theferrett

My poly bureaucracy creeps slow. Very slow. This is for my wife and girlfriend’s protection, because I am a dumbass.

See, I have a tendency of assuming that emotional intimacy == compatibility. Yes, it feels wonderfully cozy that we share all of these fears and concerns and relationship patterns, and finding your most sensitive feelings reflected in someone else is a beautiful thing.

The problem is that I’m fucking crazy. So finding someone I really resonate with immediately? It usually means they’re as bad as I am, and that we’re actually going to exacerbate each others’ issues.

I’ve been known to dive head-first into relationships without checking for compatibility first, just sort of assuming that because we have A Connection it’s going to work out. Then, after months of daily fights, me wringing my hands 24/7 about WHY WON’T SHE UNDERSTAND, and an eventual slow death by slices, I’ve learned that I need to spend more time getting to know people before I start getting committed…. if only so my wife isn’t obligated to play psychotherapist for me when things turn sideways.

So there’s a six-month cooldown time in place, where we can make out but not have Teh Sexx0r… and usually that cooldown time stretches to nine months, or even a year, as we just take it slow and not rush getting permissions.

The big question is, why don’t I find this limitation confining?

Part of it is, of course, is that I chose this lifestyle. This isn’t an externally-produced ruleset, created in a process tantamount to blackmail; it’s one I helped shape, because after a series of four disastrous relationships that imploded messily across my poly web, I took an honest look and said, “Okay, that’s a bad pattern, what’s a potential fix?”

But more importantly, sex is the least important bit for me.

Don’t get me wrong; anyone who’s ever made out with me will tell you that I’m passionate as hell. But sex is something that’s common; particularly in the kink communities, it’s not particularly difficult to get. If you’re open about your desires, reasonably personable, and are sapiosexual as I am, you’ll have a lot of options.

What I can’t get elsewhere is you.

Sure, maybe I’ll spend nine months hanging out with you on our once-a-month dates, getting to know each other… but that’s the best part. For me, “getting to know people” is an activity I find desirable in and of itself. Chatting, snuggling, dining out… that’s all stuff I like. And the level of flirtation/innuendo is a beautiful spice for that.

If and when we eventually hook up, that’s gonna be a wondrous new layer to what we share, and not the entirety of it. So I’m perfectly okay waiting for that to happen, since that is far from the whole reason I’m here.

I’m in no rush.

So yeah, it’s a long time. It’s not a process I’d recommend as standard for most poly groups. But that’s the glory of poly relationships: there’s no objective set of rules. What would be insanely restrictive for one set of people is actually a wise and stabilizing force in ours, just as what would be joyous freedom for some couples would actually cause harm if I tried it at this time in my life.

But does it matter if my rules would work for you? Lemme repeat: if it’s working for you and the people you’re dating, then it’s great.

This glacial proceeding helps me to choose better partners, and keeps my wife and girlfriend happier (even as neither of them are bound by this six-month rule), and hopefully the people I’m dating in this slow process are still happy to see me even if I’m not whipping out Little Elvis yet.

It’s an approach. Because there’s no the approach. And there never will be a the approach as long as humans are varied creatures with differing needs.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

oddeefeed

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postsecret

http://www.postsecret.com/2013/05/sunday-secrets_18.html

 

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theferrett

Eventually, if you’re trying to make it as a writer, you’re going to despair.  You can’t write well enough. This story will never sell.  If you do sell it, it’ll never be popular.

This terrible feeling like you’re just wasting your time and nobody cares happens, absurdly enough, to very popular writers.  It happens to nobodys.  It happens to writers, period.  If you’re putting words down and trying to get people to read them, there will be times you’ll want to take everything you wrote, set it on fire, and then fling yourself in to burn with it.

Here is what you do when those down days come: you write more.

Took a nasty rejection straight to the sternum?  Write more.

Had a confidence-shredding bad review?  Write more.

This grand story in your head is completely beyond your ability to commit it to the page?  Write more.

This terrible book you’re reading made millions, and your better work can’t find a home?  Write more.

Feel like you’re a fraud who’s somehow lucked out when better writers languish behind you?  Write more.

Your favorite author just told you he abhorred what you wrote? Write more.

The thing about writing is that so much of it comes down to tenacity.  The most popular writers in the world can all tell you about this fellow they knew when they were starting out, a colleague who could write stories that would charm the petals from a rose… and yet these natural geniuses didn’t stick with it.  They either let life swamp them, or couldn’t stand the rejections, or didn’t feel like it.  And these magnificently talented people never became Writers, because for whatever reason they never pushed through.

It’s not that they weren’t very good.  It’s just that they stopped knocking on doors.  While the writer you’ve heard of kept ringing doorbells until she got an answer.

