Tag: Competence

Categories
Culture Homesteading

Day 856 and Spring Into Action

It’s been a beautiful week in the Gallatin Valley. Every single morning on my daily constitutional walk I notice new growth. Very suddenly we went from of melting & assessing snow damage to bright and sunny spring green.

The more northern latitudes get a shorter growing season (in fact we will get more snow) but the season is one of magnified intensity as our evenings stretch towards 10pm before the light is gone. And so on this first weekend of May we’ve begun taking action on spring. Hobby farmers spring into action.

Alex slicing open a bag of manure in our back pasture in preparation for tree planting
A man, a hole, and a shovel

My husband and I have no idea what we are doing but with the true spirit of fuck around and find out we began anyway. Our running joke is that Alex is a #ManofAction as there is just simply so much more practically to do when you live on land for which you are ultimately responsible. It’s a lot of fun and very grounding.

And as you might guess the most liberating feeling in the world is being held accountable for yourself and your choices. So even knowing full well you are basically that dog typing on a computer subtitled “I’ve got no ideal what I’m doing” you carry on anyway.

I’ve got no idea what I’m doing Golden Retriever Typing

While I did a few laps around the pasture and helped with a bit of the lighter work my role was mostly to capture the fun and excitement of trying something new. We picked two apple, two plum and one cherry from Starks Brothers to add in after a fall planting of a number of apple trees. We’ve got no idea if any of this is going to take. We’ve read some books but that barely counts.

Our cyberpunk John Deer free of computer parts along with a few stages of planting

Meanwhile inside the homestead I’ve been doing some spring cleaning. I’ve been appropriately assigned gender formative roles as I actually enjoy keeping things attractive and beautiful. The closests need turning over from the wool and layering over to tee-shirts, sundresses, and linens. Alex mostly goes from button downs to tee shirts. Jeans are swapped for cargo shorts. Being a man is simpler.

Winter boots need to be put away and flats, sneakers and sandals brought to the front. Alex had more work gear and footwear as he does more of the outdoors work than I do so shoes are more Alex than me.

Heavy winter oil and moisture rich cosmetics will give way to lighter water creams and ceramides. I don’t change retinols but I may add in more C and lactic acid for turnover in the heat. Alex meanwhile gets away with a basic vitamin C moisturizer and SPF.

I alas have not dealt with getting my hair trimmed in sometime but the reminder that it’s time to cut off dead ends is ultimately a spring time ambition. Hopefully you had the good sense to prune in the winter. My husband is lucky enough to simply buzz his head. Happy spring everyone and may your rituals enjoyable to you.

Categories
Chronic Disease Internet Culture

Day 851 and May Day

My husband Alex is currently being main charactered on Twitter for posting his distress that the cleaning service we use once or twice a month put his cast iron skillet in the dishwasher.

Spent a year seasoning this guy and a cleaner ran it through the dishwasher

As you will learn from a perusal of the 650 or so quote tweets, this Tweet is horror of privilege, class tensions and social inequality. Division of labor is bad and paying people to do a service you could do yourself is also (inexplicably) bad. It’s my opinion that this response is mostly fear that our capacity to earn a living through labor is diminishing. Happy International Workers Day!

Twitter has been so broken that it’s been a while since I’ve seen a context collapse happen to someone close to me. It’s been pretty fun. I’d almost forgot how ridiculous Twitter can be.

Now, of course, it’s impolite to drag someone on Twitter. But being upset that a professional fucked up a paid service is however kind of Twitter’s whole vibe. Being a cleaner is skilled work. You don’t put cast iron in a dishwasher anymore than you’d toss a wool suit in a dryer. But you can’t take knowledge for granted and Alex fucked up by leaving the pan on the stove.

Alex is sad for to have lost something he values. He is a talented chef and treats his tools with care. The seasoning came from a year of cooking. The skillet can be repaired but a year of cooking only gets replaced by a year of cooking. Loss is part of life.

But as this May Day viral Tweet indicates, any public display or experience that suggests you have privilege of any kind can quickly turn into a dim witted undergraduate seminar where it everyone is failing basic critical theory. Power is complicated.

I’m particularly amused by the jealousy on display as the reason we have a cleaner come once or twice a month is because I’m disabled. I have a chronic inflammatory spinal condition and my husband is my primary care giver. Typically disability is recognized in the wider pantheon of intersectionality as a disadvantage.

