Ten pounds of personality in a five-pound bag
I realized today that part of my personality is that I constantly feel like a fuckup, to the point that I just embrace it and make a point to learn how to do better next time.
It’s like kaizen but worse.
Now come, be a fuckup with me. Know better, do better, fuck it up in different ways next time.
I think one of the most important life skills I have cultivated is the ability to just take people at their word. To believe what they say.
Doing this requires some degree of “if you get hurt, I’m okay with that.” You have to turn down the empathy dial here. If a person lies to you (whether on purpose lying or not) about being okay when they’re really not okay? You have to be comfortable with the fact that any hurt they experience from you taking them at their word is their own fault.
But they will be hurt nonetheless. Even though it’s not your fault. And you have to deal with that.
Because you know what’s worse, in the end?
Not respecting your friends enough to believe them when they tell you things.
Being so arrogant that you think you know their inner mind better than they themselves do.
And the pretzel logic we all get into when we try to anticipate and guess what everyone actually means, rather than just taking them at their word, hurts everyone involved.
So just…believe people when they tell you things. If they lie, return the awkwardness to sender. You did nothing wrong by believing them.
I wrote this down a little while ago and can’t remember what conversation it was from, but: still wanted to share it.
Don’t write alternate history fanfic about your life. Just keep moving forward and making the best choices you can with the information you have.
Or, “Do the Next Right Thing.”
Today at the Sakura Matsuri, I had an extremely amusing moment. Well, amusing to me, anyway.
We were at a booth that sold toy swords (either plastic or wall hangers – not sure which), and two young men (I would estimate early 20s) were there looking at the swords. I overheard one of them telling the other “This is called a katana. It’s what they used…” (I don’t remember the rest of the sentence). The second young man said “So is that what you would use in martial arts, then? Like to practice?”
The first young man floundered a bit, so naturally I decided to insert myself into their conversation and info dump a bit.
“Well, that depends on the martial art. For kendo, they use a sword made of bamboo slats, so you can hit each other without hurting too much. For iaido, they use a sword made of an aluminum zinc alloy, so it’s lightweight but not sharp. For batto-do or other cutting arts, they use a real sword made of steel. There are probably demos of that today or tomorrow!”
Young man #2 said “wow, you really know your stuff!” And I said “Yep!” and wandered off.
This is an example of how Not To Human. In general, this kind of behavior is not considered polite or appropriate. But I think in the specific context I was in, it was okay.
Blogaround time! My friend wrote this and I think it’s pretty spot on. Especially the stuff about parenting.
I like this.
https://hennymarlene.substack.com/p/you-should-pick-your-friends-up-from
Do the thing.
Be inconvenienced.
Short opinion.
I think that the reason people treat blocking (on social media) as this Horrible Unforgivable Crime is that to them, social media feels like real life; and in real life, Shunning and Ostracism are genuinely punishments for horrible crimes.
But the Internet is not real life.
My half-baked hypothesis is that people think this way because young adults right now had their formative years during COVID, when things forced us online much more than even the most dysfunctional people, and it exacerbated and accelerated a lot of already-bad social trends.
As I told someone earlier today:
This is not an “others have walked so that you can run” kind of situation. This is more like, an “others have run straight into the electric fence, so you should strongly consider walking” kind of thing.
This can apply to many things.
Go slowly. Make careful, measured decisions.
Being wrong is a skill that can be practiced. It takes a lot of effort and awareness to be able to just shut up and step off.
Practicing “Oh, I hadn’t thought about it from that perspective” or “I’m going to step back and think about this for a while, thank you” is a really useful thing to have in your social skills backpack.
In a work context, “We’re all going to lunch” usually carries the implication of “Would you like to join us?”
If you’re still not sure if the implication is present, you can ask “Mind if I come along?” Or “Do you have space for one more?” Or something similar.
Here is an Instagram video about this!
Emilybook 