying for a bunch of stuff you would like to pay for.

And for the stuff that you would not like to pay for... hey, did you hear there's an election this November?

--R

Appendix A: These are the animals I have decided I paid for having some dinners:

alpacas
lemurs
bobcats
cheetahs
clouded leopards
fennec foxes
mouse deer
meerkats
red pandas
sand cats
skunks
tigers
coatis
and especially the grey wolves. :)

Appendix B: Here is some other stuff I have decided I paid for: library books, some upkeep on national parks, a fuckload of Covid-19 testing, some upkeep on the water structures in the playgrounds in which Fox likes to frolic, lots of medical care, housing, and food for people who don't have those things, a bunch of school textbooks, part of Ayanna Pressley's salary.

Also the thing where the RMV is like weirdly helpful and efficient lately.Like, the person who sits by the door and makes sure everything in your RMV documents is in good shape before you go and stand in the incredibly long line? I paid for that person to work the last several days I went.

Ooooh, and the software engineer they had to pay for adjusting the website so that you can choose a nonbinary gender on your Massachusetts driver's license, and I hope I tipped them, because they made it super-easy. I renewed my driver's license online and in the "sex" box it now says "x" rather than "f," and I am incredibly happy about that.

comments

Some Things for Black Lives

Fri, 05 Jun 2020 21:08:15 GMT

One local, one not.

The not-local one:

Reps. Pressley, Amash Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to End Qualified Immunity

"Qualified Immunity" is the thing that protects police from being sued for anything they do while acting in an official capacity. It's a doctrine that was introduced in 1967 (unsurprisingly, to limit the options of civil rights activists), which has been used increasingly since 2005 in cases of police brutality to keep cops from facing consequences for their racism and violence.

Given the Senate and the President, of course, this bill has the odds stacked against it. But if you let your congressfolk know you support it, maybe it'll be seen as having more legs in the future? At any rate, it seems very worth supporting.

Also, you can do this with no risk whatsoever of catching covid-19, so that's cool.

The local one:

SOAR will be back standing out against racism this coming Saturday, June 6th, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. Thus far, we have stand outs at the following locations:

(1) Intersection of Rindge Ave. and Alewife Brook Parkway in North Cambridge.

(2) Davis Square in Somerville.

(3) Porter Square in Cambridge.

(4) Inman Square in Cambridge.

(5) Central Square in Cambridge.

We are a loose collection of people and there may not be a leader at each location -- just show up and hold a sign. Bring your own sign, or sign-making materials. Please wear masks, bring hand sanitizer, and keep your social distance.

ETA: There's also apparently a rally on the Cambridge Common on Sunday, June 7th, from noon to 2pm. This one seems better organized, and run by actual black people. :).

--R

comments

How to Handle A Plague, 17) Spend some time every day on something that is NOT the pandemic.

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 22:53:01 GMT

17) Spend some time every day on something that is NOT the pandemic, and don't worry too much about what.

This echoes some earlier ones, but I feel like I really cannot say it enough: you need to have something you are thinking and feeling about other than Covid-19.

And by "need to" I don't mean that it's not possible to spend every waking hour focused on the pandemic, because it absolutely is. There is more than enough news, Twitter, and random things to notice looking out your window for you to spend absolutely every second and brain cell on it. I just think you shouldn't, because you will feel terrible and exhausted.

So in service of this, it's useful to have something else that is taking up space in your thoughts and feelings. There are so many options, and it's important thing to note that almost any option that gets your mind on something else is about equally useful for this purpose. Like, if the pandemic is inspiring in you tremendous drive for arts or crafts or politics or inventing educational games with your kids, that's awesome. Also, if the pandemic is inspiring in you the desire to sit down and rewatch all of Leverage, that is also awesome. What's most important thing is that it helps you feel some emotions other than fear, and think some thoughts other than dire possibilities and casualty lists.

I know that some people see others gravitating towards things that are considered more "productive" or "creative" or whatever, and feel bad about it. I want to really, really emphasize that being productive is not the point. We're all doing our best to get through a very difficult time, and different people are drawn to different things to make sure that they have something to focus on other than the traumatic one.

If you find yourself wishing you were being drawn to something different, then my best advice is to just keep doing the thing you are drawn to. Do it a lot. Do it until you feel replenished and less stressed, and maybe even bored with it, because then you might have the mental and emotional energy to be drawn to something else. But this is not the time to second-guess your subconscious, and if what your subconscious says is that you should alphabetize your spices, then by all the gods, get alphabetizing.

