Category: Essays

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Keep Marching

A couple things today.

First is this Instagram video of the song “Keep Marching.” Even if the work is not completed during your lifetime, keep fighting for everyone’s rights.

Second is this essay someone sent me called Cathedral Thinking. It’s about the same sort of thing: that we have to think bigger than just the span of our own lives.

https://www.mr-sustainability.com/stories/2021/cathedral-thinking

Third is this quote that gets cited in the first item here, but it’s worth revisiting:

The Talmud states, “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

Fourth and finally is the song “Hope Eyrie.” Even though space flight is not much in vogue in my circles right now, I find this a powerful reminder of what humans CAN accomplish if we work together. Even if we don’t have the resources to do this specific thing right now, we can still do great things, together.

Hang in there, everyone.

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Online spaces are not real spaces

I recently took a weeklong hiatus from Facebook – not on purpose, just because I was very busy with things going on in my life, and didn’t have time to log in and share some memes.

While I was gone, a very anodyne post that I shared exploded. I was generally aware that “there was some drama,” but I was unaware of the fact that people were, apparently, calling out to me within the comments of the post. (I do not keep Facebook on my phone for balance/mental health reasons. Life/life balance? It’s not work/life balance, it’s just that I find Facebook distracting, and I try to limit my distractions whenever possible.)

Today I’m checking back in on things, and reflecting: should I have been there to monitor the post?

I have a friend who considers his online space (that he controls and moderates) to be an extension of his living room: that it is for people who he invites in, of his own volition, and he expects them to behave as though they *are* in his living room, conversing with people they know to be his personal friends, with all the assumption of noble intent that would go along with such an interaction.

Not all of us keep such a tight leash on our Internet communities. My Facebook is almost entirely private, and while I do occasionally befriend people who are “one hop” away from me (and have made good friends by doing so), in general, I try to keep the posts to people I do, in fact, know, and generally get along with.

This has landed me in hot water more times than I can count; in part, because I can get along with many different types of people. Not everyone; I have my lines. I have unfriended or blocked a handful of folks over the years, and I could probably tell you exactly why for each one. (If I knew how to do spoilers on WordPress, I would give the examples right here.)

This is, in a sense, an extension of Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive. The people that I am friends with are not always going to get along with one another; and that goes double if I am not there to moderate the tension. But here’s the thing: I don’t live on Facebook. Facebook is not real life. I cannot moderate it all the time; I’m not hosting a 24/7 living room party in my house. And I think that fact extends to situations in which I refrain from logging in, even for extended periods. My real life will always take precedence over Facebook. (Even if real life does involve some level of farting around on my phone on DIFFERENT social networks.)

So, while I do feel bad that the conversation spiraled without me…I am realizing that I don’t feel responsible for it, if that makes sense. I would say “sorry,” but it would be the “sorry” of Condolence, not of Apology.

I figure I will continue on as I have begun: by using Facebook sporadically, and not trying to check it more often just because people might have driven a thread off a cliff. (Especially since on a platform like Facebook, I have no moderation power beyond just deleting the entire thing.)

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It is okay to not be compatible

One of my vices is that I love to read advice columns on the internet. I looooove the train wreck of watching other people implode.

But to expand on the Advice Column Paradox a little bit: I think that part of why I’m usually in the “maybe you should just break up” camp is because I view dating as a way to determine if you are compatible with the other person for the long term.

If you are not compatible: that’s completely okay! It’s okay to date someone for one, two, five, whatever years and then realize that you want completely different things out of life and relationships. Now, is it better to realize that earlier than later? Of course. But if you’ve realized a fundamental incompatibility in the relationship… You don’t “owe it to” the relationship to try to force it to work.

AND THEN you get things like this TikTok, where we have the algorithm trying to convince us that we are Better Off Alone (at home, engaging with a platform). For my part, no, I don’t think “he wants to meet in a public place” is a problem. I think it’s the greenest of green flags.

But overall? It’s okay to have dealbreakers. It’s okay to walk away from a relationship that’s not working. “The relationship” isn’t an entity that deserves consideration; fuck off with that Citizens United nonsense. The relationship isn’t a person. You, and your partner, are the people here. Your respective best interests are what need to be considered.

And even if I think your dealbreakers are dumb? Frankly, my opinion doesn’t matter. I’m not the one in the relationship here. You are. And only you can determine if you’re happy, if you’re secure, if you’re satisfied.

So get out there. Own your preferences. See what makes you tick. And as Gazelle says, try everything. 😉

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Best friends

I’ve had best friends before.

One, or six, or fourteen at a time?

At this stage in my life, I think the whole concept of a best friend is children play-acting at monogamous marriage before they’re ready or interested in a romantic relationship with anyone.

I still remember the agonizing feelings I had when someone else got to be The Best Friend when I wanted to be.

