Ferrett Steinmetz's Blog

"You haven't posted anything in over a year!" people say.

That's not true, though!  I'm posting away semi-regularly at my website theferrett.com. But when I shut down my LiveJournal - partially because I was uncomfortable funnelling old Google-traffic to its owners, partially because it just didn't feel like "my" site any more - people said I vanished from view.

Truth is, the feeds just weren't updated to point at the right location.  So this is one last post to say "Hey, I've moved on, here's where you can find me."  Because while I miss all of you crazy LJ people, enough people dropped away that LiveJournal stopped feeling like home to me at some point.

So if you're using RSS to track me, repoint your RSS feeds to https://www.theferrett.com/feed/.  If you're bookmarking me, change it to www.theferrett.com, because this will be the last post I make here.  If you're on Twitter, I'm microblogging away at @Ferretthimself, and if you're on Facebook, well, sorry, but I'm trying to minimize my contact with that evil empire.

(And if you friend me on any social network, hit me up there to say who you were on LJ!  We'll always be buddies.  Telling me your old LJ name is like a secret handshake, and I will always be happy to hear from you.)

That said, here's the big news: I have a new novel coming out.  It's called The Sol Majestic, and basically I threw everything I loved into a box - five-star molecular gastronomy dining filtered through a Willy-Wonka-in-space lens, two dysfunctional boys falling in love, grand philosophical tracts on how food makes your home, all nailed down with a chaotic, memorable cast of characters.  I think it's the best thing I ever wrote.

If you preorder it now (it comes out in June 2019), you'll get all sorts of cool stuff sent to you - a signed bookplate, a secret drink recipe from one of the world's best cocktail bars (no joke), and even a secret secret non-drink recipe.  The details on how to get all your swag can be found at my main site.

And if you just wanna sign up for my newsletter, which will tell you about my most notable blog posts on theferrett.com, well, I started one of those too - and they'll tell you when I'll be doing an appearance in your town.  (As of March 5th, I'm holding a contest where anyone who signs up can win a signed advance copy of the book.)

Anyway.  I'm not here any more.  If you are, or your RSS feed is suddenly saying "Ferrett has a new entry!", update your software.  I'm elsewhere, man.

I hope to see you there. 

As a long-time Star Wars fan, I loved The Last Jedi, but I loved it as I would a well-written fanfic.  There's one big problem at the heart of it:

That's not the Luke Skywalker I grew up with.

The Luke Skywalker I grew up idolizing was a hero, whose empathy and strength at the end of Return of the Jedi signalled the start of a long career where he went on to do many awesome things afterwards.

In other words, for me, the Holy Trilogy was an origin story.

Yet what Rian Johnson has decided, canonically, is that Luke was a fluke - he had one great moment, rather like that high school football player who won the big game, and then spent the rest of his life as a loser.  It's significant when Rey is talking about the achievements of the Jedi, she mentions him redeeming Vader and then doesn't mention that Luke a damn thing after that.

Because he didn't.  For Rian Johnson, the Holy Trilogy is not an origin story, but the sole thing Luke managed to do with his life.  (Which, by the way, is confirmed in the canonical Star Wars books leading up to the film. He's not a significant player in any of the post-Rebel fights; he barely exists except as a figure of inspiration.)  And Luke's been slowly rotting in a cave ever since - out of his depth, confused, having learned literally nothing from his adventures.

(Whereas Yoda, for some reason - who radicalized Luke as a murderer and was trying to train Luke to kill his father - gets a pass on his mistakes, still retaining his unwarranted halo as "wise teacher" despite the fact that all of Return of the Jedi only happens because Luke's instincts were better than Yoda's.)

Honestly, I have to admire Rian's ballsiness.  Rian Johnson pushed all-in on the "Luke's a loser" card because it made things way more interesting for Rey and Kylo in this movie - which is a bold damn choice.  And it also makes Luke's arc (in this movie) more riveting, because the question becomes "Can this man manage to pull off a twofer in his life, or is he forever going to be known by his one achievement?"

