Tag: Status

Categories
Politics Travel

Day 631 and Reunion

I normally spend a lot of time my husband. During the pandemic we got very accustomed to being around each other twenty four seven. We quite enjoy each other’s company so it’s been a life upgrade.

But occasionally we take longer chunks of time apart. It started as a deliberate effort, but now as the post pandemic world works itself out travel is starting to happen naturally again. We haven’t seen each other for two weeks. And completely organically.

And we couldn’t have had more diverse life experiences and seen more varied cross sections of America if we’d planned it. Alex was at an investment firm’s CEO summit in Santa Barbara while I was in Billings Montana taking wilderness medical incident first responder training. He was hobnobing with bankers while I was doing “stop the bleed” with wildfire fighters and EMTS.

When we reunited this evening after being apart, and for such disparate types of experiences, it was so much fun to compare notes. The types of concerns and the expectations for the good life couldn’t be more divergent for the two poles of people. And I am modestly afraid that as America polarizes and different industries code for different versions of America that it will be rare for different classes to intersect.

And that’s a real problem if bankers are so far removed from paramedics as to have entirely different interests and ideals for their shared country of America. It’s clearly possible to encounter all types of Americans across all classes but I’m not sure I’m optimistic about enough people making the effort to bring us all together.

Categories
Culture

Day 622 and Uneven Bars

I’m not very temperamentally even. I run hot and excited and passionate and I’ve got a mean streak a mile wide. I can only assume the reason I’m so popular with some men is they love a bitch. Everyone does.

It’s not the most appreciated trait in popular culture but it does seem to be the dominate preference of a lot of very intelligent people. At least these days plenty of people both conservative and progressive appreciate the necessity of a ball buster. It’s a status object too. We don’t trust men with weak wives. It makes them look weak.

But I’m not sure anyone thinks it’s a particular good thing for the majority of women to act forcefully. If you hold your ground it can bring out howls of ostentatious victimhood. Which if you point out, they quickly gender the tactic a dark feminine trait of less less powerful that they learned from you.

It’s a really stupid party trick that somehow works well past the age of reason. After about 21 you should have really learned men tell you are weak because they know you are powerful over them. But honestly I still get caught flat footed by it. It’s a fickle power to be wielded without assurance or trust. But it is still a power and it’s insulting women women don’t claim it.

Women deciding to dismiss the uneven hold of their power makes balancing power for everyone a bit of a mess. The default switches from human manufacturing got reset.

Gender essentialism is pretty deep. It’s very jarring for the literal minded mainstream of society in particular. And unfortunately for everyone the world is run by the mainstream and they are prone to revanchist sentiment. Just look at everyone simpering for monarchy. Even if you are above that sort of thing no you are not. And so the uneven bars of progress continue. If you aren’t a realist about it you might get screwed.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 603 and Summer Vacation

It feels like I’ve always disliked summer. I suspect people like it because of it’s association with vacations. But I find neither summer nor vacations to be that appealing individually or in conjunction. What is there to like about heat, ozone pollution, and fire season? And then you want me to add travel and disruptions to my routine? I’m skeptical.

This is probably more a reflection of how much I’ve come to hate the intense heat associated with climate change in the west. Heat domes that keep the temperature over 40 C for weeks and their associated forest fires are the stuff of nightmares. But I don’t recall looking really forward to summer breaks as a kid except for the ones that were spent at an ashram. I enjoyed all of the meditation and yoga. But otherwise summer was just a weird time when I was mostly alone.

So it’s a bit of a surprise to feel like I’m having a summer vacation and I like it. I promised myself I’d take off all of August so we could really settle into our new homestead in Montana. I didn’t expect it to feel particularly relaxing as we have a chore list a mile long. It was meant as a different kind of working summer.

But I feel like I’m having the best summer vacation of my life. The weather is lovely and cool at the moment. The food is spectacular. All cherries and steaks. I’m spending a lot of time outdoors just by walking around the neighborhood. I’ve got time to workout. We installed a full lifting cage in the barn. I’m getting plenty of sleep. My Whoop is entirely green except when I push because I want too. My time is entirely spent on personal projects. Maybe this is what people have been raving about?

Categories
Aesthetics Travel

Day 600 and High Season

A lot of folks seem to be coming through Montana over the next two weeks. Maybe it’s the nature of high season that people flock to Montana at the end of the summer?

