There's a lesson here
Hand Sanitizer breaks the cycle of time
That works for me
I’m at a sociology conference and just attended a memorial for one of the giants of our field, and one of the panelists told this story…he was at a meeting with this guy, who he got his PhD under and had a long standing relationship with, and he was bemoaning the current state of the world, and he asked this old professor, “how can you be so optimistic? I can’t ever be anything but a pessimist.”
and the old professor said, “you little fucker, I’m going to make a statement and then I’m going to take you out to the parking lot and beat your ass. What good does your pessimism do?”
and that really struck me. not the least because I also knew this old professor and he very rarely swore, so I know this was something he was really worked up about. what good does your pessimism do? What GOOD does your pessimism DO. I’ll be thinking about that for awhile.
“Now there's this about cynicism, Sergeant. It's the universe's most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you're not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace.”
- Lois McMaster Bujold, Borders of Infinity (1989)
"It helps me be prepared!"
As a recovered pessimist raised by a horrendously toxic pessimist: No, it doesn't.
Foresight and practicality are completely separate qualities that can exist without pessimism. You can acknowledge the worst that might happen and prepare for it without having a completely negative worldview.
And pessimism can absolutely exist without those qualities. Which is a miserable way to live.
ALL OF THESE REQUIRE GETTING OUT OF BED
For real, actionable advice feel free to skip ahead to the second big text. tl;dr look around the red text.
Why do people write this?
Typically advice for depressed people is written by people who aren't depressed. That does make sense since depression makes it so much more difficult to do things. Things that are done are most often done by people that find it easy to do things.
For the author, a making a cup of tea or sitting outside for a few minutes are examples of something that is a "free action". You might here someone express the belief that "willpower is infinite".
I used to think I could walk forever up until I did so for 9 hours. What is going on when someone writes this is that they never had to come up to these limits before. That leads to advice that isn't helpful to the people that need it most.
This is also a problem with physical exercise. Most people think of running or lifting weights as typical starting points. But what does someone who can't stand for long do?
The same principles apply, you stretch the muscles, they break, they repair. It's just that when you are starting from scratch, lifting the leg and standing or what have you is enough to do that.
So I am depressed and can't get out of bed. What do I do?
Just like with exercise we start small.
- Think about breathing manually. This is impossible to fail. You don't have to do anything besides think of breathing. And yet, as you do it it is proof you have some control still.
- Wiggle your fingers. Open and close your hand.
- Move your arm. Lift it up. It can be just at the elbow to start
- Put your hand in a position to push you to the side. It's okay if this just gets you to your side. That is progress
- Get the legs involved. You can start with the toes, then ankles, then up to your knees
- With more limbs involved we can shift over to the edge of the bed
- Get some legs off
- Sitting position
- Now stand up
Reading this you may find that it doesn't take that many steps. That's great. You may find that it takes more and that you have to recover from each one. That's fine too. The important part is that you gained some progress each time. Even if you fall back, it gets easier and easier to do the same thing, just like building muscle.
At the end of the day, no one is going to know how many steps you used to get out of bed. The trick is that when something seems insurmountable you break it down into small enough steps that the next one is doable to you personally.
Once you get it done, then that's as good as anyone else.
I actually love hearing about reformed people's stories. I love hearing about people who were in toxic communities or people who used to objectively be dickheads talking about how they got out of that. How they made themselves better.
I hate how most people's initial reaction to stories like that are things like:
"How could you have ever done those things?!"
"Oh my god, you believed those things?!"
"Well it doesn't un-do the harm you did!"
People incessantly advocate for change but then refuse to allow people who have changed the grace of being acknowledged and given opportunities and chances.
I love hearing about ex-antis talking about how they don't spend their days being angry and sending death threats anymore.
I love hearing about ex-homophobes who realized there's no magic law about what is "natural."
I love reformed bullies talking about how they made amends with their victims and spend their days being considerate of others.
You can't scream about wanting people to change but then expect them to spend the rest of their lives stuck in the past and on who they used to be. You can't expect people to spend the entire rest of their lives grovelling and apologizing and demeaning themselves.
Instead of clinging to who they were, latch onto who they are.
Ask how they got out of it. Commend them on changing. Enjoy that there's one less cause of harm in the world.
I also love stuff like that because it's a blueprint for how we can save others. If someone used to be a giant racist and stopped, we can take what convinced them to change and spread that message
Maybe take this moment to check if you’ve been punishing behaviors you want to see?
