ugh, people sometimes

I have to remind myself regularly, for some reason, that "random people that you don't really know, their opinions can be silly and you shouldn't be swayed by them."

A few instances....

- I get a digest of a listerv for readers of American Scientist and some of the stuff on there lately....arguing about whether ArXiv (a well-respected physics-research depository) is good or not because one person said that "they have never accepted my research" and they went on to list their accomplishments and the length of their career. And yeah, I don't know their situation but there are also people out there who do goofy research and manage to get it published somehow, and I've encountered my fair share of academics with some pretty big blind spots about things, like, not quite believing-in-a-flat-earth blind spot, but close, and yet...

And sometimes their opinions get weighed more heavily than those of people I would regard as more rational.

- I ordered the pink yarn from this new KnitPicks  line. And I happened to see a ravelry thread about KnitPicks. A lot of people hate on them for various reasons; I know they had a data breach years back (I am very careful - I use the PayPal account I have my lower-limit credit card linked to, so I figure I'm safe) and I guess for some people it's either a snob thing or maybe a "well, they're not as Ethically Pure as this small company in my town that artisanally sources yarn"

But anyway. Someone commented of these yarns 'oh god they're hideous' or similar and I cringed. Because you know? I kind of like them. I thought the pink one might work up into some cute bright socks, maybe with little cables? But when someone expresses an opinion like that my reaction is "oh they think this thing I like is hideous, if they met me they'd probably think I'm hideous" and yes, I know that (a) not everyone is going to like me and I shouldn't even hope for them to and (b) people have weird opinions on stuff and (c) sometimes when someone blurts out something like that in real life and you 'call' them on it they walk it back because they were literally not thinking, but still.

And yeah, I know: I don't really always have what some people would call "good taste." I like bright colors. I like weird patterns some times.  I have a higher tolerance for "clutter" and "mess" than most people do.

- In some cases like that, a lot of the "ethical shopping" stuff, it sort of presupposes that people have access to stuff most of us in rural America, small towns, the center of the country, etc., don't have access to. I've had people online tell me flatly "don't shop at wal-mart" but until we got the Pruett's I didn't have a lot of choice - my other choice for very much grocery shopping was driving an hour's round trip to Sherman (finding the time, using the gas, creating the pollution, causing the wear and tear on my car) for groceries. And again, the whole purity testing thing - it's great if you have the privilege of being able to find enough healthful, locally-grown-and-sourced food that you can do that, but here it would be very hard.

And yeah. I admit it: I want to be thought of as a "good person." I try hard. But I also know on some level it's a fallen world, you can't maximize everything, and it does frustrate me when people go "OMG why did you buy tennis shoes to work out in that were made in Vietnam, don't you know people working in that company are exploited?" and I'm like "find me a store here I can walk into and try the athletic shoes on in that has a pair made in the US or by some "ethical" overseas company and I will buy them. Yes, mail order? but I have hard to fit feet and with athletic shoes for working out you do NOT want ones that give you blisters or have poor support. 

- There was a long Metafilter thread (I won't link it, it got tiresome fast) about the phrase "don't yuck someone else's yum" which I find a little bit off-putting in its phrasing (I would probably say 'don't rain on someone's parade') but there is some truth to that, especially in simple things that don't really carry any moral weight. We can like and dislike  different things for aesthetic reasons but it's a big difference between saying "I personally don't care for it" and "ew, it's gross"

(The thread went bad because a couple people assumed people were saying, first, "don't yuck MY yum" and that by that, they meant, "I like this thing you have deemed Problematic" and from there they extrapolated to "this person is saying white supremacy is all right!" and that seems....a bit of a stretch from someone saying "I know you have problems with Disney's corporate structure but I genuinely enjoy their movies..." And also there's the whole question of "how Problematic must a Thing be before no one should be allowed to enjoy it" and I don't even know*)

And yeah, there does seem to be something about the Internet that makes people want to stake out the highest of high grounds and also declare that every hill is the hill they are willing to die on. I don't know. I generally just don't talk about the stuff I dislike (movies, tv shows, etc.), I'd rather talk about the stuff I DO like, because once in a while I'll get someone commenting going "oh wow I like that too! I thought I was the only one!" or "gee, if you think it's cool, maybe I'd like it too, I'll check it out"


