The bad Emily

I agree with the idea that empathy, in any given person, exists as a limited commodity.

I believe that a person is by nature a limited being; there are bounds to all dimensions of experience, feeling, etc. Once a person gets into the appearance of having unlimited any-quality-within-the-self, it seems to me like we are now talking about gods or fictions. Or narcissists, I suppose.

I have read that our daily ability to self-discipline is limited; that it shows a decline in performance over time when taxed. (Yes, I've also read articles that decry those same studies; seems like the jury is out on this topic. However, I've never seen a study demonstrating a human's unlimited quantity of -- well, anything.) I know for a fact that attributes of mine, such as patience or anger, certainly feel and appear limited as I engage in or with them. My general level of intelligence is limited by my brain and genes. My stamina and physical endurance are limited, as I begin to feel exhausted halfway through a 6 mile run. I can't even sleep forever; the body wakes me up when it's hit that particular limit, with no input from me on whether I agree.

I think the thankful antidote or defense to this limited experience and limited mental/brain-i-al resources that all persons experience is the ability to switch off: when I recognize my empathy has reached a limit, I can switch gears from empathizing, perhaps, to trying my best to listen, or learn. When I am out of patience, I can divert my attention to something less trying. When I am out of reason because, perhaps, my emotions are too high -- I can realize this, consciously decide to stop engaging analytically (or to stop allowing myself to turn to 'logic' or overthinking) and practice letting go, or accepting that not everything can be proven, defined, known -- can be mathematic in nature, I'd like to say.

There are limits to empathy, just like any other human trait or ability; knowing what our personal limits are allows us to recognize when we have reached them and to stop trying to wring a dry sponge, or get the car going by flooding the engine. It is useful to know when a given approach may no longer be viable due to resource constraints so that then, we can either admit this limit and step away from the task, or we can admit the limit and begin to try other, potentially also-valuable approaches.

https://www.discogs.com/user/broganator/collection?sort_by=median&facets=folder%255D%253A%255BThe%2520Rolling%2520Stones%2520Collection

I've had a kickass year.

Tomorrow I have 3 back-to-back interviews for a position I really want and have been encouraged to apply for from almost every angle.

I'll find out if I get it within another week.

Sounds like a number of people have applied. Sounds like, regardless of my encouragement, that competition will be real -- even if I am the favorite of the hiring manager(s) (which is an IF, not a CERTAIN) I can't fuck around on this; I gotta keep bringing it.

I had a good long talk with my sister last night. One thing we touched on was how I've been trying to change my life over the past year. She told me, "it's like you went to a therapist, except you just did it yourself." I showed her my gratitude journal and talked about how making minimal steps, minimal requirements to achievement, got me so far it was perceivable with a year's distance.

29, and nearly 30, and I think finally basically have come to terms with the last serious break-up. It took two years of thought and effort besides. I'm going on dates now. I have one I'm really excited about on Sunday, actually. Even my sister thinks he's cute. We don't have each other's numbers -- I told him I'd meet him to watch the Dallas/Eagles rivalry game go down, at the same pub where we met earlier this week when a friend of mine turned wingman. I found him on facebook, though, and I know his full name. I know how he feels about guns (when asked if he was carrying in the bar, he reacted with the very appropriate and appreciated shocked face -- yes, we have confirmed, it appears this one is sane). And various random other stuff besides.

There's a temptation to only reward oneself when there's a tangible success you can pin on it. "I can buy whatever I want with my bonus" or "I got a raise so I deserve a big fancy dinner" or "I'm promoted so I can really party wild" or "I lost 20 pounds so I can buy whatever clothes I want" or etc etc. While in the big picture I support the idea that rewards should be merited...

I f*n love the Rolling Stones. And I've wanted to see them for years. And pretty soon, at least one of them is going to die. And regardless of whether I get that job or not, of whether I get that promotion this year or not, of whether I lose those last 5 pounds before 2019 or not...I have worked hard this year. I have changed so much, most importantly my mentality. I've grown a sense of ownership and accountability and responsibility for myself, like I finally understand I can control my actions. Most if not all of them.