But right now fandom is in fury because, well, they've had forty years to imagine what their version of Luke's been up to.  A lot of people had no problem with The Last Jedi because their impression was that Luke was a whiny loser, of course he'd just fuck everything up, and so their version of Luke is pretty much "Yeah, he'd have deteriorated."  But for people like me, who grew up inspired by Luke's surpassing his whiny teenaged years to become the black-clad badass he was in Return of the Jedi, living an adult life trying to escape that black hole pull of the dorkiness of their high school experience, well...

The idea that Luke was basically a one-hit wonder, the Lou Bega of Jedi Knights, is a hard pill to swallow.  And even Mark Hamill didn't agree with that - what he said was, "I fundamentally disagree with virtually everything you've decided about my character."  (But because he's a pro, he decided to play that character as written - and I think The Last Jedi draws much of its strength by Hamill leaning into that blade, taking his own reticence about that and manifesting it on-screen.)

And if you're wondering why The Last Jedi has ignited a furor among fans, that's because it's the first Star Wars film to actually make a new decision about the Star Wars universe since The Phantom Menace.

That's right: Star Wars has not had any major alterations to its fabric since George Lucas introduced the idea of midichlorians.

Oh, the prequels did some new things, but we knew the ultimate outcome: Anakin went bad, Obi-wan went into hiding, everyone else died.  Same with Rogue One.  The death of Han in The Force Awakens was a bit of a shock - but was blunted by the fact that Han had taken on the role of kind father figure to Rey, and ever since Ben Kenobi got cut down we all know what happens to father figures in the Star Wars universe.

Truthfully?  Star Wars has been on rails literally since Phantom Menace's credits rolled.  We knew the outcomes.  Things were safe.

Except for midichlorians.  Remember them?  They were the invisible.... germs... that were responsible for Force power.  Lucas said that the Force was basically a magical cold, and some people had a lot of midichlorians (which you could theoretically test for, like trichinosis), and that's why the Force worked.  No midichlorians, and you could never be a Jedi.

The fans hated that, too.  They liked the idea that anyone could be a Jedi.  They didn't like the idea that it was a genetic lottery that disproportionately rewarded specific people - hell, they got enough of that crap in high school.

And the interesting thing about fandom is that you can't really decide what elements of canon stick.  You can say it happened, but fandom has its own consciousness and culture - and if an element is too alien, fandom will quietly reroute around the damage.  As a creator you can keep pounding on that rogue element, trying to sell it to the fans - but if you do it too much, they'll walk away rather than swallow this stupid part of "canon."

Given time, your new addition to the canon will become a footnote.  Things will return to the normal people come to expect.

And so midichlorians became an embarrassing backwater.  They're not mentioned again in the new films, because everyone hated them.  In fact, The Last Jedi specifically craps all over the idea of midichlorians - thematically, if not specifically - by Luke saying the Force belongs to everyone, not just Jedi, and by the way here's a random inspired kid who's using the Force.  And Rey's a great Force user even though she's from nobody parents.

The Last Jedi is, in fact, in many ways a rebuttal to George Lucas's midichlorians.

Midichlorians didn't take.

And the fascinating question to me is whether this version of Luke takes.  He's already not stuck in this Luke-loving household - oh, we absolutely believe in the events that happened in The Last Jedi, because Luke's final battle kicks ass, but secretly Gini and I have come to believe that Luke didn't really do nothing after the second Death Star went down.  We've taken to covertly rewriting our personal Luke history to be more like the old Extended Universe, where Luke had a long and storied career of wandering around doing massively heroic things before settling down and fucking up his Jedi Academy.  (Which does seem like something Luke would do.)

In other words, I wonder whether Rian Johnson's version of Luke of that one-hit wonder will actually take root in the fandom.  It might. There's a lot of people who genuinely believe Luke was an idiot, and if so, you can keep that opinion to yourself because I don't share it.