So pushing through is what you need to do.  Write when you’re sad.  Write when you’re busy.  Write when you’re uninspired.  Write when you’re utterly consumed with the idea that you cannot do this.  Learn to take all of that despondence and to transform it into beauty, for writing in the throes of despair will do two things: when you are writing sad scenes, you will have so many more emotions to cram into it, and when you are writing happy scenes, you will be forced to emulate joy. One will make for better writing, the other will elevate your mood.

The truth is, though I’ve written in both despair and elation, I can’t really tell which mood I was in when I go back to revise.  You must learn to write without hope.  Keep creating through those dry spells, keep sending out stories during the rejections; decouple your personal contentment from your creative muse and make that bitch dance for you.  She’ll be clumsy at first, foolish… but with time, you can make her do the most elaborate pirouettes when you’re barely able to move off the couch.

In fiction, there’s often a plot sequence: Try/fail, try/fail, try/succeed.  In real life, there may be a hundred try/fails before you get to that succeed.  But you’ll never know unless you stay in that execution loop.

Write.

Write more.

And then write more still.

(Inspired by Catherine Schaff-Stump’s Writers and Despair.)

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

theferrett

Just discovered: I could pretty much ruin any woman’s day when she’s about to leave the house by asking, “Oh, you’re going out like that?” and then muttering that it’s fine, it’s fine.

I just said that to Erin hypothetically, and she knows I didn’t even mean it, and she’s still itching to change her clothes.

(Cue tides of women saying that they’re above that. You may thank me for making you feel superior.)

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

danouche

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theferrett

In the end, this Star Trek is... not that Star Trekky.  The old Star Trek wrestled mightily with matters of theme and morality: the reason Star Trek II was so popular was because it asked, "What happens when you can't win the Kobayashi Maru?  What happens when you're old?"  This new Star Trek asks, "What happens when a violent terrorist - oh, wait, PLOT TWIST!  Oh, look at that!  Boom!  Cool!  And... hey, duty, isn't it great?"  It just moves too fast to really actually ask or answer any questions.  It is, like The Avengers, utilizing clever one-liners in lieu of actual characterization, which is witty and fun and does not lend itself to anything more than cartoon characters.

Which isn't a big ding.  I mean, it's a big-ass summer movie.  But the Star Trek concept has been watered down to fit in our popcorn, and it's satisfying enough.  This may actually be a better thing on the whole, as the failure mode of Star Trek is BLAH BLAH MORALITY, and when Star Trek fails it becomes sludgy and preachy.  This new Star Trek may fail at some point, at which point it'll basically degrade to Transformers... which, from a Hollywood perspective, is actually preferable.

(Fun Fact: Damon Lindehoff actually wanted to call it Star Trek: Transformers 4, which as he noted "Was technically available."  He was joking, but I think there's more than a little acknowledgement that this new Star Trek is intended to be a blockbuster first, Star Trek second.)

I'm not saying that Into Darkness is bad.  It's a notch below Iron Man 3, which I loved.  It's a fun movie, and I'd encourage you to go see it.  If you're a Star Trek fan, well, it's Star Trek Lite, and that's still a big hoopla, and they even throw in old references to make it work.

In short: it works. You'll probably be happy if you go see it.  Benedict Cumberbatch is very Benedict Cumberbatchy, and Chris Pine does an excellent job channeling Kirk.  And there's no need to stay through the credits, as there is no Shwarma.

This is all you need to know.  Now go buy your tickets.

theferrett

I fricking love getting my stories read at Escape Pod – the narrators there are so good, the forums so full of awesome feedback, and there’s just something beautiful about hearing words I wrote become part of an old-time radio show.  So my singularity-as-horror tale “Dead Merchandise” is up – and the people at Escape Pod seem to be digging it, thus far.

In case you need a sample, it follows:

The ad-faeries danced around Sheryl, flickering cartoon holograms with fluoride-white smiles. They told her the gasoline that sloshed in the red plastic canister she held was high-octane, perfect for any vehicle, did she want to go for a drive?

She did not. That gasoline was for burning. Sheryl patted her pockets to make sure the matches were still there and kept moving forward, blinking away the videostreams. Her legs ached.

She squinted past a flurry of hair-coloring ads (“Sheryl, wash your gray away today!”), scanning the neon roads to find the breast-shaped marble dome of River Edge’s central collation unit. River’s Edge had been a sleepy Midwestern town when she was a girl, a place just big enough for a diner and a department store. Now River’s Edge had been given a mall-over like every other town — every wall lit up with billboards, colorful buildings topped with projectors to burn logos into the clouds. She was grateful for the dark patches that marked where garish shop-fronts had been bombed into ash-streaked metal tangles.

The smoke gave her hope. Others were trying to bring it all down — and if they were succeeding, maybe no one was left to stop her.

