Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Wednesday midday things

* Of late (meaning: since I got back from break), I've been trying something new with sleep. It started out one night when the house to the north of me (whose windows overlook my bedroom, and I do not have room darkening shades or blinds) wound up with a light on ALL NIGHT. (the person who owns it is apparently renovating, and they forgot. I have their cell number but they're also out of town a lot, and I figured it would be pointless to call them at 2 am if they were, like, in Dallas or something).

So instead, I found a sleep mask I had* and put it on.

(*I have one of the drugstore kind in my travel kit. This one is fancier and in the mode of the Holly Golightly kind, has glamorous lashes printed on its front. I don't remember where it came from - if it was an impulse-buy at Five Below or the Ulta, or if it came in a long-ago Doki Doki crate [which is what I kind of think it was])

I think I slept more soundly. I've been doing it every night so far now, even if my neighbor hasn't left their light on any other nights. I guess I am enough bothered by the occasional car that goes through the alleyway at night, or moonlight, or whatever, that it keeps me up.

I wish I had something to deal with the boom cars (some idiot decided to PARK in my neighborhood with one going for a while late last night. Just loud enough to impinge on my consciousness but not "call the police and complain" loud. And also barking dogs. One neighbor - I think it's an across-the-alleyway person - has a dog that sits out all night and it barks at stuff. Yes, earplugs, but I worry I wouldn't hear the smoke detector then or something in a genuine emergency....hearing it would wake me up and I could pull off the sleep mask in time.

* A couple of over-the-transom things spotted on Twitter (1): reference to a Chronicle of Higher Ed piece (which is paywalled so I haven't read) claiming that Twitter encourages academics to be "sycophantic, hyperbolic, and cruel"

Someone else countered that through Twitter, they had developed professional ties, set up collaborations, got encouragement, got speaking gigs....and while I don't use Twitter professionally AT ALL, yes. I know people who use it professionally who have used it to publicize publications and get speaking positions and encourage junior scholars in their field.

And I think it's not so much that things like Twitter "make" people vacuous or cruel; it may be more that it reveals what's actually there. (I don't know what the Latin for "social media" would be, but: "In Twitter, Veritas"?) I think the problem with "people tend to act mean on social media" is that you can remove those last three words and have the root of the problem. Social media (and yes, I still dislike Facebook and won't use it, even absent any privacy concerns) is a tool, and how you use a tool is on you. As I've said before: you can take a hammer and go help build a house for Habitat for Humanity, or go and hang up art in your own house, or hit another person with it. And it's your choice, not the hammer's.

I've had generally-positive experiences on Twitter, and I think the two secrets are: 1. I have a "closed" account (you have to ask and be approved to follow me) so I don't get the random people "@-ing" me where they explain to me how they know my career focus better than I do because they are a dude stayed at a Holiday Inn Express one night and 2. I try to be generally supportive and positive towards those who follow me.

I suspect "closed accounts" for more people would solve the problem that a lot of (especially female-presenting people) find on social media, of getting explained to by some person who thinks either they will get a New Friend that way* or because in some twisted way they think making someone else feel small makes them look or feel big.

(*Heh. One of last night's Bob's Burgers episodes was the one were Dr. Yap was using "the Prince of Persuasia" to try to get dates. And the whole pick-up artist "insult her and make her feel stupid and small" thing....wow, that is like the diametrical opposite of how to get me interested in you. Insulting me will just make me shrug and walk away (if I were a tougher and meaner person, I'd probably throw a drink in your face first). Then again, I am not the sort of woman pick-up artists would be interested in, so....)

All that said: yes, I do see some of my "worst self" tendencies come out on social media. Mostly a desire to be noticed, to have people find the funny things I say funny, to have people respond sympathetically when I am hurting. I am not yet so far gone as to go to the (figurative) "bunny-boiling" stage to try to get a reaction from people, but...yeah.

* Someone I follow retweeted this from "Estradiol Warrior" (slightly euphemized by me, because I like to keep the blog family-friendly):

"started saying "i love you" to my friends and [dang] does it feel good. more people should do this, [forget] that "cheapening the word" [stuff]. knowing there are people who love you even platonically is so so good for your mental health and it works for the person saying it too


Oh my goodness yes. Yes, this so much. There are people - numerous people, I suspect, in this big world of ours - who do NOT have romantic love in their lives (I do not, and have not, really, for the longest time). And you can survive it. Maybe it's not ideal, but it's reality.

BUT: I think it would be much, much, much harder without the love of friends and family. I spoke before about how that one day Mike whispered "I love you" in my ear at church, and I knew - no illusions - it was 100% platonic friendship-love, but in that moment it was SO important to me to hear that.

(And I might take out the "even" in "even platonically" because honestly? Some of the best and longest relationships I've had in my life have been the 100% platonic ones.)

And also, the idea that some hacks claim "saying you love your friends is 'cheapening' the word" is so silly and actually I would argue it's the reverse of how it is: saying you "love" someone because you feel a romantic/lustful attraction to them, because you want them to "get with" you, is what cheapens love. Of course, given my background and training, I consider the "agape" type of love (a special case of platonic love) to be the pinnacle of "good love," but I think saying "YOU CAN ONLY SAY 'I LOVE YOU' TO PEOPLE WHO ARE YOUR ROMANTIC PARTNER" is kind of a childish and short-sighted thing. And it's not fair, it's like saying "if you aren't scrumpin'* someone, you don't get to talk about love" and that's so stupid. (And yes: if English had the proper number of words for "love" instead of just one, maybe then it would be easier, and people who, for example, wanted to "get with" someone could say "I lust you" and it would be clear, and I could say something to Mike like "I friend-love you" and to some of my colleagues "I love you like a brother-in-arms" and all of that.

(*maybe it was just my grad-school cohort that used that euphemism? I don't know. I just remember a long camping field trip where one of the guys tasked with getting campfire snacks wound up with a big tub of some kind of cookie thing names "scrumpies" (which were not very good at all) that he bought SOLELY because of the 12-year-old inside of him laughing over the name)

So I don't know. But I think one of the ways in which our culture is a little...immature, really...is that we take romantic/partner love as THE ABSOLUTE IDEAL (with "love between a parent and their child" as sort of a secondary) and push everything else over into the "*sniff* That's not REALLY love" category.

Because I have a lot of people I love....as friends....and yes, because our culture is stupid in  this particular way I can't always SAY it outright because "love" has been made into such a fraught word.

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