Sharing Random Thoughts

Posted on by Dawnrigger

I’ve slid into a bad blogging habit, which is treating this space as a place for Bigger Ideas. It’s not an inherently bad idea, but most of my thoughts aren’t Big or Exciting or Happy. They’re small, ephemeral, personal ponderings.

Or rants.

The tally of my petty rants–drafted but not posted–is well into double digits. I rant on subjects like “How did I waste this whole day?” or “WTF shut UP about my NAME already!” and no one else needs to read the whininess I simply need to get out of my head.

Back to today’s meander. It feels even more petty and unimportant than usual to write about my little life when so many Large Important Events are happening and so many people have Much More Important Things to Say.

And yes, I could leave the blog to languish. The problem with that plan is that if I ignore this virtual space for too long it taps hard on my guilt button. Or rubs at the surface of my attention and leaves blisters. Or gnaws on my mental ankle like a hungry cat. Pick your favorite analogy.

(I’m in an analogy mood today. I love the days when metaphors are easy. And parentheses. It’s a parenthetical day too.)

ANYway. I feel bad if I don’t regularly use all the different spaces in my house, too, so it’s clearly something fundamental in my psychology.

This is my usual long way around to the point, which is that I don’t actually HAVE a point today

Attractive topics are not thick on the ground. I don’t want to bore anyone with another same-old writing update (progress is being made, but it’s glacial & hard to quantify) the house fancification is done, the garden is in an early summer “nothing to see here” phase, I haven’t baked anything interesting, and I haven’t found the right words for dealing with my feels on the Current World Situation.

Plus every time I check the internet I’m reminded all Karens are awful, which reinforces my already powerful belief that the world neither needs nor wants to hear from me. It also feels physically like someone has just kicked me hard in the gut, so that’s fun.

It’s a struggle to convince myself to share anything. And by struggle I mean the kind of struggling you do when you’re walking forward against hurricane-force winds while people beat on you with sticks.

(This has been a digression into a small sample of the rants I write when I’m crying offline. Sorrynotsorry. We now return to the regular program.)

In summary: I wanted to say, “Hello, world!” via blog because it’s been too long since I last posted. And now I have done that. Victory is mine! Check box checked!

I’ll try to prevent more large time gaps from developing, even if I only have more Small Thoughts or stray dream snippets.

Until later!

Two random thoughts

Posted on by Dawnrigger

…because I am awake at ridiculous o’clock  (thank you, abrupt weather changes, for these fantastic joint aches and this fabulous itch-behind-the-eyes headache-ish thing that cancelled my sleep after only two hours)

AND I’m behind on blogging, so here I am, filling time and space.

Random thing the first: a realization about genderthink

It all started way back when I read Anne Leckie’s Imperial Radch series. It blew my mind in several ways, all excellent and glorious.  The biggest impression it left was the foundational nature of gendering assumptions.  It was HARD wrapping my brain around the default pronoun being she/her. Such a simple concept was far more difficult to process than I anticipated.  WORTH IT, though. Such a good book.

The read cut and polished new facets into my worldview.

Most of my life, when I saw an identifier like, “his cousin,” in a book I was reading, I would assume that cousin was male until given a name or other information that indicated otherwise.  And to be honest, if it was a side character, or a bit player, no such information would ever be offered. So in my mind, all the random NPCs in fiction ended up being male by default.

That doesn’t happen any more. In the last few years my default assumption has changed to female.  I noticed this reading something today where cousins were referenced several times before being gendered. Learning they were boys jarred me right out of the narrative. I had just assumed…a completely opposite assumption than in the past.

A lot of terms do not require or include gender (like cousin, or manager, accountant, neighbor or staffer versus aunt or uncle, ) There’s zero reason to default to a male identity other than cultural expectations. And expectations can change.

I’ve got no conclusion here, it’s just a thing I noticed.

Random idea the second: why isn’t mothering a job?

What would the world be like if we treated mothering as an activity rather than a gender-chained identity?  I fear I’m missing some huge meaningful Spiritual aspect of Motherhood or inadvertently insulting millions by asking that question,  but there it is.

There’s a lot of mystical, magical malarkey associated with being “A MOM” that seems to only apply when the job is done by a FEMALE presenting person. And I don’t think perpetuating those ideas is good or healthy for anyone with a mothering gig.

Maybe I’m missing something here, but mothering is a set of definable actions.**  Mothering is a thing one does. It doesn’t even entirely require a child, although I would submit that is the prime example of it. Strip away the cultural gender baggage, and the whole thing gets much simpler and healthier.

So I’m amusing myself picturing a world where Mother or Mom is a just a job title meaning “person or persons whose social role is primary child nurturer.”  This also creates an opening for Father/Dad to be an action-defined role too. Maybe it becomes the term for the secondary nurturer or nurturers–the one or ones who nurture the primary child nurturer, for example, or contribute to the social unit in other ways.

(I’ll leave details to someone more clever and well-rested than I feel right now.)

This random thought was sparked by reading an article on “stay at home dads” and the different expectations placed on them, and thinking to myself, hang on, how much of this whole problem is the labeling? If their primary job is taking care of the kids, the meals, the wash, the home finances, the scheduling and so on, then they’re doing the mom job, so why aren’t they stay-at-home-moms?

And I suspect the answer is, “That would make too many people feel unmanly.” Which kinda indicates there’s gender-baggage, and that’s why it tickles my imagination to ponder a world where a dude proudly calls himself Mom, and a woman answers to Dad.

ANYway.

Totally random stuff. And that’s all there is, so I’ll wrap it here.  G’night. Or good morning. Whatever.

 

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and here is a random chicken image.

**Yes, any activity or job can also be an identity, but the dangerous nature of tying identity to specific work is a topic for a whole ‘nother post.

 

Random thinky-thought

Posted on by Dawnrigger

I’m testing out a new approach to my work/life balance: ranking comfort & happiness higher than Greater Productivity.

It feels strangely subversive, even radical, to take care of myself first, to rest when I’m exhausted, to do what feels good, even if that means not doing a thing.

“No pain, no gain,” is the mantra of the modern world, and our culture shouts, “You Are What You Make/Do/Consume” from every platform. “How much have you made?” is the standard metric for measuring value.

It’s HARD to stop treating time like it’s a commodity to be spent, to stop asking “what have I got to show for it?” as a measure of an activity’s value.

All those lessons on The Intrinsic Value Of Hard Work I absorbed growing up? They’re not easy to set aside.
But I’m trying.
Because…I kinda like it.

Also, there’s the part where my joints are enforcing the slowdown by flat-out REFUSING TO FUNCTION if I push them too hard, so there’s that.

The shoulders and wrists and hips and suchlike gotta last me a few more decades, so if protecting them means I write less, lift & haul less, DO less, then well…then I will practice enjoying what I can do with ‘unproductive’ time. There’s a lot I can do. “Stay active but be more careful” covers a lot of ground.

And yes, I’m aware of how lucky I am to be in a position where I can choose to do less and still continue to eat, have a roof overhead etc. Yeah. Gratitude is a thing too.

Anyway. It was on my mind, now it’s on the blog.

Until later.