Anyway, you can listen to it here.  It’s about thirty-five minutes.  And another great production, but I’d expect no less from the ‘Pods.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

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ursulav

So, if you haven’t already read Hyperbole and a Half’s absolutely brilliant write-up about severe depression, go forth and read. I’ll wait.

How ’bout that, huh?

I was talking to Kevin about the post (we’re both fans, and have both had our own bouts with depression) and as I was talking, I realized that before I had my particular breakdown, two people had said something to me—two people, one of whom I don’t know, one of whom said one word—and those two people had a profound impact on my experience with depression.

One was good, one was bad.

The first—the good one—was my doctor. When I’d gone in for my checkup after my divorce, when I was getting all the medical stuff done fast before I went off my ex-husband’s insurance, she asked me if I needed antidepressants.

I told her no, that I was fine, because it hadn’t occurred to me that what was happening wasn’t fine, if that makes any sense. Yes, I couldn’t sleep and was sobbing a lot, but I was getting a divorce! I’d moved out! Random sobbing and epic insomnia are normal in that circumstance! It’d be weird if I wasn’t miserable and irrational!

That’s what I was thinking, anyhow. I don’t know how coherently I expressed any of that, but she looked at me over the clipboard and said “Uh-huh. Well, call me if that changes, and we’ll get you started on something right away. It’s a lot easier to start it now than when you’re at the bottom of a hole you can’t get out of.”

I can’t say that this phrase saved my life, because I’ve never had suicidal tendencies (the closest I ever got was a profound hope that the atheists were right and I eventually wouldn’t have to deal with this any more) but it sure as hell saved me a lot of time and grief.

It normalized everything. It made it a medical problem. It still took me awhile to figure out that a lot of things were probably linked to depression (insomnia, say!) but when I finally broke, at some point what I thought was “Oh, hey! I’m at the bottom of that hole she warned me about! I will call my doctor. She will fix it.”

(And may Ganesh give her every blessing known to nurse practitioners, because she handled it like a pro. “Oh, no! Okay…okay…yes, that’d be anxiety.” (I believe I said “Oh! Is that what that is? Neat!” because even in a hole, I am still fundamentally me.) “Now where are you? Let’s find the nearest pharmacy, and I’ll call in what I can over state lines. Come in as soon as you’re back in NC.”)

If she hadn’t said that one sentence, I would have floundered around for ages, trying to do the brain chemistry equivalent of fixing a broken leg through the power of positive thinking. But she did say it and so when I finally realized what was going on—”Hey! This is a nervous breakdown!”—I didn’t go through any of the stages of trying to figure out how you treat that or was it bad enough or whatever, because she had set the stage.

Thank god.

The other person was…well, less helpful. And I don’t know her name and couldn’t pick her out of a line-up, but I still feel a vague bitterness toward her, because when I was newly moved out of my house and away from my garden, I went to a local garden center to ask what I could grow in pots in the shade of a building–real, true, deep dry shade, in permanent shadow.

She curled her lip and said “Plastic.”

I know I tried asking a few questions, and maybe she suggested ivy or something, but it ended quickly and she walked off with the you-are-wasting-my-time air. And I, in innocent despair, believed her and went home and didn’t garden again until I moved in with Kevin.

I know perfectly well WHY I believed her—I was depressed and getting a divorce and leaving one of the cats with him and it made total sense that of course something else I loved was going to be taken from me, because that was just how life was going to be. But I do wish I’d cracked a book open, because, as it happens, she was incredibly wrong.

I mean, jeez, I had flowerpots, I could have done ferns. Impatiens. Sedges. I could have grown moss, if nothing else. If I didn’t feel like watering, there are epimediums and cast iron plant and any number of things. Meehania will grow in a dark closet. (Fine, that’s obscure, I can’t blame her for missing that one. But I could have taken up growing mushrooms, for cryin’ out loud!)

There’s no knowing what road you don’t walk down, of course, but that definitely slowed my recovery. Gardening is what I DO. I say “I’m a gardener,” as often as I say “I’m an artist.” Gardening is where I feel the most like myself. (Art is where I don’t actually notice myself, if that makes any sense.) If I’d been digging around, I think I would have been much more resilient. (And by “resilient” I may mean “would have put grow-lights all over the living room and been living in a jungle” because if that had occurred to me, I expect I would have done it in a heartbeat.)

Plus there’s that one soil bacteria that gives your serotonin levels a boost, which is not to be sneezed at when one is fighting chemical wars inside one’s skull.

So I don’t know. Life is better now and both these things have largely faded, but Hyperbole reminded me. Much like single pieces of corn.