(*I finished "Bats in the Belfry" last night and like many books of its time, there's some casual anti-Semitism in there, though it's more used in service of explaining that a character who is demonstrably a Bad Person is Bad - that one of her traits was that she was a raving anti-Semite. But yeah, the whole "do you throw the whole story out" is a modern question. I admit I can blip over things like that and kind of shrug and go "times were different then and people were less-enlightened and more tribal" though I think we're probably EQUALLY tribal now, it's just, there are other things it is seen as "okay" to ostracize someone for. Though I guess in some circles, ostracizing someone for having a heritage of a particular religion is still tolerated (the character in question in the book had refused to talk about his parents and grandparents, which led the detective down one trail that was incorrect; it later turned out the man's parents had been immigrants from, I think, Eastern Europe and they were Jewish, and the man in question wanted "acceptance" and he wasn't religious anyway, so he did his best to deny their existence)

I dunno. People are funny and frankly I find them hard to live around some days. I was raised to more or less be a "live and let live" type and I think I've even become MORE that way in recent years (someone I know was wringing their hands over the Drag Queen Storytime and "kids being exposed to that" and I was like "but it's not....mandatory? The parents taking their kids to it are already supportive of the idea? And maybe the kids just see the people there as "people in really bright fancy clothes"?  I tend to feel like if it doesn't directly hurt me or someone who is vulnerable (I would, for example, object to Person Known For Animal Cruelty Going To the Animal Shelter to Take Dogs Out), I'm not even gonna say anything)

 Probably tiresome though not as tmi as some of the stuff as I've written about this past week, so below a cut it goes:

I....think maybe what I had was "nothing exceptional"? I hope. For several days the start of this week I could feel abdominal "twinges," like in the lower abdomen and of course my brain was going "tumor? Or irritation from unexpected stuff happening? Or me being freaked out and being hyperconscious of the area?" And I felt like....well, no non tmi way to say it, but like my bladder was irritated. I kept having to run to the bathroom.

Finally, in desperation, I was like "well maybe we need to flush the system" and I drank a lot of water last night and things are ... better? today?

I'm wondering if the lower-abdominal weirdness I was feeling was a combo platter of a slightly overworked abdominal muscle (did more vigorous workouts this week, out of some magical thinking of "look if I can work out this hard I can't be VERY sick") and anxiety and MAYBE the arthritis that is often there in my right hip.  I had some lower back pain last night but I was also on my feet for five hours yesterday on the concrete floors in this building.

I really hope the answer is "nothing is wrong and you just scared yourself." My doctor is back on Monday and her office will, I guess, call me. In the past they've called about the bloodwork to tell me everything looks fine because they know I worry. I tried looking it up on the "patient portal" but it's not up yet; I am guessing the doctor has to approve it being put up because all the past ones had a note on them about her putting them up.

But of course, because I am me, I am imagining what it would be like to either (a) get a phone call with a hushed voice leaving a message saying "call us as soon as you possibly can" or (b) my doctor walking into the exam room next Friday, taking a deep breath, and going "Well...." and my whole entire live being upended, me having to figure out how to fit in surgery and recovery time, find someone to look after me while I'm recovering, get my horrible horrible house cleaned enough so that the person looking after me will not judge me too harshly (for serious; the main thing that drives me to do deep housecleaning is "oh man, what if something happened and someone has to come over and they see it like THIS." The problem is I have so little storage space; I don't have a good place to bung stuff and when I do that room gets even worse.

I'm hoping that the fact that I feel *better* now than I felt at the start of the week is an indicator that nothing is really wrong.

I did break out a little bit (on my face, where I used to when I was younger) yesterday and overnight, so that tells me hormonal weirdness is going on. Stress? Aftereffects of having a cycle? Starting menopause for real? Any of those would be tolerable reasons. The not-tolerable reason would be "tumor somewhere stimulating hormone production" and I don't even know if that's possible and I'm telling myself I should NOT Dr. Google it because that's how I got down the rabbit hole of fear before.

But yeah. I am going to be trying to distract myself as much as possible this weekend so I don't focus on what that phone call might be on Monday.