From that post about the sarcastic “look who finally decided to join us!” when a teenager leaves their room— those kinds of comments are punishing behaviors you want and then they will happen less frequently. Instead, we need to celebrate the behaviors we want in order to encourage them. That’s how the human brain works. If a particular action is associated with good brain chemicals like dopamine, then we’ll do that action more often; if a particular action does NOT activate the brain’s reward system bc we instead get negative feelings when we do it, we will not do that action anymore.
Is there anyone in your personal life that finally did The Thing? Did you get excited/happy and say thank you? Or did you respond with sarcasm/“took you long enough” type comments?
Is there anyone in your online sphere that started Doing Better? Or Apologized for a past mistake/something harmful they used to do/believe? Did they actually pay attention to the backlash on something and then learn from that to be better? What were the comments like in response? Were people praising them for doing better or tearing them down for not being perfect originally?
Do you actually want to see improvement or do you just want to see someone punished in perpetuity? If we truly want to see improvements in the world, we need to reward people who change for the better. If all we do is make it feel bad to change our behavior, no one will ever change.
there was a person a bunch of my friends used to have beef with and he got into a fight with someone and they called him out and he said "well shit, you're right, i apologize, i was out of line there" and everyone in the social circle was like OMG YES PLEASE COME HANG OUT WITH US NOW and now he's friends with a lot of them and he's a delight to know.
absolutely fucking magical.
this is one of the better things i posted on cohost and i wanted it to be more easily accessible again because i still believe it very much. i wrote it in february 2023.
I've been thinking about the things people have said about my art that have stuck with me the longest, and trying to synthesize that into a personal philosophy about how I talk about other people's art - and I think I've got it to a point where I just want to get it out into the world somehow. It does also start with a bit of a humble brag but the story is important to get to my conclusion.
One time I practiced a single piano piece for weeks on end for a once-in-a-lifetime live performance. I was playing a piece called Familiar by the German pianist Nils Frahm... in front of Nils Frahm. This was terrifying. He was sat literally on the floor about 2 metres away from the piano while I played - his eyes shut. After everybody at the performance had played their pieces, Mr Frahm came up to me and said something that justified the work I'd put in: that he really appreciated how delicate my touch on the piano keys was. It made my weeks of practice feel visible and worth it in a way that wouldn't have been quite the same if he'd simply said that he'd enjoyed the performance.
So when I am responding to art of any kind, this is what I say to myself: find a small detail in the work - something technical, some specific element of it - and talk about that. Be honest about what you appreciate about it. Be precise. You could say a piece of work is beautiful, and sincerely mean it, but if your aim is to compliment the artist in a way you want to land you could compliment the brush strokes on the shadows of the archway, or how an artist captures the slow movement of the ocean in their line work, or the contrast in the colour palette between the artificial and natural. Find something small and intentional, because the small stuff can be the part of the process of making art that consumes our effort and thought the most.
Since I've started trying to apply this rubric in my day to day life, I have found two things: the first is that I've started taking in art of all kinds on a more detailed level, and found a deeper appreciation for the technique involved in its creation; the second is that nobody (so far, and so far as I can tell) has taken this form of response poorly.
do y'all write like this? (this is for one chapter. I can only go chapter by chapter or I will lose motivation)
- outline, outline, outline
- write a version of the chapter that is "John went over here. John said this. John felt this. John wanted this." Some flashes of usable dialogue/narration, but most of it is quite bad! I can't skip this phase with stuff like "[something cool happens here]." I won't write anything that way.
- revise revise revise
- basically, translate all of the "placeholder" narration into actual narration. (like isn't that penultimate chapter of Persuasion by Jane Austen placeholder narration bc she died and didn't get to revise it????)
- Filter words! Show not tell!
- Then put in bolded, highlighted notes that yell things like [SUBVERT EXPECTATIONS!!!!!] who tf am i yelling at
- print out the chapter to revise again. I print out everything. This is the Jokes Pass where I'm like "heh heh...how do i make this funny"
- I finish a chapter, but because I'm going chapter by chapter I know I'll have to go back and go over the entire novel to make it cohesive
- revise it again like two weeks later to procrastinate working on next chapter
- i feel like i write like a comic book artist draws lmao. "Oh you gotta sketch the thing then refine it when you do pencils and then you ink it and color"
@doodlebug-aboo YES. NO LIKE, EXACTLY!!!! YOUR TAGS!!!!