(Mind you, at the time I found duck decoys pretty damn hysterical…)

Originally published at Tea with the Squash God. You can comment here or there.

someposifeed

http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp05162013.shtml

slutbunwalla

Yes, I've finally started just picking out some therapists from a search on the psychology today website. "CBT" was one of the search terms. I have been dragging my feet, thinking things like,"obviously a therapist that's working on S.I. Cannot get their shit together enough to get off this damn rock. But looking for someone in the city is a bad idea because they are more expensive, and there are so many more to sift through, and lets face it part of my problem is getting myself out of the house.
But if they have that S.I. accent it won't work for me. I know I'm being prejudiced but I have vetoed some on their last name (Italian) or if they look like typical S.I.
Also if they mention spirituality... One otherwise interesting profile included that she uses Reiki and " soul work" ::shivers:: no thanks. Although I know that meditation is probably helpful in general...
Anyway I sent off a couple emails, telling them what I'm looking for, and if they would be the right fit, or if they could point me towards a place/person that would.
It's weird to just pick people out, not get some kind of referral from someone else, but that method hasn't met with much success in the past, anyway.
I'm really ready to move on, man. I know it's going to require a lot more energy output and focus, but that's better than just being miserable all the time.

There was more to this, but it seems to have disappeared. Clusterfuck 7 problems...

theferrett

Sometimes, you get a rare gift, but don’t recognize it for what it is.

Kitchen Nightmares is a show that specializes in dysfunction.  The pattern is standard: world-renowned chef Gordon Ramsay shows up to a failing restaurant, meets some owners who are in deep denial about some aspect of their business (usually the terribly food), and yells and cajoles them until they come around.  (Most of the restaurants fail within three years after Gordon’s makeovers – but then again most restaurants period close within three years, and all of these guys would have been out of business within months without Gordon’s help, so I generally consider Gordon to be a good bet.)

Now, nobody cares about the food in the American Kitchen Nightmares – it’s all about the crazy people.  The owners are each uniquely bollixed – overly-proud, self-taught chefs insisting that the customers love their octopus slides, sad sacks who’ve given up after discovering that the restaurant life isn’t the easy money they thought it was, chefs claiming that pub food is Steak Wellington and wondering why their customers keep asking for burgers.  The array of people in denial on Kitchen Nightmares is a fascinating microcosm in all the ways that a personality can kill a business.

But this week?  They found the mother lode.

Amy’s Baking Company Bakery, Boutique, and Bistro – yes, it has all those names – had one of the most magnificent Facebook meltdowns ever after appearing on Kitchen Nightmares, and being the only business ever who Gordon Ramsay – one of the most stubborn personalities on television – actually walked away from because he couldn’t get through to them.

Amy and Samy, the owners, greeting Chef Ramsay by imploring him to help them against the “lying bloggers” who were spreading bad reviews about their restaurant.  The problem was not their food – it was that they didn’t have someone like Gordon Ramsay to vouch for them.  And they routinely yelled at customers, telling people who complained to fuck off, we don’t want your business, a fact both shown on television and in their customer’s reviews.  They’d literally scream at someone loud enough that everyone in the joint would turn to find them.

The problem was that their “real customers” loved their food.  Anyone who complained was not a “real customer.”  And they both became frenzied, like snapping chihuahuas, because how could so many people misunderstand them?  If they just got the word out past these local yokels, got real chefs on their side, then the world would understand.  The problem was not that they were being irrational, it was that they weren’t reaching the right people.

Which is a common dysfunction.  You know, if the world could see what we did, people would agree with us!  The problem is you!

And hence, Amy and Samy got a very rare gift: the world saw what they did.

Hundreds of thousands of people saw them act up on Kitchen Nightmares – where, yes, it’s a show that emphasizes conflict, but at the very least they still willingly hounded customers out to the street on camera – and then watched them argue on the Internet.  And in fact, pretty much nobody agreed with them.  We all thought that Samy and Amy were awful people for withholding tips from their waitresses, for firing a hundred people over the course of a year, for being brittle and awful human beings.

How many people get that opportunity, really?  To have their reality tested so thoroughly?  Sure, you can say that folks would agree with you if they only knew the truth, but how often does that happen?  They have empirical evidence now that what they’re doing is childish, alienating, and unlikable!

Of course, that opportunity doesn’t actually work.  They’ll find more excuses.  That’s largely what humans are: excuse-hunting machines.

But honestly, it’s a strange and beautiful test of their delusions: they got exactly what they wanted.  And now they’ll manufacture reasons why it wasn’t exactly what you wanted, if things had just gone a little different then Samy and Amy would be drowning in flowers and sympathy.  They’ll show they have a truly world-class psychosis, one that can withstand all of America scorning them.

I feel a little sorry for them, as I do anyone who attracts the ire of the Internet.  But in this case?  It’s also a fascinating look at how darned intense denial can get.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

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