The thing you are producing, the thing you are creating, is a self who has gotten through the pandemic. That will be more than enough of an accomplishment.

--R

comments

How to Handle A Plague, Helpful Link

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 21:00:36 GMT

Hi! No particular words of wisdom today, and I've decided to post only on days when I'm feeling particularly inspired, rather than scraping the bottom of the barrel for something new every day. But this seems useful:

if you live in Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, or Rhode Island, you can go to the CVS website and fill out some screening questions. If you qualify for testing in your state, you can make an appointment to do drive-up testing for Covid19. It's free, you may get results within 30 minutes, and they're working on adding more sites.

At the moment, in Massachusetts at least, you seem to need to have some reason to think you might have the disease, and having a referral from a doctor is definitely helpful. But as testing becomes more widespread (I hope), this seems like it could become more and more applicable to more people.

--R

comments

How to Handle A Plague, 16) Better living through chemistry.

Tue, 21 Apr 2020 16:59:45 GMT

So, all these entries are "works for some people not for others." This is extremely one of these, because plenty of people in overwhelming pain have gotten addicted to substances, and had to work extremely hard to stop, and if that is you, then please do use some of the other coping skills you have learned instead. ( Read more... )

comments

How to Handle a Plague, 15) Find something bigger than you to put your faith in.

Sat, 18 Apr 2020 01:45:52 GMT

I was talking today to someone coming up for the first time against the fact that the pandemic is, incontrovertibly, not under their control. That is not a fun realization. It tempts one to grasp even harder for control, but the only way I have only ever found comforting or helpful was reaching out to 15) Find something bigger than you to put your faith in.

If you're religious in the right way, this is fairly straightforward. God/s/the Divine/etc has a reason for allowing /causing this to happen, and will make everything turn out okay in the end. (The internet insists that it was John Lennon who said "Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."). If this is your worldview, then I highly recommend spending some time praying.

If you don't believe in that kind of god, it can be a little more challenging, but there are still plenty of things bigger than you. You can have faith in your family, or your community. You can have faith in love, or stories, or in Life Finding A Way. You can have faith in scientific progress. You can even have faith in a political party, though neither of the major American ones are giving me much to base that on lately.

The point is to have something to look to when you reach the end of your resources, something that can do what you can't. You know that you, personally, can do your very best to stop the spread of the virus, and to take care of the people around you, and you also know that your best efforts will not save everybody. But you know that it's not all on you, and that there are more powerful forces at work.

Personally, I'm putting my faith in the human determination to Fix It. I know that this will not solve everything, that it has already let so many people die, and will not prevent the suffering and death of many more. But I talk to doctors, and nurses, and first responders, and they are scared and tired (and would very much like better pay and more PPE, please), but they are so determined to get out there and help. They talk with so much frustration when they're not able to be on the frontlines, because they see this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to really, really make things better.

And I look around the streets, and see people putting on masks-- hell, people stopping a whole economy-- to protect people who are vulnerable. It was more impressive in the beginning, when we believed that younger people without an underlying medical condition absolutely couldn't die of Covid-19, but even now; most of us, I think, are driven much more by a desire to save others from the illness than to save ourselves. We all have someone we care about in a vulnerable population, or many someones, and we are all willing to turn our lives upside-down to keep them safe.

Or look at everyone making masks, or uploading inspirational and educational Youtube videos, or raising money to feed hungry kids no longer being fed by schools, or checking on their neighbors, or figuring out how to 3D print N95 masks, or having block parties from their front stoops, or writing to their elected representatives, or having really unfortunate incidents with magnets in an effort to help people stop touching their faces. Or or or or or.

The whole entire world, right now, is united in being quite upset about the pandemic. And maybe not every single person, but so, so many of us are trying to figure out how we can help.

It's not going to solve everything, but it's enough to let me rest when I'm tired, and know that someone else is carrying the torch until I can get up again. I hope you all can also find something like that to let you get some rest.

--R

comments

How to Handle a Plague, 14) Any chore you don't have to do was done correctly.

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 01:18:44 GMT

This is another in the ongoing series of "how to get along with the people you live with, now that you live with them all day every day," : 14) Any chore done by somebody else, such that you don't have to do it, was done correctly.

I am convinced that everyone has their own theory about the Correct Way to load a dishwasher. Which is all very well and good (human diversity and all), but can lead to so many arguments, many of which start when somebody tries to instruct someone else how to do it "properly," or when someone notices somebody else somewhat pointedly rearranging the dishes they had only just loaded.