With writing I am taking a full-ass sketch and lowering the opacity to 5% and hitting ctrl+Z trying to draw pencils like "uhhh okay. Uhhh okay. Ummm yeah that looks right. Uhhhhhh fix later."
it’s so cool everyone makes amvs and art and poems and fic and edits and shares them so they can get passed around again and again and someone’s post inspires a drawing or someone’s tags inspire a fic and it just keeps going and everyone is creating for the joy of it. to give themselves a little piece of the story as they see it. it’s very good.
found an old wip of human leo designs and decided to finish it up :3
i missed these silly turtles 🐢 ⚔️
A/N: ‘Sapience play’ is a bit of a catchall term I coined ages ago for anything where a character’s level of personhood is negated and denied, whether as a TPE/kink thing, mind break, brainwashing, being made a pet, reprogramming, dehumanization, bimbofication, hiveminding, hypnosis, dollification, etc. Not necessarily sexual. This one I think would fall under brainwashing.
The whitecoats are moving around outside the cage again, rattling their tools and making some kind of noises. You follow them with your eyes, waiting to see what they’re going to have you do this time, if they’re going to have you do anything this time, alert because you don’t know yet if this will be a test or a feeding or a punishment.
“…can’t have them getting in here and ruining—“
“Of course not, do I look like an idiot? But they smashed through the systems at lab seven, and ours are the same model.”
“Is it even trained yet?”
“Enough for this, look.”
The speaker in the corner crackles and you sit up, alert. “Subject Blue. Ready.”
It’s a command. You answer, falling into the proper stance before the bars of the cage. The door swings open and you wait, attentively.
“Forward. Stop. Guard.”
It’s a command. You answer, halting at the door of your cage, ready to guard.
A faint creak. Skittering footsteps. A rat, running across the floor, headed between your legs.
Before it can pass the assigned threshold, you snatch it off the floor and snap its neck.
“See?” One of the whitecoats says something that isn’t a command, so you don’t listen. You contemplate the rat’s corpse instead, already cooling, and lay it down outside the cage. It doesn’t belong in here. “It does exactly what we want it to.”
The whitecoats send you down to the tunnels below the lab, to the entrance to the storm drains where the water flows. They give you a patrol radius of the area that belong to the labs. They tell you to guard. It is not necessary to kill the rats down here, as none of them attempt to pass the entrance, and they flee from your footsteps as you circle the surrounding storm drains.
You’re at the far end of the patrol radius when you detect…something from the other end. Not even footsteps. The displacement of air, the shift of water. You flit through the tunnels as silently as a shadow, reviewing the commands. Patrol the tunnels. Guard the labs. Repel all intruders.
Then you find the source of the barely-noises, of the displaced air, and a strange sense overcomes you, because your commands are suddenly in conflict.
You were told to repel intruders, and the response to that command has been written into your bones with pain and hunger on a level deeper than reflex, in the crackle of a speaker and the snapping of a rat’s spine under your fingers. But looking on these intruders—not whitecoats, not strangers, not recognizable and not unfamiliar—an even deeper reflex tells you no, they aren’t intruders, they belong here. Of course they belong here.
The not-intruders are staring at you, and trapped in the middle of an unresolvable conflict, you wait for the command that might resolve it.
“…Leo?“
thanks this made me drop my face into my hands and giggle in delight and pain! excellent work!
My 30-something wisdom is that your palate is constantly changing so don't assume because you hated a food 10 or 20 years ago you still will. Most radically, your taste as a little kid is not indicative of what it will be as an adult-- I've known too many adults who still refuse to eat anything but chicken strips and ketchup because they're still basing their taste on what they experienced at 8 years old and so have cut themselves off from the entire world of adult taste. In my case, my taste for savory foods, especially vegetable dishes, "bitter" foods, and more complex flavor combinations has really expanded. I didn't like mushrooms as a child or for most of my 20s, but around 28 suddenly they worked for me. I started enjoying dark chocolate around 25, especially paired with fruit flavors. I've never been hugely fond of eggplant but discovered that in a sauce or roasted in butter and oil its delicious. I've always enjoyed fish but in the last 15 years I've discovered a passion for it, salmon especially. I've learned to recognize the tastes of herbs and love putting them into everything I can (currently I'm most enthusiastic about dill.) I'm also suddenly crazy about all kinds of sandwiches. And I'm still trying olives every couple years in case suddenly they start working for me, though sadly no luck on that front yet. So basically, expect that your taste is going to change in adulthood and expect that it will keep changing. And you can also work to develop your palate by exposing yourself to new flavors and combinations and cuisines, opening you up to even more foods you might never have liked before. So keep trying new and old foods, because you never know when you might suddenly start liking something new or discover a new way it can be prepared or a new texture it can come in. Don't wind up imprisoned in a world of chicken strips just because you haven't tried anything else since 3rd grade, you deserve better.