But it’s been quite fun to have all kinds of friends, mutuals and acquaintances reach out to make plans. Visibility on Twitter has played a large role in this, as anyone passing through Montana might be inclined to grab a meal or a drink if they scroll their local mutuals. I like to think I am top of mind because I am a good hang but it’s probably because I’m just quite visible.

All these tourists has got a bit of a “center of the universe” feel to it. It’s like a mountain summer town version of Manhattan during fashion week. Or Los Angeles during the Oscars. I’ve got to say it feels like I’m Monaco and it’s F1 racing season. Every city of note has an event that brings all of the jet set to their hometown.

I’m usually mixed on doing too much social activity but I’ve been feeling like socializing more. I’ve even been eating out with much more frequency. And what’s amazing about it is that in the past I didn’t want to do more than a couple events a month. But this end of summer in Montana thing has me looking forward to more deck cocktails, eating cold cherries on the marble kitchen slab, going to pubs and ale houses, and maybe even a few steak houses too.

Categories
Aesthetics Finance

Day 584 and Fraudsters

I hadn’t bothered watching any of the numerous Netflix documentaries on how Americans love a beautiful fraud until this weekend when I made an attempt to watch Inventing Anna. I can’t tell if I regret the decision. I’ve avoided any glamorizing of the various grifters that we love to hate.

I don’t love stories about hustles gone bad because I fundamentally believe the difference between success and failure is a lot thinner than than the average person knows. “Fake it to you make it” is part of the great Pentecostal American prosperity gospel. You can come from nothing and become someone in America. We worship the idea of social mobility even if we don’t always like how people gained their fortunes. It’s an entire aesthetic in America.

This is particularly true because sometimes we actually do let the fraudsters win. Especially if we admire their hustle. And let’s be frank it’s a lot harder to tell who is a fraud these days because decades of publicly being a fraud doesn’t stop you from sitting in the Oval Office anymore.

Is it any wonder we aren’t quite sure how to feel about wealth and privilege and the black magic required to obtain it? We act like fraud is a temporarily embarrassing discovery on the way to respectability. Because it often fucking is.

Being in startups has given me a front row seat to just how much talent and capability matter. Except when they absolutely don’t. It’s genuinely hard to reconcile how little effort and outcome can be correlated occasionally.

And this absolutely lends itself to people being willing to take shortcuts. Mistaking that some hard doesn’t pay will kill you if you aren’t able to stay one step ahead. If you get caught, well that is clearly bad but who is to say you couldn’t have kept it up? It’s not like Americans trust cops or prosecutors (except for the line blue line fetishists). Maybe you were just too much of a loud mouth.

I will say the Inventing Anna series has shown me Americans are genuinely confused on how the rich stay rich. In so far as I can tell it boils down to gambling on who might be the real deal and simply writing off the frauds.

Cost of doing business. It happens to everyone. And the worse your boundaries are, well, the worse off your percentages. If your bullshit radar is bad that’s how generational wealth disappears unless you can figure out a way to rig the system (which is always an option).

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 566 and Thot Leadership

I’m only a week out from moving to the homestead in Montana. So naturally I’m having a lot of feelings that I’m coping with by being unproductive on the internet. I’ve been enjoying falling down various rabbit holes like the rise of femcels whilst torturing reply guys on Twitter with bait polling.

But through this particular exercise in self indulgence, I’ve wandered off my usual path of vaguely right coded back-to-the-land regional capitalism and stumbled into the extended universe of socialist criticism of neoliberalism feminism. Socialists spend a lot of time being pissed at capitalist visions of feminism. And it’s really good stuff.

The discourse on resistance to neoliberal feminism is fascinating and the narrative space is so rich. We’ve got the failures of female friendship because of productivity concerns. We’ve got tradwives and reactionary refusals to work outside the home. We’ve got elaborate aesthetic deconstructions of Mormon homesteading. Ann Helen Peterson is an entire Substack beat. Meg Conley has some of the best writing on consumption and home life ever written.

It’s enough to make me wish I’d stayed in academia and pursued blue check thot-leadership. How fun is it to complain about being burnt out and misused but in fancy language? Ok it’s probably not as fun as I imagine since they are mostly untangling lifestyles I actually live.

But like what if instead of being a Girlboss who became a Tradwife homesteader I did academic research on myself instead? Write what you know amirite?

It’s clearly uncomfortable being in an in-between space and I simply cannot move to Montana fast enough. I’m scattered and annoying and in hardcore goblin mode and I’ve got no other excuse but I’m scared. You can really spot it in the erratic shitposting and bitching. But I think everyone is having fun so I guess it’s alright.

