The fight for diverse and conscious voices

I've been trying to use Daylio (https://daylio.webflow.io/) to track my daily activities and mood. And it offers some options to rate how my day was, like "good" and "bad" that you'd expect. But mostly my days aren't all good or all bad. They also offer "meh" and you can set up your own, like "complicated". But if everything is one category that category might as well be "day" - amirite?

For example, this past weekend.

Friday I work from home, (good, no commute). Working remotely has some drawbacks (meh) but nothing compares to finding out, mid-afternoon, that the hot water heater has sprung a leak (bad) and soaked the garage (bad). Did I mention that the garage is so full you can kind of not really navigate it? It has like five half-finished projects and some furniture that really should go to a storage unit that we haven't gotten around to renting and... yeah, it's one of those things you look at then turn around and close the door. Except now we can't.

Oh, and we're supposed to be hosting a party Friday night. Should we cancel (bad) or postpone (impossible) or just go ahead (good). We pick the good option, send out a "no hot water" warning and proceed to have a fabulous party. It got a little crowded and I felt bad that some of my friends couldn't easily find a place to sit at points but it wasn't quite enough people to start a second cluster downstairs. But I got to sample some very nice new Scotches and meet some very nice new people so overall, good. But if I look at the day? I really would rather not have had a major appliance go bust and not be fixable until Monday. "meh" doesn't really cover it.

On to Saturday when I get to sleep in (good) but have no hot water for showering (bad) and we kind of vegetate for a while (meh). Then we buckle down and spend about 2.5 hours mucking out the garage. Fortunately there's less actual damage than expected (good), but we still have those five half-completed projects (ugh). Those turn into two giant piles of "give this shit away" and "throw that shit away" and a smaller pile of "figure out what to do with this shit". So progress on projects (good) and more work to do (bad) and it doesn't actually solve the problem (meh) but it makes a path big enough that the old tank can go out and the new tank come in (good).

Then we get cleaned up (no hot water still, bad, but heating water on the stove is not entirely terrible, meh) and go out to a friend's party (good). I ended up spending much of the party talking to current Lab people. and getting caught up on the goings-on there (very good). I'm normally not that social but ended up spending a couple of very pleasant hours and met some interesting new people (good). The day as a whole wasn't good - just the evening part was good, and yet it wasn't bad, or meh either.

Sunday we couldn't have game (bad) because Arisia Concom (good) and the meeting went well and we got some things decided. Plumbers were set to show up Monday (good) and I had to work at home (meh). Also, tired (meh) but managed some good adult fun (good!). I mean, that's only like five things which isn't a very busy day and it's still complicated.

Coda:

Plumbers showed up (good) only an hour late (meh), Pygment is an awesome packrat (good) and managed to dig up the receipt for the still-under-warranty water heater (good) that was replaced for merely a thousand bucks (bad) but they did give us a free detector (good) because code now requires that and I did manage to get some work done (good) despite network issues (bad) and the dog (meh).

Daylio? I can't even.

If you're even close to my age you should be thinking about retirement. If you're younger, you should be saving for it.

Here - https://www.soa.org/globalassets/assets/files/resources/research-report/2019/viability-spend-safely.pdf - is a report from the Society of Actuaries, based on their research project looking at the success rates of over 200 variations on retirement plans. The PDF is a bit long, but quite readable. It's focused on people who have under $1 million in savings at retirement age and are largely going to depend on Social Security.

Major recommendations:
- Delay taking Social Security as late as possible. Age 70, currently
- Generate more income by using minimum distributions and investing those distributions in low-risk vehicles

This is about medical stuff that might upset some people so I'll cut-tag it. tl;dr I'm OK but now have another ongoing situation to deal with. As with all medical things, please consider the context before bringing this up in conversation.
( Not entirely clean but not overly gross either. Long, and full of details. Eventually I'll have a short form for it )
( Base level pain )
( Surprisingly, medical incidents have emotional repercussions. OK, not surprising, but still... )

My weekends are usually hodgepodge of chores and this-and-that and I think they're boring myself and shouldn't inflict that on anyone else. But this weekend we Did Things so here are some things I did.

Party prep and shopping, with Thing 2. Kind of interesting in that we're tentatively trying to reconnect after Thing 2 did a thing that upset me past speaking coherently (no, I'm not going to write about it; I'm not even sure I can talk to people privately about it).

We had a party. It was small and cozy and nice. Pygment and I made (too much of) the chicken-cheesy dip thing I made for dinner one night a while back, on a lark. We ate leftovers, then fed more leftovers to the gamers and more leftovers to people Sunday. Then I ate the last of it myself Monday. No more double batches, eh?