But intersectionality isn’t nearly as fun for dunking as inchoate rage. Much better to enjoy a little consequence free social opprobrium by laughing at those awful wealthy startup shitheads who pay for services. Fuck us!

I don’t desire any pity for my disability. But it would be silly to pretend that simply because we came into some money that I don’t have any problems.

Without treatment I was bedridden and unable to walk. So when we had some startup investments exit it was an relief to feel like we wouldn’t be in lifelong medical debt. We hire services as it allows us both to work. And I work because our medical bills are insane. Fun loop right?

Whatever you take away from this, I’d argue it’s good to care about power, community, skills, disability, labor and ending the culture wars. I’m glad this happened on May Day. We will continue pay a living wage to our skilled service providers. We are lucky it’s within our means. We pay $150 for three hours and we will continue to put our money into our community because that’s the whole point of rich assholes. Now go watch some Downtown Abbey.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 842 and Sucks to Suck

A lot of folks are suffering right now. And I’ve got all the empathy in the world for just how rough it is to live in this modern moment. So I want you to really hear what I’m saying knowing that I do it out of love.

It’s sucks to suck

I’m currently sucking at a bunch of stuff in my life. Because I’m learning new skills and expanding my horizons. I am just sucking big hairy balls as I go about the process of embarrassing myself becoming competent through failure.

Thankfully I am surrounded by a family who loves me and wants me to improve. They don’t mind if I suck because sucking is the first step in success. If I don’t suck at something I’m probably not pushing myself to learn. And just because I’m afraid of sucking is no excuse. Everyone sucks sometimes.

And I get it. It sucks to suck. I hate how uncomfortable it makes me feel to fuck up. I am regularly failing at lots of shit on what feels like a daily basis.

And I do often want to crawl into a hole and stop doing new things so I can enjoy the feelings of power and competence at things I am already successful in.

And yet I don’t want to stay in my comfort zone. Even though I am intimately familiar with how much it sucks to suck. I hate the feeling of having not tried even more. I’d rather shoulder the risk of the fuck ups than live with the crushing anxiety of not shooting my shot.

Because more than it sucks to suck, it really fucking sucks to not even try. It eats away at your soul. You wonder if your life could be better. And I am here to tell you yes it can be. My life is fucking awesome right now. And it’s awesome because I tried. I spent a lot of time being embarrassed.

I didn’t get everything I wanted. But like those damned boomers said, you might find that you get what you need. So go ahead and suck. The path to happiness is on the other side of it. Don’t give up just because it sucks to suck.

Categories
Startups

Day 816 and S Tier

I fancy myself as someone who enjoys playing games. I mostly play the great game but I enjoy a good stupid grinder. Pokémon Go, Duolingo, and Fitocracy all appeal to my sense of hard work mattering.

But, of course, games have exploits. Some of them are significant. Sometimes leveling up is just a matter of getting lucky. A side quest dropped you an s tier item and the game engine smiled on you. Yay!

Silicon Valley mistakes luck for skill pretty regularly. And we don’t take it that well when other people use the same exploits as us because damn it that’s just not fair!

So rules tend to get rewritten and the hacks get patched and the economy in grinder games reliably defaults back to rewarding repetitive work. It’s not that different from the real economy. Gamers want to know clever game play works but not as much as they want to keep the value of what they have earned. It’s a real tension those sunk costs! Even if starting over benefits you the tendency to cling is understandable.

You’ve got to know when to spot when an activity is worth more than the general perception. You used to have to do this sort of work on your own but thanks to the internet we’ve got cheat codes literally everywhere for everything.

Don’t confuse the fact that cheat codes work for the fact that grinding came be the right approach for the game you are playing. Sometimes putting in the work means being a team player is valuable. Sometimes you are the glass cannon. Sometimes your style of play will offend others. Don’t take it all so seriously that you cannot stomach making a move. What’s the worst thing that happens?

Categories
Internet Culture Media Startups

Day 815 and Kayfabe

Here is a mindfuck for you. Pretending works. The mimicry of the thing occasionally, though not mostly, can lead to having the real thing. Fake it till you make it” works if you’ve got a long enough runway to allow for take off. If you’ve judged the resources correctly is more art than science but you should still be able to do the math.

There are, of course, laws of physics to account for in all of this but your reality is more fungible than you realize. I wouldn’t try manifesting a whole fantasy world, but if you are Brandon Sanderson you might have a shot. That guy rocks.