But what I suspect might happen is that parts of fandom will quietly push back on this idea, so that it gets pushed back, the way that Jar-Jar's influence got trimmed back in Attack of the Clones and then to cameo in Revenge of the Sith.  I suspect that even if Episode IX doesn't have some hint that Luke wasn't entirely a loser friendless cave-dweller for the majority of his career, some future Star Wars project will demonstrate a Luke at the height of his powers, doing something, anything, other than "saving Vader and then doofing away the rest of his life on insignificant things."

And it may be that forty years from now, there's a movie that explicitly pushes back on the idea of Luke's isolation in some way.  Because there's a tradition that if you bring your heroes back they have to be broken - Han Solo died as a loser who frantically tried to replicate the waning thrills of his twenties (he wore the same jacket, and how sad is it when a seventy-year-old dude is dressing like the Star Wars equivalent of Hot Topic?), and Harry Potter turned out to have learned nothing from all his experiences in the stage play The Cursed Child.

I don't know whether this version of Luke will take in Star Wars fandom.  I suspect it'll get kicked around a bit, massaged, Luke showing up in the cartoon shows as some sort of guest-star badass (and it's not like Mark Hamill doesn't do fantastic voiceovers).  And I suspect if there's a Star Wars series where Rey shows up, her appearance will be in part a rebuttal to Luke's appearance here - because if you're a huge Rey fan, imagine that after Episode XI's credits roll she settles back in a Jakku-like world and sits around passively waiting for someone to get her.  If you don't like that, well, that's how many of us feel about Luke.

But I do know that what we're seeing right now is part of the great Star Wars debate: which parts get to be widely accepted, and which don't?  The beauty of Star Wars fandom is that Lucasfilm doesn't determine canon ultimately - that's dependent on the quality of the show and the fan reaction.  (If it wasn't for the magnificence of Clone Wars, I suspect the prequels would be a null zone that people rarely referenced.)

Rian Johnson said who Luke was.  But he doesn't get to decide that once and for all.  He might get there, but ultimately?

It's the fans who get to decide if his take on Luke is what they think really happened.  We all get to decide our own internal canon, the same way that many of us have shrugged off midichlorians.

Because you know what's important? Enjoying the movies in the way you want to.  And if that involves quietly skipping past the prequels, or midichlorians, or Luke as Lou Bega, well, I'm behind anything that makes Star Wars more fun for you.

As a non-Star Wars side note, I'm using LJ for Star Wars-related blogging because, well, it has cut-tags and my blog at theferrett.com doesn't. I've stopped cross-posting here because a) my cross-poster broke, and b) I'd been planning to sunset LJ anyway because I fundamentally disagree with LJ's new owners. And right after that, when I planned to discuss that because some people had emailed me, I've had some serious psychological issues where my social anxiety and blogging have intersected and I've not said much. (I'm in therapy now; let's hope it helps.)

Anyway, the point is, I may make another Star Wars post here or two in the future, but if you want to see me, follow me at theferrett.com. I'll probably start blogging again at some point, albeit at a much slower rate. Thanks for reading me and such.

In case you forgot, I’ll be at Borderlands Books (my favorite place in SF) at 3:00 pm this Saturday to read to you from my new book The Uploaded, sign whatever you put in front of me, and to, as usual, go out for hamburgers afterwards.

(And if you’re extra-special-good, I may do a super-secret advance MEGA-preview reading of The Book That Does Not Yet Have A Name. Not that, you know, you shouldn’t be rushing out to your stores to buy The Uploaded right now.)

I will, of course, bring donuts after my massive DONUT FAIL in Massachusetts, which I still wake up in cold sweats about. I will bring you donuts or die.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/589246.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

“I’m not up for sex,” she told me. “I’ve had a lot of medical issues lately. It’s more painful than not to even try.”

“Cool,” I said, and we spent the day going to a street festival.

I woulda liked sex. But life happens.

“I’m in the middle of my seasonal affective disorder,” I told her. “You show up, I might not be able to leave the house. I might just curl up and cry all day.”

“Cool,” she said, and I was pretty morose but we cuddled a lot and eventually managed to go out to dinner.

I woulda liked to have a working brain. But life happens.