Saturday night I decided to pass on both things I'd wanted to do. Between tired and the weather I just didn't have the spoons.

Sunday was clean-up and game (D&D tabletop) which involved some more heavy roleplay. It's a challenge for me to switch minds and speech patterns and behaviors across the various NPCs that the party are interacting with. This one is a lost civilian with a good heart trying to barter his way back up from misfortune. That one is a minor con artist looking for easy marks. This other one is a well-experienced traveler looking to make good money from what he knows, without getting himself killed.

The players seem to be enjoying themselves, so that's good.

We ended game early so we could have people over (Pygment's GF and husband) for food before movie. I used to like going out to dinner before movies but I found that too often I was feeling rushed and stressed because I couldn't control when things ended and I hate being late to things, particularly movies, even when I have reserved seats. Having food at home was less elegant (party leftovers!) but it was on our schedule and we got to socialize with people I like whom I don't speak with often enough. And it guaranteed that six of us could get done and out the door in time for Black Panther.

I'll write a full review of the movie Real Soon Now, but let me say that this movie is in my top 3 or 4 of all Marvel movies ever. (Winter Soldier, Iron Man 1, and this movie _might_ be better than Avengers 1 or might be tied with it.) If you haven't seen it, and you like this genre of film, go see this.

Monday I did very little most of the day while Pygment was out doing her things, then went out for Arisia things. Dinner-meeting followed by brainstorm-meeting. Both were good and productive but being in Dedham meant I got an hour less downtime than I usually do, which meant my brain was still racing and sleep last night was restless while I processed through many of the things we'd discussed.

It's interesting to review how I'm learning to work within my limits and where my limits are ... well, limiting me in some really bad and annoying ways.

Before I get sunk into politics again, here's some of what's going on with me. It's a lot more than bullet points so I've cut it up into sections.
( Arisia blather )
( future Arisia plans )
( I cook food )
( I work )
( I don't much social )

So that's me. What snoo witchoo?

Backgrounder: Arisia has a Code of Conduct. It's an official corporate policy that every year's convention uses and every attendee must agree to abide by. If you don't agree, we refund your money on the spot. Read it here: https://www.arisia.org/Code-of-Conduct

Every year we get a few people complaining about the CoC, including one person (whom I shall call Complaining Person or CP) who recently asserted that it was one reason they don't go to Arisia. Now, I'm an old white dude myself. I've been to every Arisia since #2 and worked most of them. And Old White Dude drwex gets it.

CP is right - a Code of Conduct you don't agree with, or don't think will be enforced fairly, is a very fine and valid reason not to attend a gathering, be it a SF/F convention or other. Old White Dude drwex does not need any CoC - I move within a big sturdy privilege bubble and I don't get upset anymore when people call me "faggot" because I wear skirts or kilts, nor do I have strangers trying to stare down my shirt or making unwanted and prolonged physical contact with me.

You know who needs this Code of Conduct? My female-bodied partner. My trans children. My friends whose skin colors, hair styles, names, gender expressions, and facial appearances mark them indelibly as Other and for whom response to Other-ness is often frightening, intimidating, excluding, demeaning, or downright harmful.

I mentioned that I'd worked "most" of the cons. I stopped working, for a time, but came back in part because Arisia was making a Code of Conduct and trying to create a better place. Arisia next year will have been operational for 30 years. That's a remarkable run for any convention and I don't see any practical reason it couldn't go on for another 30. I won't be around then, I suspect. But my kids will be, and maybe they'll do what I did - wheel their babies out of the hotel room early in the morning so Active Kid can get some noisy time and not wake the sleeping parent. I came back to Arisia to help build the convention I want to pass on to my kids. I'm still doing it, and the CoC plus supporting structures are foundational pillars of that.

Another thing Complaining Person objected to is that "only some" behavior that violates the CoC gets dealt with. Again, CP is right. We don't deal with violations we don't know about. If CP reported a CoC violation and didn't get a good response from us, we owe CP an apology and to do better in the future. This year, Arisia implemented an Incident Response Team (IRT) structure based on our past experience and experiences at a Worldcon. The IRT is to try improving how we find out about, how we record, and how we respond to incidents.

The IRT isn't perfect. I have concerns about it; I've expressed those concerns. I can say with confidence that everyone in Arisia, from the Conchairs on down and from the Corporate President & VP heard my concerns and responded seriously to them. Some changes have been made. I think more need to be made and I plan to continue working with people on this so by Arisia 2019 we can get some improvements implemented.