In discussing whether it is better to fire founders or product managers on Twitter today I got to see a lot of the cargo cult culture of Silicon Valley coming off a high. A lot of people can perform innovation and we’ve maybe even got it down to being well liked by financial markets. But sometimes you actually do have to go and do the thing. And you can’t fake it.

If you aren’t familiar with kayfabe, it’s a term used in wrestling. It means you don’t break character loosely. You keep the secret even if everyone is in on it. You can take things a bit too far and the blending of fiction and reality has now given us a reality tv president.

But what happens when you don’t make the jump? Does reality crash in? Will the market punish you for not delivering on a convincing enough value proposition? Do you have to keep your ambition within some scope that can exist in our agreed upon reality? Yes of course. Fuck you it’s called civilization. But every once in a while someone goes from vapor ware to the Revolution. Don’t be so sure you can spot the difference though. Kayfabe doesn’t just fool rubes.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 809 and Powerful

I’ve been through the gauntlet over the last month. And despite the nauseating rollercoaster of it all, I feel powerful. I am happy that I’ve drawn upon who I am and the boundaries required. It’s been liberating in a professional capacity but I can also see how my personal life got bigger and better as well.

The future is looking as uncertain as a Paul Atreides without the spice. I cannot see how it resolves. I see only hard choices and responsibilities both individual and collective. And I feel ready to hold my ground on what I contribute. But I will be holding others to theirs as well.

We’ve got a long ways to go. Many people do not wish to see things as they are. Issues both material and social are gripping America and by extension the world as the dollar hegemony comes into question over powerful institutional distrust. The power that comes in holding your gaze on what it could all mean and not turning to panic in fear is immense. I am not turning away.

I hold the knowledge that I can do everything right and still fail. I have faced the no win scenario. The Kobeyashi Maru of it all is that sometimes we lose. And we will feel it. And those feelings matter. But then we shoulder the burden and do what needs to be done. The only one who can save you is yourself. And I chose to see the power in the hard choices.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 793 and Pretty Skills

My mother has always had a gift for aphorisms. I am grateful she has this talent as I’ve been able to simply repackage her wisdom and look much more talented than I actually am at delivering pull quotes. Brevity is the soul of wit and my mother is very witty.

One of the pithy witticisms I believe I learned from her is a classic take on beauty and class being more fungible than we are led to believe.

Pretty is a skill set

Me and/or my mother

If you’ve ever hung out with a bunch of rich girls and wondered why they are all hot consider the dilemma solved. It’s a skill that is cultivated. Like any skill you cultivate or with time but also money. And if you are rich and white the path to beauty is a lot shorter than you might realize. It’s pretty fucked.

I’ve been lucky enough to cultivate this skill set over time. I’ve come to rely on it as part of my arsenal. But I’ve also got a bit of a cranky body so I’ve not always been able to consistently practice the various skills required.

And sometimes life just gets in the way. I look like a fucking mess today. After a week cooped up in an air conditioned room in Mexico with trips outside for slightly traumatic family emotional bonding, I look like shit.

My hair is unsettled and popping off static electricity. I’ve got small pimples all across my forehead. I’ve got patches of eczema on my right chin. I do not appear to have the skill set for pretty today.

Normally I do my best to hide in these circumstances. Especially if I don’t trust someone. I don’t like looking like I lack skill when it comes to presentation. And it is often a sign of respect to look well groomed and beautiful.

In fact, today we’ve got a houseguest that normally I’d feel required to be at full skill set capacity around. And I just didn’t feel like it was necessary. And that’s a skill set worth cultivating too.

Categories
Emotional Work Travel

Day 744 and Nothing

It’s always a toss up as to whether I am going to write beautiful missives showcasing my deepest emotions when traveling or just shit out whatever I can manage. I’ve discovered I’ve got quite a range over the years. And I can almost never predict it.

I assume everyone can relate to this. You can never really predict when your best efforts will yield great results. This is, of course, why I prattle on and on about about practice and habits. If you aren’t forcing yourself to hone a skill set even when you don’t feel like it you won’t ever improve it. If you don’t let yourself fail you never win. You miss all the shots you don’t take.

I totally get why people are obsessed with sports metaphors. I often wonder if athletes use business or war metaphors because otherwise they are stuck with the literalism of being descriptive.

I’ve always hated when business people use war metaphors as it feels a bit offensive (don’t elevate your work to life or death unless it actually is life or death) so I default to sports metaphors.

But mergers, term sheets and deals aren’t as sexy as goals, shots or points so if you are an athlete maybe sticking to literalism is fine? I mean, they are to me, but of course I’m inclined to think my work is hot. You’d be worried if didn’t.