And I remember the guilt I felt when I drifted apart from my closest friend of childhood. Was I, somehow, divorcing her?

I’ve had “friend breakup” talks, as an adult. They were painful, but a necessary part of being compassionate to someone you once (and still) care(d) about.

One of my friends in college told me, “Best Friends isn’t a single job; it’s a tier.” I didn’t believe her then. I do now. (And her husband is the person I’d pick if I was forced to pick a single best friend, which is an amusing bonus anecdote.) For the most part, I don’t have a single best friend; I have a rotating cast of friends who are all close to me in different ways. One friend is my local emergency contact for everything. The other (aforementioned) is my advance directive POA. Yet another pair are the designated guardians for my child in case both my ex husband and I pass away.

A friend today shared a post about how “best friend” is a term that imitates monogamy, and it made me think about all this. (I don’t have the link handy, but I’ll add it when I do.) It’s been percolating in my mind for a while, but I haven’t really put it into words.

It’s not realistic to expect one person to be all those friends for you; different people are different, and every dyadic friendship has its own shape. They don’t take away from each other, except inasmuch as time and energy are limited things.

I am grateful, though, for all the friends that I do have, and for all the friends I used to have. You have all touched, shaped, my life in one way or another.

I’m glad that I don’t have to pick one friend to be a Best Friend.

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On clothing and consumerism

This tweet resonated pretty hard with me today.

https://twitter.com/sesmith/status/1622296174777729026?s=20&t=Qg-VB8q-Qoj–W1k8G-H0w

I hadn’t ever thought of it in these exact words, but this is basically how I frame my decisions about what to buy.

The phrasing I’ve used in the past is: Yes, I can afford this; but I shouldn’t afford it. (I think I may have heard my parents say that once but I’m not positive.) This attitude has served me well as I transition to a lower household income than what I had before: I’m putting off a lot of household furniture purchases and so forth, because I don’t want to find myself in a position where I am spending money on credit card interest. (That does not spark joy.) Some interest is unavoidable; emergencies happen, mistakes happen, etc. But anything I can do to minimize that helps me feel more comfortable and secure in my life now.

And the positive ethical implications of lower overall consumption are just the icing on the cake.

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Financial order of operations

A friend of mine shared this link with me, and I’m really appreciating it right now.

The Financial Order of Operations: 10 Great Money Choices for Every Stage of Life

I’m always looking for new ways of thinking about money, and this post highlights one of my own weaknesses: I always tend to go for a mathematical solution, rather than looking at the root emotional causes of what I’m doing. So thinking about what it is I want to be able to do with my money is an important thing for me to step back and contemplate.

Along with that, though, her second point about creating a Descriptive Budget first is something I already love. The first step (or, in her list here, the second step) to taking control of your money is knowing where it all is going.

Steps 3 and 4, emergency fund and employer matching, are also good; though from the title I had expected 4 to be about Lifecycle funds. But I guess that comes later!

Step 5 is interesting. She calls it “pay off then highest interest rates first,” but also talks about the snowball method (pay off lowest balances first). Fortunately, those two things often run together – a credit card balance is likely to be smaller than a car, house, or student loan, and it’s likely to have the lowest rate. So that makes sense.

Steps 6 and 7 are emergency fund and retirement, again. I approve. Then step 9 is about aggressively paying off debts. I like that this comes after establishing baseline financial security first; debt is not a great thing to have, especially if it has high interest, but it’s not evil.

Steps 8 and 10 relate back to Step 1: thinking about what you want again, and then making it happen. Most things in the world come with a concrete price that you can look at and save up for, even if that price is not immediately visible. And prioritizing your dreams and placing them within the context of what you want to do is a great way to make them much more accessible.

In short: I like this financial writer!

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Ethical Clothes

A few recent threads on Twitter have caught my eye, about fast fashion and the ethics thereof.

It makes me think about how I went through a phase where I wanted to slowly transition to only wearing clothes made in America. That never happened, but it was instructive. I bought a couple pairs of $90 sweatpants from American Giant. I still wear them.

That last is part of what Cora Harrington has been saying for a while now: keep wearing your existing clothes. That’s it. Just…wear your clothes. The way you avoid paying slave labor wages is to buy less stuff. It’s not perfect, of course, but it’s the most immediately effective and impactful thing you can do.

I know it’s easy for me to say this. I’ve never cared too much for fashion, and my body size has stayed more or less consistent over the years. I can’t wear my jeans from middle school anymore, but I can wear my jeans from age 29 if I’m doing housework and don’t care if I need to undo the button because I ate too much fiber or something. I’m a straight sized person and yeah that’s one form of privilege. But at the same time, there are no easy answers. Sometimes the best answer is “you can’t have cute ethical cheap clothing because it doesn’t exist.” You can pick two.

