You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘personal’ category.
This sorta stuff is what makes or breaks relationships. Have you ever caught yourself doing the actions they just mentioned in a video like this? I just did.
Let me tell you a story, but first watch the video .
Pretty high on the useful emotional educational chart if you ask me. But back to my promised anecdote.
This happened not even a week ago – I do my blogging on the weekends, and schedule a week’s worth of posts in a batch – so really this happened today, but in the past when you, gentle readers, get to partake.
My weekend job starts at 7:30am every Saturday and Sunday. When I’m feeling particularly responsible I like to get to bed before 11pm, as we all know getting enough sleep sets one up for at least a semi-productive day. Of course, this Friday was not the case. For some reason the allure of watching an poorly animated Batman featurette trumped my getting to bed before pumpkin time. So, I’m shortening the length of my sleep on the front end – why? – because I’m an idiot some evenings.
My partner, who goes by The Intransigent One (TIO) here on DWR does not work on the weekends and thus can sleep in. All is well and good, except that *this* morning for whatever reason – dust, allergies, the moon, etc.- she begins snoring at about 5:50am. Now, gentle readers, it is almost always a question of magnitude when it comes to the disruption caused by one partner or the other when they bust out the fortissimo eupneic overtures.
It was kinda like this:
Anyhow. I was upset because my morning just got a lot earlier and now in hindsight I realize that I had passed squarely into the Blame zone as indicated in the Dr.Brown video. Was I thinking about the sort of night TIO was having? Nope, nope, nope. I was mad, and turned off the empathy for what may have caused her snoring and focused on blaming her regardless of the context of the situation.
I was mad. I left the lights on in the bedroom (sadly we have to do that now as we begin to tilt away from the sun, I really enjoy the 6am dawn) after I put my clothes on and proceeded to prepare my lunch and gather my computer for work.
Looking back now it is like: Holy Passive-Aggressive Batman! And over what? – 45 minutes of sleep. :(
It is that easy to turn off your connection to the one you love and treasure most in the world. You would think that after taking the p-sychology courses and a fairly steady diet of sociological/psychological reading one would be able to stop shit like that in its tracks.
I wish.
But back to the story, I look forward to going home, apologizing for being a doofus, and then having a nice nap to catch up on what I missed this morning.
Nap time and snuggles incoming! :)
All will be well once again. :)
How I (mostly) feel about video games
I grew up playing with Barbies and reading books, and didn’t really use a computer for anything other than basic word processing until around the turn of the century. On top of that, I have really bad hand-eye coordination, and not great depth perception, so simulated 3D environments just break my brain. In other words, video games are not something at which I’m primed for success. I’ve never made it past the first hole you have to jump over in the original Mario game. Ever.
Arb really enjoys video games, and over our years together, he’s tried to get me involved. I end up getting stuck in a door or falling off a cliff repeatedly or getting lost or just getting shot a lot and having no idea where I’m getting shot from. (On one memorable occasion, it was Arb shooting me in the back, running in a circle around me and keeping just ahead of me awkwardly spinning around trying to see what was happening.) And then I get mad and quit.
Now, I’m trying again. Read the rest of this entry »
The front flowerbed at Arb’s and my place is starting to take off – perennials that I’ve planted over the couple years we’ve owned the house, are established enough now, that they can dedicate some energy to blooming! Of course, weather that’s good for flowers is also good for weeds, and our weed crop is plentiful, so I was out pulling weeds yesterday evening.
Working in the front yard is not a peaceful and relaxing experience for me. I feel self-conscious about bending over with my back to the street and my butt in the air and often get into weird positions trying to avoid it. I’m on edge and there’s a constant stream of snarky comebacks and verbal self-defense going on in my head, along with self-pep-talks about how this is my yard and I have the right to be in it and what I look like while doing yardwork is nobody’s business.
Why?
In a word: men.
Like last night when a carload of young men appeared seemingly out of nowhere, yelled something about my fat ass, and peeled out with a screech of tires and raucous laughter.
This shit doesn’t happen super-often – not every time I’m out in the front yard, for example. But it’s often enough that anticipating it and steeling myself against it, takes a non-negligible portion of my mental CPU cycles. It doesn’t matter that not every man who passes by harasses me, and that in general not all men harass women. Enough men harass women often enough, that being on guard against it is an almost-constant thing you do, if you’re a woman.
Greetings and good day gentle readers. It is that time of year again where we talk about changing patterns during the holiday season and bemoan the rampant commercialization of Christmas. I have to admit I have a poorly kept secret. I don’t give holiday presents anymore. Instead all the people who are near and dear to me get a card and a message that, in their name, a Turkey has been donated to a family in need.
Let me assure you, it is a great tradition to start. I recommend you start your tradition of giving this very year – because everyone wins if people don’t go hungry.
The Turkey Drive starts today! So yes, so go to the cbc.ca website and start the donating, early and often :)
I won’t guarantee Holiday Happiness, but helping others is a great place to start.
I think so much at once kinda sucks. 20cm and still accumulating…
The view from my front window.
This is a post based on a personal experience. The general topic of the sexist nature of video game culture can be found here.
As of late, I’ve been on a bit of League of Legends binge; a fact the Intransignet One can well attest. The problem with League of Legends (LoL) is that the competitive aspects of the game makes it very rewarding to win and thus, difficult to not to play. It is a strategic game based on skillful play and teamwork – it rewards the teams that communicate and work together. Thus, voice over IP in the competitive stream, provides a definite leg up on those who do not use voice communication.
Ah the glories of voice communication… it exposes one to other gamers with different backgrounds and social experiences and therein lies the problem. What do you do when one of your teammates, as a part of their regular vocabulary, uses the word ‘rape’ to describe what is happening in game?
As in: “We are raping hard right now!” as a descriptor of our team doing very well or, “we’re getting raped” when we happen to be losing.
Here is where I pause because I’m stuck and I know I should not be. Rape is traumatic, horrible crime that should not be normalized in gamer talk. Yet, when I was confronted with it, I sat passively by and said nothing (tacit acceptance, if you’re keeping score). There were five people chatting and they noted that those darned Canadians were a quiet polite lot. Little did they know the social struggle going on within me.
The pressure to accept the normalized use of the word rape was stifling as it would mean, on my behalf, requesting that said individuals please refrain from using that terminology in chat. I was part of a social group and we were all having fun playing a game – and it would mean harshing that particular mellow.
In hindsight I can see that all the social baggage that prevented me from speaking up was/is utter bullshit. There is no excuse for not calling out rape culture when it is staring you right in the face, yet I declined to act, thus propagating and encouraging the rape culture that I vigourously campaign against in other facets of my life.
This is a personal failure of integrity and will. It leaves me feeling disappointed in myself and my culture.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…