So today I’ll accept that we use the metaphors we have on hand as sometimes we do t have anything else. We’ve got nothing. And you’ve got to work with what you’ve got to make something from nothing.

Categories
Politics

Day 740 and Immigration Failed Us Again

My second attempt at a securing a tourist visa for a friend failed this morning. If you’d have asked me a few years ago if I thought the American immigration basically worked, I would have agreed that, sure I thought it probably worked ok. No reason to think otherwise right? Phew I was wrong.

But after years of being humiliated over and over again by the state department for “the crime” of wanting a family friend to come visit us for vacation, I’ve never felt more ashamed of myself and my country.

I’m ashamed I was such a sucker. I thought we would still do the basic work of being a functional state. I’m ashamed that America treats people who want to visit us this badly.

We have well off, interesting, curious guests that want to explore our culture and spend their time & money seeing our land. We spit on our guests by turning away anyone who isn’t on a Schengen or ESTA waiver. You probably think that includes most people. I did. But we are wrong.

Only 40 of the 195 countries on the planet are granted travel visas without going through the visa embassy approval process. Most people have bad passports. Latin America, Africa, the Balkans, the former Soviet blocks and most of Asia have “bad passports” that require a tourist visa that requires years of waiting for appointments and almost assured disapproval at the Embassy.

I’ve never met a system so broken I couldn’t find a workaround. But here I am at the of my workarounds in tears at how I’ve let down my family and friends. The visa I’ve been helping with was denied a second time today after waiting since March for a second chance to re-apply. That first meeting at which we were also denied also took years of waiting.

And it is getting better. This round after flying to Prague, we got two minutes instead of thirty seconds in Frankfurt. In those minutes they still didn’t look at any of the materials prepared. Just a generic we don’t like the look of your people rejection. We got some boilerplate language about strong ties or weak ties and no we won’t read the 200 pages of supporting documents you brought.

I was a mess yesterday about how afraid I was we’d get down turned down again. But I thought surely I was being too paranoid. The lawyers we paid thought we had a good chance. We’ve brought everything possible for paperwork from mortgages to W2 forms. I’d taken personal financial liability for our friend. I let the government have an invasive look at our finances. I gave the consular offices the deed to my house. I worked for months to get a Congressional letter asking for a fair review of the application. None of it was reviewed.

Now in the aftermath, I’m not even sure if it’s possible to get a consular officer to do a fair review. Our congressional representatives wrote the consular office and they send back boilerplate with no details. No one reads the applications I guess. We can apply again. And again. But would good would it do?

Categories
Travel

Day 735 and Detail Oriented

Packing is one of my most consistent niche subtopics on this experimental “write every single day” habit. I’m fact, I’ve written 23 times about packing over the last seven hundred and some days. It would have been more but the pandemic kept me at home more which also eroded my packing skills.

I’ve written about my recurring packing nightmare in which the anxiety my inner child feels about travel & packing in my childhood looms large. I’ll be trying to locate a key item as a countdown clock ticks down. I never find the item & I miss the trip.

We moved every two years from house to house. We also traveled constantly for my father’s work. The dream so clearly represents abandonment it’s barely worth invoking psychology.

Now as an an adult I loathe packing. It brings back all my childhood memories of never feeling stable. Boxes and suitcases take me back.

Day 222 and Recurring Nightmares

To overcome this lingering childhood fear, I am a very detail oriented packed. I’ve got lists. I’ve got a whole triage program to be sure I have all of my medicine and vitamins in their original prescription bottles so the security folks don’t fuck me. I do doubles so if I get separated from a bag I can manage 24-48 hours without it. And I never let my core prescriptions leave my backpack which never leaves my sight line.

A grey Muji overhead suitcase and an Aer backpack

I’m a very light packer when it comes to clothing. I’m a two shirts, two pants, one dress and six undergarments type for a two week trip. With some winter sweaters taking too much space. I do them in cubes that zip down for less space and then I label them.

Packing cubes with labels

I try to label everything in my packing cubes and match them back against my master Notion document for packing necessities. I think do another hand written list in my notebook as well.

I have to take a number of medicines and vitamins with me to manage my ankylosis which takes up a third of my suitcase. I could be a much lighter packer if the TSA and other security institutions didn’t insist on me carrying drugs in their original prescription bottle and a file with my prescriptions printed out. I’m not a detail oriented person without focus but nothing forced focused quite like the prospect of falling ill overseas.