The thing is, it does make sense to me that people have strong feelings. Especially if you're the person in your house who does most of the chores (assuming you're in a house where one person does the bulk of the chores), you can start to feel quite territorial about them. People assigned female at birth in particular often got raised to see the kitchen as theirs, and were encouraged to see anyone younger or more y-chromosomed as "hopeless in the kitchen." Even if that's not where you're coming from, there's a real sense of control that can come from knowing exactly how you prefer to do housekeeping, what method you find most efficient and effective and least painful, and a satisfaction to seeing your work done.

The thing is, though, that I feel like a lot of the time, this territoriality is the emotional compensation for how annoying and tiring it is to have to do a lot of chores. If you're the only one working, it's some solace to think that you're the only one who can do it, or at least, the only one who can do it well, because otherwise, you will start getting very resentful very quickly.

And when everyone is home all the time, the people who are more often out working are likely to notice that there's a lot to do around here, and (especially if they're not working for money at all) that they could do some more of it. Or, if people are living together for the pandemic who don't normally, the newcomer to the household is likely to want to fit themself into the household, and doing chores is a great way to do that.

At which point, the person who normally does most of the chores has two options. One is to insist that everyone else is doing it Wrong, and try to instruct them, and this is likely to lead to fights, and to everyone else being discouraged, and doing it less, and a new source of stress added to the general pandemic woes.

The other option, and the one I wholeheartedly recommend, is to realize that all roads lead to Rome, and all ways of loading the dishwasher lead to clean dishes. I mean, if someone does something that actually breaks all the china or leads to grievous injuries, then sure, say something about that. But for the most part, the more you can let go of the correct direction to sweep the floor, the most perfect removal of stains from the recycling, or the ideal timing of taking out the trash, the happier everyone will be.

--R

comments

How to Handle A Plague, Introduction

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 22:53:30 GMT

Hi, all. This is a copy of a sticky-post, but since that won't show up on people's reading pages, I thought I'd put it here, too. No particular insights today except, you know, give yourself credit for the hard work you're doing getting through all this.

( How to Handle a Plague, Introduction )

comments

How to Handle A Plague, 13) Cry.

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 22:08:21 GMT

13) Cry.

Some of you may already be totally on top of this one, and be more interested in figuring out how to stop crying. Which is very reasonable, and I hope to talk more about that soon.

But a lot of you may not have cried about the pandemic yet. For a lot of reasons. People talk about compartmentalizing-- about having the abstract intellectual knowledge that x hundred thousand people have died, but not having taken it in emotionally. Maybe they don't know anyone personally who has died of it, or even someone who's very sick. Maybe there hasn't been a single major incident in their life-- losing a job, say, or something similarly catastrophic, that feels like it would be the right reason to cry.

Here's the thing, though: even if you have not lost a person, you have still lost something. You've lost your normal routine, you've lost in-person contact with people you care about, you've lost your freedom to move around. You may have lost your job. You may have lost small businesses you loved and depended on. You may have lost your graduation ceremony; you may have lost the few hours of free time when your child would have been at school. You have almost certainly lost things you planned to do-- trips, concerts, holidays, weddings.

You may have lost your sense of security doing things as simple as going to the grocery store. You may have lost your sense of safety in the world.

You had things you were doing, and things you depended on, and things you loved, and now they are gone.

You have enough to cry about.

And this may not be true for everyone, but it was certainly true for me: crying helped. When I finally just broke down and sobbed, I was finally able to not be fine. I had been so insistently fine, because nothing big had changed, nothing catastrophic had happened to me personally or my family, and I was very competent and good at emotional regulation, so surely I could handle this?

But actually, I could not handle it. At least, not without crying, and grieving, and talking about how this is not okay, I cannot do this. It was not fine, and trying to make it be fine was only making me more stressed.

I think that grieving is the process by which you go from a world which is absolutely unbearable and inconceivable to one that you can live with. "Acceptance" doesn't mean you like it, or think it's okay, or agree that this is how the world should be. It just means that you are here with it, and it is real, and you know that, deep down in your bones.

There is a lot to grieve, in this pandemic. If you're like me, and your failure mode is to be so insistently functional, then I would like you to give yourself permission to stop.

It's not fine. It doesn't have to be fine. You don't have to wait for the other shoe to drop to start mourning.