I don't need to achieve a specific, not-entirely-within-my-control goalpost to deserve these tickets. I deserve to treat myself with love and kindness and I deserve this crazy, ridiculous, over-the-top, once in a lifetime reward. I've got two tickets that cost more than discogs appraises my whole Stones collections at (well, on average at least). I don't need to know who's coming with me. All I need to know is, whoever I ask, they're out of their goddamn fucking mind if they don't feed blessed and immediately agree to accompany me.

Fuck yeah, rolling stones. When else am I going to see them. They ain't getting any goddamn younger.

UNEXPECTED STORY SEQUELS

I was getting ready for work this morning, and I had all the way gotten dressed, accessorized, and even did my hair braided, in two french braids tied off at the nape of my neck, when by that point all the looking in the mirror which that entailed started getting to me. I started second-guessing my outfit (even despite my never-before-failed orderly-life strategy of picking out my work clothes every night beforehand). I started second-guessing how I looked. I started thinking about Instagram models and the bodies of the people I work with (typical Bank Ass office bodies, generally) and I started trying to think about female friends I have who are my age and how they looked, and how they looked compared to high school, and so on and so forth. I started to stare at the mirror and ask myself, "What do other people see when they look at me? What must I look like through the eyes of other people? Do I have a big ass? I don't think I do, but my last kind-of-boyfriend keeps vague-posting about me on facebook and one thing he shared was about how he's an ass man and the girl he likes has a huge one...I never thought I have a big ass, really, but do I?"

I go through this whole exercise in pissing away thought and time into mirrors in exchange for racheting higher and higher levels of crippling gross feelings often enough. Pretty often. Maybe a lot. Depends on the week.

So anyway I kept looking in the full body mirror in my room at myself and asking, “Is this how normal people think and feel and think and feel about their bodies?” Then I’d go to the bathroom for some other reason and find myself looking in the mirror there. I’d ask, “How do normal people feel about their bodies? Is the way I feel about my body normal? I don’t think so, I mean, what normal person does this in the morning, especially a morning when they took care and time to look a little more-than-average nice in ways that require a little more-than-average self-care and you’d think self-care meant doing so was good for one, wouldn’t it?”

And then I’d walk through the kitchen to put something in my work bag or whatever and I’d pass the full body mirror on the way and at some point between all my askings about normal people I realized something. Maybe I had a breakthrough. I think it might be one, anyway. It feels like that, in my mind, honestly it feels like a literal break in the pattern and color of the thoughts I'd been weaving just as I'm using to weaving them all the time, and yes it feels like maybe now I can see through them. And there's light coming through over there.

To explain what happened I need to talk about something else for a minute. I’m working on a 5-year plan. Early on, mid-January or earlier, while I was just starting the entire project and fleshing it out, I stopped at some point. I thought, you’re making all these plans for 1, 2, 5 years out, refugee, but why? And I stopped all my tasking and goal-orienting and sometimes-you-can-get-too-caught-up-on-projects-and-progress-and-miss-the-big-green-point-all-around you. I took a trusty notebook and I wrote down, What kind of person do you want to be?

I gave it care and thought and came up with eleven words in the next hour or so. I didn’t let myself just rush to write down popular good virtues or etc; I asked myself, what kind of person is it important, to me, for me to be? and i weighed what i came up with until I decided I agreed with it.

I didn’t tie any major life goals back to those words, not specifically, not concretely, only maybe if you stretch the meaning and squint your eyes a bit. So they didn't actually drive my goals or my 5 year plan in any visceral way. However, taking that inventory did really seem to help ground me as I went through making my goals and breaking them into smaller goals and basically wiring up my 5-year-plan process/binder. Mentally, I think it gave me the ground I needed to stand upon and solidly create my plan of attack for getting what I want out of life. I think doing that gave me the fortitude to see the 5 year plan through, and commit to it, and work at it. And keep working at it, day by day.