“I’m not sure I can make it through this convention,” they told me. “My flare-ups have been really bad this season. I might not be able to go out with you in the evenings.”

“Cool,” I said, and I went out for little hour-long jaunts before heading back to the room to cuddle them, then charging out again to circulate.

I woulda liked to have them by my side when I hit the room parties. But life happens.

I’m a massively flawed human with a mental illness. I need to have poly relationships that include for the possibility of breakdowns. Because if I need to have a perfect day before I allow anyone to see me, I might wait for weeks. Months. Years. And then what the fuck is left by the time I get to see them?

I know there are people who need perfect visits. They have to have the makeup on when you visit them, and they’ll never fall asleep when they had a night of Big Sexy planned, and if they get out the toys there’s gonna be a scene no matter how raw anyone’s feeling.

But I can’t do that.

My relationships aren’t, can’t be, some idealized projection of who I want to be. If I’m not feeling secure that day, I can’t be with a partner who needs me to be their rock so the weekend proceeds unabated. And if they’re feeling broken, I can’t be with someone who needs to pretend everything is fine because their time with me is their way of proving what a good life they have.

Sometimes, me and my lovers hoped for a weekend retreat of pure passion and what we get is curling up with someone under tear-stained covers, holding them and letting them know they will not be alone come the darkness.

We cry. We collapse. We stumble. We don’t always get what we want, not immediately.

But we also heal. We nurture. We accept.

And in the long run, God, we get so much more.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/588826.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

I knew musicals could cheer me up, but I’d never heard of one that gave me new tools to deal with chronic illness and depression. Yet when I saw Groundhog Day last Wednesday, I was so stunned by what a perfect, joyous metaphor it was for battling mental illness that I immediately bought tickets to see it again that Saturday.

I would have told you about this before, but it was too late. The show closed on Sunday. A musical that should have run, well, for as long as Phil Connors was trapped in his endless time loop only got a five-month run.

But I can tell you about it.

I can tell you why this musical made me a stronger, better person.

———————————–

So let’s discuss the original Groundhog Day movie, which is pretty well-known at this point: Bill Murray is an asshole weatherman named Phil who shows up under protest to do a report from Punxatawney, Philadelphia on Groundhog Day. He’s trapped in town overnight thanks to a blizzard. When Phil wakes up the next morning, it’s Groundhog Day again. And again. And again.

Phil goes through several phases:

Incredulous as he can’t believe what’s happening to him;
Gleefully naughty as he uses his knowledge of people’s future actions to indulge all his greatest fantasies;
Frustrated as he tries to romance Rita, his producer, but he’s too cynical for her and nothing convinces her to hop in bed with him unless everyone else in town;
Depressed as he realizes that his life is shallow and there’s no way he can escape;
Perplexed as he tries to rescue a dying homeless man but realizes that nothing he can do on this day will save this poor guy;
And, finally, beatific as he uses his intense knowledge of everything that will happen in town today to run around doing good for people.

Naturally, that’s a great emotional journey. It’s no wonder that’s a story that’s resonated with people.

Yet Groundhog Day changes just one slight emotional tenor about this – and that change is massive.

Because when Bill Murray’s character gets to the end of his journey, he’s actually content. He’s achieved enlightenment where he enjoys everything he does, toodling around on the piano because he’s formed Punxatawney into his paradise. He laughs at people who ignore him. He’s satisfied.

And when Rita, who senses this change even though she doesn’t understand why, bids everything in her wallet to dance with him at the Groundhog Dance, the Bill Murray Phil is touched but also, on some level, serene.

Andy Karl’s Phil is not happy.

We spend a lot more time in Andy’s Phil’s headspace, and at one point he breaks down because of all the things he’ll never get to do – he’ll never grow a beard, he’ll never see the dawn again, he’ll never have another birthday. Anything he does is wiped away the next morning.

Bill Murray’s Phil gets so much satisfaction out of his constantly improving the town that his daily circuit has become a reward for him.