--R

comments

How to Handle A Plague, 12a) How to go the fuck outside.

Tue, 14 Apr 2020 01:15:36 GMT

Several people pointed out that 12) Go the fuck outside is much easier said than done. Which is a good point; you can't just walk through a panic attack, and I'd be an asshole if I were suggesting you could. So, here is the addendum:

12a) How to go the fuck outside.

There are two aspects of this: convincing your rational mind, and convincing your unconscious.

...well, I started to write an explanation of why you rationally don't need to be that scared of going outside. You can read it below, I put it under a cut, but... frankly, it's just unnerving to read even though it's trying to be reassuring. It had lots of words like "virus" and "infection" and such, and... eh.

So, let's just assume that going outside is worth it, and talk about how.

First of all, you want to try this in small steps. This is going to be the basic CBT procedure for phobias, and it involves breaking down the frightening thing (going outside) into a series of small steps that are each somewhat doable, and increasingly closer to the goal. So in this case, you might:

1) Sit at your closed window, and look outside. Do something you find calming-- deep breaths, relaxing music, relaxing your muscles, taking anti-anxiety meds, getting someone you trust to hold you tight, petting your pet, listening to comedy routines. Do that until you are fairly bored.

2) The next day, sit at your closed window with your face covered, as you would if you were going out, and repeat the calming until you're bored.

3) The next day, open your window, sit across the room from it, with your face covered, and repeat the calming until you're bored.

4) The next day, open your window, sit in front of it, etc.

5) The next day, open your door, sit in the doorway, etc.

6) The next day, go out the door, and sit on your stoop/porch/whatever, etc.

7) The next day, go out the door, and walk either to your car (if you have a car) or the sidewalk, and either sit in your car, or go back to your stoop, etc.

8) The next day, walk around your block, etc.

If you feel like you can easily skip any of these steps, go for it. The important thing is to start with something you find a little scary, but not panic attack-inducing, and do it until it's not scary any more. Don't push through-- if you've already done one step today, and are pretty tired, then wait until you're fully rested to come back.

Because yeah, this is scary, and I did not mean to dismiss anyone's fear. Your nervous system is trying very hard to keep you alive by scaring you away from a potential threat, and you might thank it for working to keep you safe, and then politely but firmly teach it to focus its attention elsewhere.

Good luck, and also, please do keep telling me if the advice I give is ever counterproductive!

--R

( The explanation of why you probably won't get it from walking around outside. )

comments

How to Handle A Plague, 12) Go the fuck outside.

Sat, 11 Apr 2020 00:12:44 GMT

12) Go the fuck outside.

Not, obviously, if you're actively having symptoms of Covid-19, especially sneezing or coughing. And even if you're not, wear a mask/sunglasses if you're likely to go within six feet of another person, and wear gloves if you're going to be touching something other people touch a lot, and wash your hands thoroughly when you get home. But leave the damn house.

I realize that there needs to be a balance, here. Certainly, in early days of the pandemic (and possibly some places even now), people were being horrifyingly cavalier about going about their daily social interactions exactly as per life antebellum (antepestem?), and that was a terrible idea.

But I keep talking to people who are terrified to leave their actual houses. And I understand, because it's gotten weird out there. People are wearing masks, and everyone's backing away from each other nervously, and stores and other landmarks you love have big "closed" or "only open for take-out" signs on the doors. There are closed signs on the playgrounds, and netting around the basketball hoops in the park. There's almost no traffic, which is honestly kind of nice, but that doesn't make it less weird. It's feeling odd. It's feeling postapocalyptic. If you can forget for a moment that there's a pandemic going on, you'll soon run into something to remind you.

Not to mention the whole, "there are other people who have a deadly disease out there, and I might get it, and die, or bring it home to the vulnerable people in my home," thing. Or, in the other case, "I might have a deadly disease, and not know it, and give it to people out there, and kill them." Those are both terrifying ideas, and of course, avoiding the whole thing is appealing.

But take it from someone who's been going outside every day*: there is more good than bad to be had out there.

For one thing, we need Vitamin D, and supplements are nice and all, but sunlight is better. Vitamin D deficiency doesn't just affect your immune system, it also increases fatigue and depression. We do not need any more fatigue and depression right now.

And sunlight isn't just good for Vitamin D-- it's also incredibly useful in setting your biological clock. I mentioned the other day that many people are having trouble getting enough sleep, and that has many many reasons (stress is certainly one; lack of exercise another), but not getting enough sunlight to tell your circadian rhythm when it's day, so that it will know when it's night, is not going to help at all.