So this morning, looking into mirrors and agonizing and asking myself all these questions which hinged on this strange word, normal, this word which usually frankly I disdain -- I thought, hey hang on just one minute. Normal, normal, normal, why do you keep saying that? Why are you fixating there? Put aside the question of “Am I normal or not?” because frankly, that answer doesn’t matter to the true issue at hand. The true issue at hand is that I don't feel very comfortable with my body and haven't since I was 12— what the fuck is any normal person going to know or be able to tell me about how to change that? Scratch everything about this line of tearing-your-hair-out making-yourself-madder-not-saner-by-following-it line of questioning and KILL the underlying train of faux-logic that’s driving it.

Forget everybody else, and what everybody else does.

And I sat down, and I opened my trusty notebook, and I wrote, “What’s the kind of relationship I want with my body?”

You know what I think now? I think me and my body? I think we might be going somewhere. At last. I think, starting from here — what do I want with what I have — and seeing it as a relationship, as a “Let me take care of you and you take care of me,” sort of deal — I don’t know, in my notebook I titled it caps-lock BREAKTHROUGH. and then I gave it an underline.

OftenBen

______

Before that happened this morning I was going to share with Pubski an old poem I dug up this week, 2011 sort of old, which you know what? Has stood up to time and is, surprisingly, still intellectually decent. A little morsel. It has a tone I think mk will recognize and like. Remember when we talked about a little detachment? I think I feel it here.

_____

Happy hump day guys, on with the self-actualizing, good energy all around.

ref

hey perhaps more importantly I GOT AN ETSY STORE OPEN AGAIN

https://www.etsy.com/shop/BroganBooks?ref=hdr

Got 9 listings up as of this AM but something like 5 additional book styles/covers need to be added before my total inventory's represented. What I'm saying is hit that F5 through the day and through tomorrow too and get me some pagevyaaas. Spend some money. Spam people with my link.

And in May I'll have a vendor table at a little local art hall event one of the bars I like holds every month. That is far scarier than the Etsy shop, fwiw. But I'm committed. Eek.

Actually, into his bag of holding.

Hey dude,

I'm just going to interject here that KB calorie tracks daily and has been for years. I know this because I'm his stalker, duh. Not to mention that it's quite possible for an eating disorder to have long-term side effects on the human body. And let's not even consider what all else he might have wrong with him. I mean, dude's a little grungy. He's got that ponytail going...could have worms, maybe, you know, even?

Of course, you don't know KB as well as I do, or his eating habits, or exercise habits, or past history with food, or any of those things.

But I can assure you he already knows about CICO and that there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat.

Your comment would be totally in place if it was on r/loseit, and honestly, if you'd said it there, I'd probably have upvoted and moved on. It's just...KB's not a dumbass or a dilettante when it comes to cal counts, weight loss, exercise, etc. So I'm just gonna raise up and try to let you know as politely as possible, your comment here is coming across condescending as all hell.

And maaaybe I just saved you a verbal whipping by doing this. (But not if you get defensive about what all I've just said. Cuz I'm trying to be nice here, I really am, and it's not something I even try very often.)

whaholy fuck

Here's a really offensive idea, why don't you just have an amnio and if it comes back "your kid will be disabled" STOP HAVING THE KID ANYMORE

OK, OK, that clearly won't solve for Example Kid #1, but still. I'd advocate for that way before I could get on board with making disabled kids permanent kids.

I find this disgusting.

Reality: not as good as it first sounded

You don't have to tolerate hate speech. You can argue against it or you can go somewhere it can no longer reach you.

You aren't required to engage with speech of any form, hate or otherwise.

OP may feel he has a moral or personal obligation to speak up against certain kinds of hate speech. Kudos to OP, he is doing a valuable service. However, that's his choice and it's not mandated by any entity and he can opt out at any time.

You aren't required to enter a debate with hate speech. You aren't required to accept hate speech. You aren't required to believe it.