Andy Karl’s Phil is, on some level, fundamentally isolated. People will never know him – at least not without hours of proving to them that yes, he is trapped in this time loop, he does know everything about them.  No matter what relationships he forms, he’ll have  to start all over again in a matter of hours. There’s no bond he can create that this loop won’t erase.

And so when Rita finally dances with Bill Murray, it’s shown as a big romantic moment. And in the musical –

In the musical, Rita moves towards Phil and everything freezes in a harsh blue light except for Phil.

This is everything Phil has ever wanted in years, maybe decades, of being in this loop – and instead of being presented as triumphant, everything goes quiet and Phil sings a tiny, mournful song:

But I’m here

And I’m fine

And I’m seeing you for the first time

And the reason that brings tears to my eyes every fucking time is because this Phil is not fine – he repeats the lie in the next verse when he says he’s all right. Yet this is the happiest moment he’s had in years, finally understanding what Rita has wanted all along, and this moment too will be swept away in an endless series of morning wakeups and lumpy beds and people forgetting what he is.

Yet that mournful tune is also defiant, and more defiant when the townspeople pick it up and start singing it in a rising chorus:

I’m here

And I’m fine

Phil knows his future is nothing.

Yet that will not stop him from appreciating this small beauty even if he knows it will not stay with him. Trapped in the groundhog loop, appreciating the tiny moments becomes an act of rebellion, a way of affirming life even when you know this moment too will vanish.

Can you understand that this is depression incarnate?

Which is the other thing that marks this musical. Because I said there was joy, and there is. Because when Andy Karl’s Phil enters the “Philanthropy” section of the musical (get it?), he may not be entirely happy but he is content.

Because he knows that he may not necessarily feel joy at all times, but he has mastered the art of maintenance.

Because tending to the town of Punxatawney is a lot of work. He has to run around changing flat tires, rescuing cats, getting Rita the chili she wanted to try, helping people’s marriages. (And as he notes, “My cardio never seems to stick.”)

When Bill Murray’s Phil helps people, it seems to well up from personal satisfaction. Whereas Andy’s Phil is thrilled helping people, yes, but his kindness means more because it costs him. On some level he is, and will forever be, fundamentally numb.

This isn’t where he wanted to be.

Yet he has vowed to do the best with what he can. He helps the townspeople of Punxatawney because even though it is a constant drain, it makes him feel better than drinking himself senseless in his room. He doesn’t get to have everything he wanted – also see: depression and chronic illness – and it sure would be nice if he could take a few days off, but those days off will make him feel worse.

He’s resigned himself to a lifetime of working harder than he should for results that aren’t as joyous as he wanted.

And that’s okay. Not ideal, but…. okay.

Andy’s okay.

And I think the closest I can replicate that in a non-musical context is another unlikely source – Rick and Morty, where Rick is a suicidal hypergenius scientist who’s basically the Doctor if the Doctor’s psychological ramifications were taken seriously. And he goes to therapy, where a therapist so smart that she’s the only person Rick’s never been able to refute says this to him:

“Rick, the only connection between your unquestionable intelligence and the sickness destroying your family is that everyone in your family, you included, use intelligence to justify sickness.

“You seem to alternate between viewing your own mind as an unstoppable force and as an inescapable curse. And I think it’s because the only truly unapproachable concept for you is that it’s your mind within your control.

You chose to come here, you chose to talk to belittle my vocation, just as you chose to become a pickle. You are the master of your universe, and yet you are dripping with rat blood and feces, your enormous mind literally vegetating by your own hand.

“I have no doubt that you would be bored senseless by therapy, the same way I’m bored when I brush my teeth and wipe my ass. Because the thing about repairing, maintaining, and cleaning is it’s not an adventure. There’s no way to do it so wrong you might die.

“It’s just work.

“And the bottom line is, some people are okay going to work, and some people well, some people would rather die.

“Each of us gets to choose.

“That’s our time.”

And yes, Groundhog Day the musical is – was – about that lesson of maintenance, as Andy comes to realize that “feeling good” isn’t a necessary component for self-improvement, and works hard to make the best of a situation where, like my depression, even the best and most perfect day will be reset come the next morning.