Complaining Person is right, we let some things go that should not be let go. Sometimes we know about incidents and don't respond properly. Sometimes we drop the ball on follow-up, or on caring for people who've been subject to CoC-violating behavior. Sometimes we have bad judgment. Arisia isn't a monolithic black box - it's a complex and often self-contradictory mass of individual people and I don't think I've ever seen anything this complex function in an error-free way. That's not an excuse, that's just a fact of life, especially in an all-volunteer organization. As I said, we owe it to every past, present, and future attendee to do better.

There's no good ending to this post because the story isn't over. I respect Complaining Person's choice, even as I disagree with it. I don't know how we could resolve our disagreement. So I'll close with this, which I said last Arisia post: sometimes people are why we get to have nice things.

See some of you tomorrow...

Last week was Rosh Hashona. We had a fun and very geeky dinner with the family and metamours. And this Friday will be Yom Kippur.

As I do every year during this time I try to reflect on my behavior during the past year and to seek forgiveness for harms I have done to people I know. I'm opening anonymous comments on this post (assuming I've understood Dreamwidth's instructions for that) and invite you to contact me in any way you feel comfortable to tell me what I may have done and how I can make amends.

https://my.oxfamamerica.org/AWbday

Normally a birthday is about the person celebrating the occasion. This year I'd like my birthday to be about one of my chosen issues.

With the help of Oxfam I'm putting out a request for money. If you're the sort who cares about food shortages, meeting the needs of refugees around the world, and who would consider doing something for my birthday please visit this URL. It's the home page for my birthday fundraising campaign. If you would normally get me something please consider giving that money to Oxfam. If money isn't your thing please help me by spreading the word. Obviously this appeal is to my friends and family and people who care about my natal anniversary but anyone who feels moved as I do can join in.

Sharing the things I care deeply about is one of the best birthday presents I can imagine.

In a recent LJ entry (which she tells me was also posted to FB), minkrose wrote about "... how to be considerate of those who struggle with this season". It's an unlocked entry, and worth reading if you have not.

I felt uncomfortable reading it because I know I've done things she says not to do, for which I am sorry, and I am uncomfortable for having... well, just about the opposite feelings. I've documented some of my own struggles with SAD and my perpetual hatred of this time of year, so I feel like I fit into Mink's classification of "THE MAJORITY of people [who] struggle with this time of year". But my responses are different. Let me show you them, by pull-quoting from her post:

Please don't tell me you are sad I am not coming to (or staying at) your event

Please do tell me you are sad, if that is true. One of the biggest problems I have with this time of year is isolation. I feel like I am not popular, nobody likes me, everyone else gets invited to things to which I am not welcome, and those people who do invite me are going to hate me for not coming and stop inviting me. Little touches, even formalities, that convey the idea that people have not forgotten me, do not hate me, and would like to see me mean a great deal to me.

Nobody but me is responsible for inside my head, and I certainly don't expect anyone's expression of interest to be a sudden cure, but where Mink says "I don't understand what POSSIBLE response I can have to that that doesn't make both of us feel shitty." I have the response "Thank you, it's nice to be thought of." I realize I'm not always very good at saying it out loud, but that's what it sounds like in my head.

please don't tell me how excited you are to see me at [event that is happening soon]

This is a little trickier because there's always the chance I wasn't invited to said event. That's a social faux pas and I try to do my best Miss Manners and pretend nothing was said. But the idea that someone is looking forward to seeing me falls into a category similar to the previous one. On the further plus side there are actual documented instances of me going to events where I was not likely to go before, just because someone took the time to tell me they'd be there and hoped I would, too. There remains a part of my brain that realizes hermiting in a locked cave and snarling at anyone who dares come close is bad for me. I do it, but I also eat junk food and fail to exercise. Getting me out of my cave is, again, nobody's responsibility but my own. But weights on one side do tip scales and sometimes a little weight is all it takes to tip the scales into me doing more healthy and good things.

anything you say that assumes I am going to do something, or assumes that I should do something, or assumes that what YOU want me to do is more important than what *I* want to do -- just don't fucking say it.

Well, yes. I think we agree it's disrespectful if you're not signing my paycheck or running my household for you to behave as if your wants are more important. And I further realize that depression is a lying illegitimate spawn of a jackal and will often make me think that someone is doing this when it's not their intention.

But you know what? Do it to me anyway. Over the years I've experimented with various degrees of hermiting and I've come to think that for who I am these days it's better to have even bumpy and possibly awkward social interactions. I am responsible for my own boundaries and saying "no thank you" or some more forceful version of that is on me. People who assume I'm going to say no without checking infuriate me as much as people who assume I'll say yes.