Hate speech is protected because it is speech, and because defining sub-types of speech into categories like "hate speech" cannot in any way be imagined as objective. And if we start only protecting subjective sub-categories of speech we are in for a much bigger world of trouble than having to hear the college religious nut go off about abortions again.

War - this is honestly more directly aimed at you, tbh.

You don't have to engage in free speech or provide responses to hate speech. Some would say that not reacting, that ignoring hate speech, denying it an audience, is the best thing that you can do.

I don't agree. I think it is vital to speak up against perceived wrongs; we all have our own set, but for instance, say something blatantly racist or sexist in my eyesight and I'm going to call you out on it.

Except you're totally right. It's exhausting. Sometimes you want to just have a conversation. Sometimes you just want to vent about your day. Sometimes you want to just feel calm, not incited to anger, not riled up. Sometimes you want to just walk away. The more standing up against hate speech you do the more exhausted you get.

But you are standing up because you choose to stand up because you see an injustice and refuse to let it stand. To me that is real character. It is a person with no skin on the line other than being a witness who says, "You know what? No. I will not be a witness to this, I will not let this stand." You are standing up because you know it sucks but someone has to do it, you know someone has to do it, and you aren't going to sit on your ass looking around for "someone." You'd sit on your ass forever if you did that.

Having character, having things that you as a person stand for, and then backing those morals and beliefs up with frequent refusals to tolerate those who propagate ideas and lifestyles which are completely counter to those morals? That is exhausting. Especially if you are a decent person who sees nuance in things and doesn't want to fight people all the time. Who wants to like people, give them the benefit of the doubt, who doesn't want to be seen as aggressive or antagonistic or "that fucking annoying fucker, bringing up race arguments again." (I imagine the Westboro Baptists do not find themselves particularly exhausted at the end of the day; I imagine they cackle with glee, actually.)

It is exhausting to stand up for what you believe in. But the only reason you are able to do so is because of free speech.

We cannot limit speech based on our feelings about the content because what will end up happening is that others will limit our speech because of our feelings and our content. We can only choose whether or not to tolerate it; to serve as an audience; to speak up, debate, or challenge it.

There are users here who have left because they got tired of standing up. More's the pity: no one has stepped in to fill their shoes. And that's what happens when voices of dissent get beaten down into silence, they stepped all over, forced to repeat themselves and their arguments again and again, forced to reduce their existence to constantly arguing with different bigots over the same shit every day because guess what? There will always be more bigots. There will always be more innocent ignoramuses.

It fuckin' sucks.

All I can say is shoulder on and be the voice of dissent and keep being it. Because the voices of dissent are vital, and few, and necessary.

Democrats and the tea party differ only on the surface.

WARNING; you incited a small novel. (Many people from DE flee DE and gladly put it behind them. I feel the opposite. So I thought about why I stay a fair bit.)

I have lived and worked many different places. I grew up and went to college and all in DE, so I'm a true native, although my family stayed in suburbia and out of Wilmington for the most part. I've never lived in Wilmington proper before (though I have lived in one or two other 'bad areas' of Delaware; at one place there was a shooting on my street, no injuries though).

Currently, I work in Wilmington and have for the past 3 years (nearly!) because that's where my job is. Wilmington is a big center for banks due to Delaware's business-friendly tax and incorporation laws, so there is a lot of opportunity in my field there. I am moving to Wilmington because I wanted to get out of Newark, because I was frustrated with it for a number of reasons, and I helped my friends move into a great apartment complex (in a good part of the city on the outskirts of town) and decided to seize the opportunity, move somewhere really nice, and also get to be near/with friends.