And yes. There is a dawn for Andy’s Phil, of course, and he does wake up with Rita, and you get to exit the theater knowing that no matter how bad it gets there will come a joyous dawn and you get to walk out onto Broadway and so does Phil.

But you don’t get to that joy without maintenance.

And you might get trapped again some day. That, too, is depression. That, too, is chronic illness. We don’t know that Phil doesn’t get trapped on February 3rd, or March 10th, or maybe his whole December starts repeating.

But he has the tools now. He knows how to survive until the next dawn.

Maybe you can too.

—————————–

Anyway. There’s talk that Groundhog Day will go on tour, maybe even with Andy Karl doing the performances. He’s brilliant. Go see him.

The rest of you, man, I hope you find your own Groundhog Day. I saw mine. Twice.

Perhaps it’s fitting that it’s vanished.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/588567.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

As a reminder, I’ll be at Pandemonium Books and Games (which is an awesome store even in the absence of me) at 7:00 tomorrow to read to you, sign whatever you put in front of me, and probably go out for drinks and/or ice cream afterwards.

I hope to see you there! These donuts aren’t gonna eat themselves.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/588460.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

So this fall I’ll be premiering my “You’re Far Away But Your Hearts Are Close” class on running successful long-distance relationships. And to make that work, I gotta ask y’all:

What would you like to see taught in a class about long-distance relationships?

Some of the questions I’m planning on answering to the best of my ability are:

How can you tell if someone’s genuine online?
What are the best practices for transitioning from an LDR into a “real life” relationship?
How do you handle arguments when you’re not able to cuddle and heal properly afterwards?
How does New Relationship Energy affect LDRs?
What sorts of relationships can LDRs offer?

But the classes I teach are for you (especially if you’re attending The Geeky Kink Event, Beyond The Love, or Indegeo Conception this fall – so I ask you, “What issues with long-distance relationships would you like to see covered in an LDR class?” I can’t promise I’ll bring it up, but in the best case you might inspire an essay or two later on.

So. What sorts of long-distance relationship issues are you curious about?

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/588238.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

Salvatore doesn’t remember me.  I’d lay money on that.  I was merely one of his victims, and probably not the most interesting.

He terrorized an entire middle school, after all.

Salvatore won the adolescence lottery – while the rest of us were still waiting on deliveries of impending hormones, he got his testosterone nice and early, shooting up to six feet tall before he finished sixth grade.  He dwarfed teachers.  And he wore wifebeater shirts to show off his muscular arms and had one deep, bellowing call:

“OPEN CHEST!”

If Salvatore saw you, and you weren’t clutching books protectively to your chest, he would punch you in the chest as hard as he could.

I got hit twice.  All it took.

So I clasped my books against my chest like it was a baby, hunching my entire body around it, as did everyone else around me.  People in the halls scurried, because when Salvatore hollered his call even the teachers mysteriously disappeared.

I’m forty-eight years old.  It has literally been thirty-five years since I had to worry about Salvatore.

But my body has still not unclenched.

I know this because I’m in personal training right now, and they are panicked about my posture.  They point out all the muscles that have atrophied because I am a habitual slumper, the damage I’m doing to my spine.  They give me exercises specifically to strengthen my neck because my head hangs forward.

It’s been a month, and when I walk the dog, it’s now uncomfortable to slump.  I have too many aches in those clusters, so it’s easier to stand straight up with my spine properly aligned.

And I feel like an idiot.

I don’t have some crazy worry that Salvatore will appear out of nowhere and punch me – that’s the sort of simplistic one-to-one bullshit that bad writers think up.  No, Salvatore’s crumbled into a finer sediment.

What I feel when I walk properly straightened is foolish.  Because I grew up in a middle school where, because of Salvatore, “standing straight” was a form of pride.  Few kids stood up straight, and those that did usually got cut down something fierce by Salvatore, or had their own unique middle school qualities that made them unappealing to Salvatore’s form of bullying.

I’m not afraid of standing straight.  It feels preposterous.  I feel like people are staring at this idiot walking by with the puffed-out chest and the straight-ahead vision, this Frankenstein bodybuilder’s swagger, and who the hell does that guy think he is?