Also, while you definitely can exercise in your home, there are so many more ways of doing so that are more fun outside, and require less equipment. Biking, walking, running (okay, I hate running, don't ask me about running. People who like it say it's pretty great), they all feel better outside than in.

Because it is beautiful out there right now. In the northern hemisphere, it's spring. In my area, flowers are coming out everywhere, the skies are admittedly often rainy, but sometimes it's warm, and there's a sweet, gentle breeze. The sun is out earlier and later, the birds are coming back and singing about starting their families, the trees are just beginning to bud. It feels fresh out there. It feels renewing, and alive. We may be having a pandemic, but nature is all about new life right now, and it helps.

It helps. It helps to leave the house. When you stay inside all day every day, because there's too much danger to step outside your door, the world feels more dangerous. The coronavirus feels more infectious, more deadly, more likely to jump out and get you if you make the slightest wrong move. I do not have studies to prove this, but I think that the people who go outside with reasonable precautions are also the people who are feeling less terrified of not washing their hands enough, of not masking perfectly, of unavoidable contagion. In reality, there is danger, absolutely. But not a hide-in-your-homes-under-the-bed-the-Vikings-are-raiding-your-town kind of danger. And hiding in your home, seeing nothing but the same walls day after day after day, makes you feel like there is.

There are, of course, ways to go outside more safely. Walk early in the morning, or late at night, when fewer people are around. Go on back-streets instead of main streets or parks with trails, because sadly, if you're anywhere like the city I live in, fucking everybody is on the trails in the parks. Try places where you can reasonably go off the trail. Try your balcony, or your own backyard, if you have one. Try the roof of your building, if you don't. Try college campuses, if they're not locked, because there are big grassy lawns completely empty of the usual students. An empty parking lot may not have much nature there to appreciate, but you can at least get some sun. Walk and dance in the rain, if it's warm enough, and think deep raindrops-on-your-umbrella thoughts. Climb a tree. Walk on a fence. Plant some sort of plant, and see if it wants to come out of the ground.

Just... go outside. It will be okay. It will be more okay than you think it will.

Have fun.

--R

*As a psychotherapist, I cannot do confidential work inside a relatively small apartment with two other adults and a small child who sees no reason why he can't be with me at all times. So I ride my bike (or drive on rainy days) to my empty office, where I sit and do virtual calls every weekday. As the parent of a small child, I take him outside every weekend day because otherwise there would be no quiet or sleep or calm for anyone, ever again. So you see.

comments

How To Handle a Plague, Bonus Link: Unfogging your Glasses

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 16:50:40 GMT

Bonus Link: How to Keep Your Glasses From Fogging Up While Covering Your Face!

Helpful Video Tutorial!

If you don't have time to watch the video, it's basically: fold something up (best is a piece of aluminum foil) into a thin wire-like shape, which you then put into the top of your mask, and fold down to fit the shape of your nose, which prevents your breath from getting out. Or use a tissue to absorb the moisture, or fold the top of the mask down to fit your nose more snugly. Fun fact: clean glasses will fog up less!

I don't think this will be the only entry today, but it may depend on how tired I am at the end of the day. But this seemed good enough to bring to you all immediately.

8)

--R

comments

How to Handle A Plague, 11) Remember this, for motivation to work afterwards.

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 00:32:57 GMT

11) Remember this, and use it to motivate your work afterwards.

There are a lot of things I like about how people are reacting to the pandemic. There's the eagerness of the medical professionals I speak with to get in there and help; there's everyone's willingness to shut down their lives to protect the vulnerable; there's the proliferation of cool mask designs. On average, people are doing their best to help.

On the structural level, though, we're very much seeing the inequalities in our society in sharp relief. It's suddenly very obvious why we need Medicare for All-- not just that wrangling insurance companies takes energy and money hospitals and medical providers could otherwise use for saving lives, but also the appallingly worse outcomes for African-Americans. And those worse outcomes come from so many sources-- from the way that structural racism leaves people in poverty, so unable to afford insurance, so more likely to have underlying health problems. Or in poverty, so having to live in neighborhoods which are toxic dumping grounds, so more likely to have underlying health problems. Or in poverty, so unable to take time off of work, or get the training for the kind of job that lets you work from home. Or simply discriminated against, and so less likely to be given testing than white people.