Those aren't necessarily very strong reasons to answer, "What's keeping you in Wilmington?" but I wanted to start out with them because I think me being in Wilmington is more of a "thing that happened" than continued active decision. More specifically in response to your question, I freely admit I am a Delaware girl, have always been in love with the state, have always loved the parks, suburbs, and general feel of the area of DE in which I've grown up and lived. I like to quote Lord of the Rings when Bilbo speaks to Gandalf about Frodo: "He's still in love with the Shire." There are people I've grown up with who couldn't wait to leave DE, and denigrate it in their wake. There are people I know who scoff at people like me who (although not technically correct in my case; I've lived in PA and MD, too) "have never left." Heck, there's lots of literary tropes about how small towns are evil, or bad, or small-minded, or if you want to grow and develop as a person you need to leave them. Lately I have been thinking that there seems to be a general air of disdain, often, about people who "never leave" their hometown. But why? What is wrong with loving the area where you grew up, and continuing to love it, and staying there? - I don't think anything really. But sometimes people try to tell you that such feelings are hokey, or that people who stay are people who "never go anywhere," instead of maybe "people who love this place and want to stay." That's more what's keeping me in Delaware, though, not Wilmington.

I can't help working in Wilmington unless I were to move to another state where we have other worksites, or began WFH full-time (which I do not want). I have considered on and off moving to VA - work's HQ is located there; the housing market's pretty buyer-friendly; I've always wanted to live in a slightly more southern climate (weather-wise); etc. But recently while discussing this with a coworker she raised some potential pitfalls to doing that, which frankly bother me enough at the moment that I've decided for now, I definitely don't want to move to VA.

In the meantime, MD tax rates are just freakin' ridiculously high, so I have no interest in moving there (lived just over the border in MD for a year which is how I know that). I enjoyed living in PA but no longer have anything that draws me there; my brother has graduated and moved to Portland for grad school, the friends I lived with have all coupled up and are living with their S/Os and not looking for roommates, and I no longer have a job in PA either, one of the reasons I moved out there in the first place. So if I were to move, the states nearest me that would allow me to keep working out of Wilmington aren't good options in my mind, so I'd have to move further away and probably transfer to a different work site.

And right now, there's simply nothing persuading me to do that. I mean, I guess you could cite Wilmington's crime rate and say that should be a persuasive factor, but I don't have a family and don't plan on starting one in the short-term. Most of the Wilmington crime is drug-related and usually committed by male persons of color against other (often also male) persons of color. Some parts of the city are very, very bad, but I don't live there, work there, or go there, so the impact - besides being aware of it - is minimal. I have friends who are very committed to Wilmington and they feel strongly about standing by their city and working to redeem the community there, as opposed to simply fleeing and abandoning the city to fall into itself. I do think there is a point there that is valid, although I'm no city's savior or martyr and know that.

Meanwhile so much of my life is in Wilmington, Newark, and the surrounding areas. Many very dear friends, many very dear memories, my current boyfriend, etc. Honestly, I was saying at Thanksgiving the biggest drawback about living around here is that there is no way I can get out of going to my family Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations, unless I want to have absolutely NO relationship with my family - and I'm not there, by any means.

Once I wrote a poem that began,

  "I live inside my memory, I cannot help it." 

I really love revisiting past places, past times, past moments. I love the comfort of knowing how to get places. I love running into other native Delawareans and getting to swap stories from middle school and discover that we went to the same place for kindergarten, or etc. I love that it's a two-hour drive to the beach and I've been there and done it enough that I kind of know my way around even though I probably only make the trip a half-dozen times or so a year. I love all the country roads, I love knowing and going to all the state parks, I love the farms that start to pop up as you head away from Wilmington and Newark. I love that sometimes, I can take someone I really care about and go on a 30-minute drive with them and point out numerous meaningful places from my childhood and recount random stories that make up a part of who I am, just because I drive by places and they jog my memory. I love that I know the house with the best Christmas light display every year and I love bringing new people to see it.