Yet when a photo of my recent book signing – which, I should add, I’m doing another one in Boston next week, and in San Francisco the week after – surfaced on Facebook, people didn’t recognize me at first.  “You’re looking a lot younger and you seem to be more comfortable standing,” said a friend who’s known me for a decade.  If people notice the way I’m standing, it’s probably a positive impression.

Yet there’s Salvatore.

And there’s all sorts of other memories churned up by walking properly.  I’m not craning my head down to see my feet, so I can’t see where I’m stepping directly, which makes me anxious because I had issues in gym class that caused me to self-identify as a clumsy kid and oh God I’m going to trip why am I walking like this.  I read while I walked on the way to school, and subconsciously I’m angling myself to read the book – or, now, the phone – that I should be looking at while I bumble along.

(Note that #2 contradicts #1.  The archaeology of my memories do not have to make sense when combined.)

And I’ve never thought about these.  It’s just ancient history silently bending me into another shape.  It’s only once I struggle to break free of this that I see how many influences I’ve quietly absorbed to make me believe that this is how I should be.

And I remember a friend of mine, when I told him, “We’re all controlled in part by subliminal impulses we don’t quite understand” and he said, confidently, “No.  Oh, no.  I know every reason I do everything.”  And I thought, even then, that this was a comforting lie he told himself in order to maintain the illusion that he was a being of pure rationality, because the alternative – that much of what we unconsciously decide is shaped by forces we had no control over – was terrifying to him.

But the truth is, we do have our own archaeologies.  Even something as simple as standing is the sum total of a thousand memories, and a few wrong inputs at the right time can change your position forever.

Imagine how complex it gets when it comes to relationships.  Or sex.  Or sex in relationships.

And that’s not to say that you’re powerless to fight these forces.  You’re only powerless if you deny their existence.  I’ve watched my rational, knows-everything friend make exactly the same mistakes across two divorces now, headed towards a third, in part because he can never see how his unconscious habits are undercutting his stated desires.

I’m not saying I’ll learn to stand properly.  This may be a lifelong battle, as it is with my weight, as it is with my mental health, as it is with my writing.  But it’s another tool I can use to battle back something harmful.

And I keep watch. I wonder what other aspects of myself got concretized without my ever knowing it.

I wonder what parts of me I get to dig up tomorrow and replant.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/588007.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

Kink and BDSM Podcast Off The Cuffs had me on to discuss what it’s like writing on FetLife, but somehow I wound up talking about the time I dumpster dove for porn.

Okay. Yeah. That’s on-brand.

But there’s some good meaty conversations involving questions like “How do you accept negative feedback when people are screaming at you?” and “What is the value of engaging with people who are clearly beyond being convinced?” and “How did you get into kink?” And there’s also a great Patreon level where for every dollar you donate, they hit their in-house masochist with a new toy.

So anyway. I’m rambling over here, perhaps too honestly. You can go listen.

And if you live in Cleveland, don’t forget I’m signing my new book The Uploaded at Loganberry books tonight! Show up and get free donuts! HOW COULD YOU GET A BETTER DEAL

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/587692.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.

I told my daughter there was only one skill you needed to perfect in life: Doing shit you don’t want to do.

“You get that one skill down, and you can master all the rest easily,” I told her.

Because it’s true. I don’t wanna exercise… but I’m doing the shit I don’t want to do. This novel’s a pain to write… but I’m doing the shit I don’t want to do. Work’s a bug-filled helltangle snarl this week…. but I’m doing the shit I don’t want to do.

I do those unwanted things because they make my life better: work gets me money to live well, writing gets me the career as a novelist I’ve longed for (hey did I mention I had a book come out yesterday?), and exercising keeps me from falling face-first dead into my minestrone soup.

I don’t have to necessarily like doing any of those things. Life’s full of maintenance tasks, little uncomfortable bits you need to do to keep the genuinely fun ones rolling.

I don’t have to want to do them, I just have to recognize that I need to do them.