And speaking of working from home, that's an accommodation that people with disabilities/single parents/people who would rather not drive so much have long been told was impossible and impractical, but is suddenly entirely doable.

And speaking of driving, the one thing that people are absolutely benefiting from is the sudden lack of commute. Turns out that commuting for hours to a job, however you do it (except for bike commuting, which people are missing sorely), is a miserable experience, that everyone is better off not having to do.

And speaking differently of commuting, it turns out that actually, it's possible to use so much less gas, and cause so much less pollution, if we're willing to restructure our society a bit.

What I'm saying is, we are learning from the pandemic. And what we are learning is: the way that we were living before had many things we miss (small businesses! Being able to hug my damn spouse! Schools!), but it also has a lot of things that we don't. And when this all ends, let's remember that. Notice, right now-- what you want to keep, what you want to work your ass off to make sure never happens again.

Let's remember that if we can turn our entire culture on its ear to prevent the spread of one disease, it's because so many things we thought were set in stone don't have to be. And when we come out of our houses again, let's get to the streets, and let's make some bigger changes, and save some more lives.

--R

comments

Taking a day off for Passover.

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 23:56:19 GMT

Chag sameach, everyone! Next year in freedom!*

*From our houses.

—R

comments

How to Handle a Plague, 10) Ask for what you need, don't tell people what they're doing wrong.

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 23:49:32 GMT

10) Ask for what you need, don't tell people what they're doing wrong.

So, there will probably be a number of these that focus on domestic harmony, because it has suddenly become very, very important to get along with the people you're living with, because getting space from each other is suddenly hard, not to mention that we're all very stressed. This one I'm stealing wholesale from Marshall Rosenberg, because it's that good.

So that is: if you would like to get along with the people in your house/apartment/etc, and you are starting to get on each other's nerves, think not about what they're doing that's bothering you, but about what you aren't getting that's bothering you. Because the former may actually be impossible to change, but the latter is a problem that could have a variety of solutions. And the former is something that leads to people feeling defensive, and to fights, where the latter, if you're all people of goodwill, can lead to people working together to help you, which feels pretty great.

I am again stealing: the Center for Nonviolent Communication has a needs inventory to help you figure out what need you're not getting met. It's worth perusing, and noticing what rings true to you, and whether any of them are things that other people from your house can help with. (Personally, I needed "rest/sleep," and my housemates were really quite good about making sure there's time and care for me to get it, which is astonishingly helpful.)

Happy communicating, all.

--R

comments

How to Handle A Plague, 9) New cause, old pain.

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 00:15:13 GMT

9) Don't be surprised if your pain about this takes the same form as your pain about other things.

One of the most upsetting things about this pandemic is that it is so far out of our experience. This hasn't happened since 1918, and this particular this, with the Zoom and the "social distancing" and the being able to hear people's last words half a world away in real time? This has never happened before. And we have no idea how to do it well.

But a thing that I keep noticing, and seems worth pointing out, is that everyone has some fairly familiar ways of being in pain, and those are what we end up with around this. If you hate yourself, you probably spend the plague thinking about how awful you are for not doing more to prevent it, and how badly you're dealing with it. If you're anxious, you're probably terrified right now, of getting sick, of someone you love getting sick, etc. If you're super-driven, you're probably overworking right now. If you normally dissociate, you're, like, fine right now, you guess, but for some weird reason you can't seem to get off the couch?

The problem with this is that your particular pain is really devastating for you, and the horror and uncertainty in the world is probably intensifying it well beyond what you're used to. The advantage of this is that, hopefully, you have developed some coping skills and ways of dealing with your pain.

So... do those things. I mean, everyone should wash their hands and such, but otherwise, treat the pandemic the same way you would normally treat a particularly bad episode of your depression, or your OCD, or your self-doubt. If you don't have any history of mental health issues, ask someone who does for advice.

I don't know why or how exactly our minds get wired to hurt in one or a few particular ways, though there are many many theories. But I do know that this means that even though the pandemic is new and strange, the way you're feeling about it probably isn't. And you probably have some idea of what to do with the way you're feeling, and it is 100% appropriate for you to do that, even if it's not what's right for someone else.

I wish you all good coping.

--R

comments

How to Handle A Plague, 8) Sleep well.

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 22:00:50 GMT

8) Sleep well.

Easier said than done, right? But trouble sleeping is something that people are talking about a lot this week, and I certainly have many many suggestions for how to sleep better, so have ( a list )

comments