There are drawbacks to living in the same place and knowing all the same people - they know all your past mistakes and drama - but I've been improving my life and growing up and being pretty straight and clean, post-college. I live and interact with people in such a way that I am not embarrassed by my choices or most things(people) I've done over the past 5 years. I have cut out the poisonous friends and, even though I'm still living in the same town they probably live in, I don't run into them, not more than maybe a chance meeting in the street once a year, and when that happens I don't have to engage. I am proud of my life and who I am and where I've gotten, especially compared to when I've been down in the past. So I feel like the common complaint of living in the same place for too long, that "you know too many people and too many people know you/about you," doesn't come into play in my life very much. And I have always felt that the best part of traveling is coming home - I do not have an innate urge to go new places, break new ground, go someplace totally different where no one knows me.

Besides, the Poet Laureate for the state has just retired, which means there's an open position. She held the post for like 8 years, and while she's a good poet, I kind of feel like I am one too. And I feel like being a native makes me a better candidate for the position than not! ;)

(It's been a running joke since college that I'm going to become poet laureate of Delaware. I have done basically nothing to accomplish this, but then again, how does one get that kind of post anyway? Who knows. Prestige, I guess. Prestige and writing regional love poems.)

Side note - best thing about the passage you quote above?

| that Wilmington just got its first homicide unit.

The police chief actually vocally opposed this development. Crazy hubris IMHO - there is a clear violence/crime problem in the city. But the push to add a homicide unit came from an outside review and I think he just didn't want to agree with any of the suggestions that came from it.

Anyway. That's why I live in, basically, the same area (certainly same county) where I grew up and went to college and why it doesn't bother me - why I actually enjoy and like it. Wilmington is kind of a side effect of those choices. But again...I could flee Wilmington for its crime rate, or I could stay and try, in some small way, to help fix it and its problems. I don't think that Wilmington's problems would be improved in any way if everyone who could afford to leave it left.

I have some nice poetry news.

I've been nominated twice now for a 2015 Pushcart Prize, for 2 separate poems. A nomination is very nice - but not terribly impressive on resumes, as it's like saying, "Hey! Some person in a place of some power thought that I wrote a good poem once!" Two nominations was both surprising and double-nice.

Now the Pushcart committee or whatever will go through all tens of thousands of the nominations, read all the poems, and select probably a short list which will be published in Real Book Format and available at Real Book Stores, and Real People Who Want To Know Modern Lit will read it. It'd be amazing if I got on that list, but I'm not holding my breath. However, there's also probably going to be another list, Honorable Mentions or something, which may be about as long as the short list in and of itself. Maybe I'm delusional, but I like to think I might be able to get that.

The two poems are "A Great Grave," published by Starline (for those of you who bought a copy of The Taj Mahal,* there's a copy of that poem in the chap), and "My Loneliness Keeps Me Company." Unfortunately neither are on the web in print but I've posted them around on Hubski so if you're curious, I'll link ya or something. Alternatively, I've been recording my poems on Soundcloud, so you can listen to most of my published poems (not all yet, but working on it) here.

Also, I sent out some poems over the weekend, including a set of four witch poems that I just had a feeling a certain press (which I love) would really like. They got back to me within a day, they are taking all four, and they are paying me $15 for the privilege!! That is absolutely the most amount of money I've made off poetry in a sitting. It has helped re-inspire me a little bit. I wrote a lot of witch poems but I haven't worked on them much, I am going to start doing that and see if maybe there's a book here or something. For those curious, the press is FLAPPERHOUSE , and the print version will go live on Dec 22, so if you want, you could order a copy. (Or just donate a little money to them!) However, they usually put up poems from each issue gradually, so I am pretty sure I will also be able to put up a OC post in the next few weeks and share them with you.

So that's good news there. Maybe I just need to be having sex again in order to get back on writing poems.

I'm crying, I'm so happy for you. I love that (thru social media) I feel like I have distantly observed the entire trajectory of your two's relationship. I remember when random user was just a really cute guy who kept making insom food on Instagram. I just really love that I have been able to watch you two develop to this. Let me know when you set the date because I just wanna send you a "happy wedding!" card or something. I just really feel that I have known insom as a person from way before this was ever a 'thing' and it's very beautiful to me that I have gotten to see that. Idk. Feelings n shit. Congratulations so much you guys!!