“Working through jealousy” is a thing I do not want to do.

Now, I could remove the jealousy by removing all competition. We’re polyamorous, so I could tell my wife not to have any other lovers – but monogamous people often conveniently forget that dysfunctional relationships get jealous of anyone with a close emotional bond. I could start bumping her friends out of the way.  Hell, I know folks who are jealous of their spouse’s mother, and man, is that a fun place to be.

But I could trim all that down. I could have that Mike Pence rule where we agree not to ever be alone with anyone of a gender we could potentially be attracted to. I could guilt my wife into calling her daughters less often, punish her by sulkings and silence when she dared to call them. I could do my best to trim out the competition…

And life would suck in new and different ways, because my wife would be a lot unhappier and less willing to be generous to me and there we’d be, locked in a cage of our self-making.

No. My wife having a vibrant social life with close friends and lovers and relatives means that she brings back all sorts of interesting gossip and new movies to watch and just genuine happiness from seeing people she loves. And in turn, that makes her willing to let me go hang with the people I love.

So time to do the shit I don’t wanna do, and handle the jealousy when she’s out on a date with someone else. Maybe I go for a long walk. Maybe I flirt with someone else. Maybe I need to find a friend with a shoulder I can sob into.

Yet I’ve had well-meaning partners who’ve witnessed my mopiness and blackmailed me.

“I can’t stand seeing you unhappy,” they say. “So unless you can manage to become ecstatic about this, I’m going to lop off all the portions of my life that inconvenience you.”

Don’t you fucking dare.

Look. Part of who I am is “occasionally insecure.” And the partners who try to blackmail me into joy mean well – because they don’t feel jealousy, and they genuinely believe that if they did everything right then I’d dissolve into a cloud of brightly-colored butterflies and do the dance of the galactic unison.

That’s not me.

I’m insecure, but I do my best to own it. And over years of dating, I’ve learned that for me, the choice is “Swallow back some insecurity from time to time” or “Wall off my partner’s options until they’re so miserably captive they break out and leave me.”

I choose to swallow back some insecurity because it’s objectively the better call. I spend a few mopey nights, but in return I get a jazzed-up partner who adores me and comes bouncing back into the room to squirt love all over me and who doesn’t want that?

And I know you mean well, but telling me “I can’t do anything until you’re not just willing, but rhapsodic about it” is a form of emotional blackmail. I mean, sure, if I’m so constantly miserable that our relationship dynamic becomes entirely about reassuring my insecurities? Then maybe it’s time to go, because that shiz is unhealthy. You can’t have all misery.

But I can’t have all happiness, myself. Life can be fulfilling for me and I can still have those nights of “You go have a date, I’ll find some way to compensate for my loneliness this evening.” Because that’s normal, man. Nobody likes sitting at home alone when there’s fun times that you can’t attend.

(And that subtle “YOU MUST BE HAPPY” emotional blackmail often extends into the twisted logic of “WELL THEN MY PARTNERS ARE INVITED TO ALL THE FUN TIMES” and the concomitant “We only date as a couple” shitfall that often leads to forcing attractions that don’t actually work and third-wheel syndrome and the terror of disappointing your partner by not being into someone… but that’s a whole other essay for another time.)

But no. Look. My life is filled with shit I don’t want to do, that I do do because the payoff’s greater than the grump. I don’t like being frumpy and jealous, but the reward for handling the occasional discomfiting emotion responsibly is way better than creating a relationship that rests entirely on a thin crescent of our Least Common Denominator.

And I know you mean well. But don’t try to armwrestle my emotional maintenance into unfettered joy. It’ll just make me more miserable because now I’ll feel like something’s broken within me as opposed to this grungy task I gotta do to clear the pipes.

I would instead suggest, tentatively, that perhaps your learning to not require paroxysms of euphoria with my every acceptance is the shit you gotta do that you don’t wanna.

Maybe get to work on that.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

This entry has also been posted at http://theferrett.dreamwidth.org/587485.html. You can comment here, or comment there; makes no never-mind by me.