But if you rewear clothes, the dollar cost averaging (or whatever you want to call it) of the Not Cheap things actually comes out pretty good.

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Your reminder: end of life planning

Saw this tweet today, and thought I’d write a post about it.

https://twitter.com/AngryBlackLady/status/1609183979399438336?s=20&t=jb0ZW25N7l_Y44zkvimTwg

If you have any care for the people who come after you, you need to write a will.

It’s okay (not great, of course, but life is what it is) if you can’t afford the whole lawyer shebang at this stage of your life. Not everyone can afford to do the (important) legal part of their will. But all of us can do the emotional/mental labor of listing all our assets and debts, and writing down who you want to receive them when you die.

This goes beyond just bank accounts and cars and so forth. Do you have a collection of old Magic cards? A dear friend lost their brother this year, and he made sure to account for his collection in his last wishes. (I don’t know if he had a will or not. He was relatively young.) Anything you own will have to be disposed of when you pass, and your next of kin will be grateful to have some idea, any idea, of what you would like done with it. Even if the answer is “Sell it all to an estate sale company.” That’s still an answer.

If you have minor children, it becomes especially important to make sure they are cared for in the event of your passing. Do they have a Designated Guardian listed in your will? This isn’t a legally binding thing, but a court will take your wishes strongly into consideration when choosing a guardian for your child in the event of your death. Do you have life insurance? Who’s the beneficiary? Make sure it’s not an estranged parent, or anything like that.

Look, nobody likes to think about this stuff. But it’s important. A lot of what we call “adulting” is just the boring, painful parts of life that we do because not doing it makes things worse for the people we love. And since this is the time of year when everyone is being pensive and making resolutions, consider “making end of life plans” as an idea.

A friend of mine made a spreadsheet of Things To Do When You Are The Executor, when his father passed away. Here’s the folder for that. Note that none of us are lawyers, none of us are YOUR lawyer, and this is just a starting point for you to use in conjunction with your actual professional who has your back. But everyone needs a starting point, so if this helps you, I’m glad.

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Airborne swine and financial planning

Today I saw a screencapped post that said something along the lines of “If you give up your daily Starbucks habit, by the end of the year you’ll have $2000, which is nowhere near the $60,000 you’ll need to put a down payment on a house!”

It made me think about how we, as a society, often frame discussions about finance. Generally speaking, the Internet and TV scolds are not, themselves, financially literate. The thing that every Fox News Uncle seems to forget, come Thanksgiving, is that order of magnitude matters. Different target audiences have different financial goals, and the attainability of those goals varies wildly.

Like lots of things, the advice is only useful for folks in the middle. If you’re poor, then you’re likely not going to be able to save up for a down payment, no matter what you do (though your municipality may have other programs to help you buy a house, etc.). And if you’re poor, you are already not buying daily Starbucks. You’re probably not buying any Starbucks, unless it is as a treat.

The advice of “If you have a daily Starbucks habit, you can reduce it in order to save money” is Technically Correct. (The best kind of correct!) And I am confident saying that for the people who buy daily coffee, reducing it to “weekly Starbucks and cheap office K-cups or brew the rest of the time” is, in fact, a great way to save up an Emergency Fund: a thousand dollars in a disused savings account to help you through an unexpected household expense. This would catch a slice of America that lives at the intersection of “can’t afford an unexpected household expense” and “buys treats.” But I’m not actually sure how large that slice is. (And I am curious.)

On the other end of the savings scale, you have Big Expenses. Putting away your pennies won’t be enough to save a whole down payment, even with the miracle of compound interest. This part is where real choices about lifestyle need to be made, if (again) those choices are even available to you.

I think the availability of that kind of choice during my childhood is what shapes my somewhat blinkered expectations of financial capability. My parents explicitly told me, as a teenager, that they made the conscious decision to only buy new cars every ten or so years in order to save the equivalent of the car payment in the other years. They told me that they chose not to fly to Europe every year, not because they couldn’t afford to but because they didn’t want to spend that much money. They prioritized being able to pay for my college over their own lifestyle. And I think, to some extent, I have a little bit of survivor’s guilt over that. It’s not too much; they’re doing okay in retirement. But I feel acutely aware of the need to not squander their gifts to me.

I think, when pigs learn to fly and the TV scolds decide to actually offer reality based advice, they should focus on the correct Order of Magnitude: reducing $1000-level expenses (like airplane vacations) in order to save for $10,000-level goals (like a house down payment).

Or they could offer the other end of the advice: reduce your $5-level expenses to save for $100-level goals (like an unexpected car repair). That would actually be useful, modest advice that some (not zero) people can actually use.

But modest advice doesn’t feed the rage machine. And that’s why I titled my post the way I did. I don’t think they will be doing that anytime soon. But it would sure be nice if they did. 🐖 💸