I think we'd all also agree that once an answer has been given it's good to respect that. Wheedling, guilting, cajoling, and similar forms of emotional manipulation go over really poorly when I'm in this state. But I can be bribed, and I can be reminded that last time I did a thing it was enjoyable. Nuanced and thoughtful interactions - even those that might push me - are good for me.

Finally a note about the "me" thing. There are people commenting on Mink's entry agreeing with her. That's great - people who can coherently express a point of view make my world a better place, whether or not I agree with that point of view. I have tried to write this entry in I/me language to say "Here is my point of view. It is different from those peoples' point of view. Neither is right or wrong in any global sense." Perhaps that's me reacting to what I saw as Mink's broad titling of "...those who struggle."

Here I document where I am that I think sets me in a different place than the place from which she speaks.

(Normally I f-lock stuff like this but I'm leaving it public in respect of Mink doing so and to enable anonymous responses. Comments will be policed.)

Courtesy of silentq three excellent questions. If you want your own, say so in the comments.

1. Describe your latest lightbulb/a hah! moment.

I work for a living as a UX designer so I get a lot of minor ones of these. Like, "aha, I can make peoples' lives simpler by giving them one summary table of data rather than requiring them to click back and forth among twelve different forms to get their data."

Recently I've been working on a project that is both chemistry-heavy and math-heavy, neither of which are my strengths and I think I got it. Of course, we won't know until it's prototyped and we put it in front of users to test but it was pretty cool to have the insight to understand how this mathematical chemistry thing ought to work, and how I could present it to people in a way that was human-understandable.

2. What's been your greatest triumph?

Surviving my kids' childhood. People think I'm joking when I say that we almost didn't get through my elder child's third year unscathed. Then there are the parents who grimace and nod. I don't think I'm out of the woods yet, but I'm far enough out that I can see the light between the trees at the edge.

I am not a natural parent. I'm blessed with a partner who's beyond awesome and neither of us can fathom how a single parent manages. It's so much harder than anyone tells you, and so much more risky. It also doesn't play well with my own mental and upbringing baggage. But I think I've survived and in some sense succeeded.

Rolling back to a previous stage of life, I'd say it was getting my PhD. I might try to dredge up the details from the depths of time but suffice it to say that it was not obvious to me that I'd make it until I had made it. That's not glamorous, nor particularly enlightening to say. Triumphs should be triumphant, right? But sometimes triumphs are "I got to walk across that stage and get handed this piece of paper that impresses everyone else a lot more than it impresses me."

Rolling back even further I think there's a pair I could nominate. The first would be making a relationship with sweetmmeblue work. When we met we were living 2/3 of a continent apart, and both in other relationships that were in the process of disintegrating. We were each others' rebound, and we both brought our unresolved issues into this relationship. There's no way this should have worked. I think that it worked is mostly her triumph, though. Her relationship skills have always exceeded mine, and I'm a very slow learner. People who've known me a long time can tell you how I've improved over the last couple decades, but it's been a slow process.

Sometime after Pygment and I decided we were going to try and make this work, we ended up having a morning-after-late-night-party breakfast at some chain - I want to say it was a Denny's. We started to talk about each of our respective life goals: her career, individual practice. My graduate work. Our mutual interest in kids. We sketched out something like a plan, literally making a timeline on the placemat in that restaurant. I wish I'd kept that mat because we more or less kept to that set of goals and order of achieving them. To the point where at my 40th birthday I was able to look around and say "OK, I've achieved all the goals I set myself - now what?"

3. What's the one thing that you wish that everyone would learn?

That the future is neither so different from, nor so much the same as, the past. We (humans) have a bad habit of forgetting how slowly things really change, and a commensurate lack of understanding of how profoundly things do change, over time. Yesterday is a pretty good model for what tomorrow is going to be like, but "a pretty good model" isn't a guarantee, and rounding errors - or small deliberate changes - pile up. Next year may be a lot like last year, but it's not so much like two years ago, and it's probably a whole lot different from ten years ago.

William Gibson hinted at this idea with his famous aphorism about the future already being here. The world doesn't change uniformly and that thing that has taken over some particularly corner of the world is still unknown in a lot of other corners. Overgeneralizing about things like "the future" tends to lead people into all kinds of errors. That includes small-scale errors like in their relationships, and big-scale ones like failing to plan properly for the future. My older son is a couple years from (I hope) college and probably four years of that into full-time work. I think I have a reasonable idea of what kind of job he'll have and maybe what the world will be like when he goes to full-time work. My younger son might not enter the full-time workforce for a decade, and I have to believe I don't necessarily have a good model for what kind of job he'll be getting.

(This has sat un-posted for quite a while as I pondered it. I'm going to post it now despite its flaws. Ask away, ye who want to answer.)