Categories
Aesthetics Emotional Work

Day 563 and Packing Puttering

I spent the day puttering on and off through all my worldly possessions. I was deciding on what needs to be packed and when. We have a tiered system of immediate, first week and first month use. And then leaving to the last minute all of the stuff you are fairly certain you use daily.

When it isn’t for an immediate trip it turns out I really enjoy putting together an edited list of daily necessities. I had fun putting together a cosmetics kit for a two week “vacation” where I might not be able to access my full vanity.

I had an enjoyable afternoon going through everything in my bathroom. Just seeing what you have held onto for no good reason and what you accidentally prioritized but didn’t desire pride of place on your shelf. I feel like few things show a woman’s own ambivalence about her priorities quite like her makeup bag.

I’ve ruthlessly culled my routine down to the bare bones. I’ve packed my entire life down to one shitty Heathrow quart baggie. And I’ve enjoyed preposterous largess with two full cabinets of cosmetics crap from a stint in the industry. I’ll never throw away some of it but I doubt I’ll use it either. It’s a strange thing to hang on to as I know shit expires.

I’m grateful my husband hasn’t said anything about me lugging several hundreds pounds of going out makeup to Montana. As if even in Bozeman I’ll find a way to integrate a smoky eye or a bright red lip. Or maybe I’m crazy and of course I’ll find a reason to get done up. Sometimes it’s hard to know now much you are puttering around with things that need to go.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 561 and Community Building

The big move to Montana is only a few weeks away. I was expecting to be in a frenzy of preparation but I’ve been stuck in bed with a symptom flare so I’ve basically done nothing but ask for Twitter advice. Thankfully my community online is generous and available with their insights.

I’ve been lucky to participate in (and build, communities in spaces as varied as fashion, local politics, and disaster preparedness. My husband is also a community builder professionally. We both have a knack for finding our people and becoming a part of of all types of communities both in real life and online.

We are both excited and a bit nervous to move to a new town. Bozeman is a small town but not so small that it’s clear where we should start when we arrive. We’ve been told it’s a bit skeptical of outsiders. We’ve definitely received the advice to change our license plates immediately. It’s a bit intimidating to be honest.

There is a lot of amazing advice from my Twitter friends on becoming a member of a new community in real life. I would definitely check out the thread if you are feeling isolated or like you could be better connected to people around you. It’s helped me feel like I actually might be equipped to integrate into Bozeman smoothly.

I’m already putting the advice into the big Notion project management document that Alex has put together for our move. We don’t have too many close neighbors (just two on our road) but I am looking forward to introducing myself to them. I’m still debating what activities and organizations I will prioritize when we get there.

I am most interested in gardening, local agriculture and community preparedness efforts but I have enjoyed town politics in my past life. I served as an appointee on Manhattan Community Board 1 and loved it. There isn’t a lot of glamour in permits or licenses but it’s crucial work. So perhaps I can find a way to serve local businesses in a similar way.

Whatever happens, I cannot wait to invite people over to our home. It’s always the one on one connecting that weaves you into the fabric of a community and there is no better way to do that than being welcoming. So I will probably start by showing up, smiling and listening to my new neighbors.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 558 and Interior Design

The reality is dawning on me that I don’t have enough furniture for an actual house. We will be moving from a barely furnished townhouse in Colorado to a 3-4 bedroom farmhouse in Montana.

What makes it even funnier is we barely acquired additional furniture when we moved from a one bedroom loft in Manhattan to the townhouse in Colorado. We didn’t know where we’d land long term and boy howdy did we put off acquiring anything larger than some houseplants and a chaise lounge.

The instability of the pandemic years didn’t really drive the acquisition of home goods for us like it apparently did for others. We didn’t want to have big items to move as we were fairly sure the townhouse in Boulder wouldn’t be our forever home. But as it turned out, it took almost two years to figure out where we wanted to purchase a homd and successfully acquire one.

So now I’m saddled with the responsibility of furnishing our new home. You’d think it would be a fun obligation. Shopping! But I honestly never developed much of an interest in interior design. I have a decent enough education in aesthetics and a personal style that is presumably easy enough to translate to interiors. I just so don’t want to do the work to source all the items and string it together into a cohesive whole. So apologies in advance if I do a lot of furniture posts over the next month.

Categories
Travel

Day 554 and Creature Comforts

You’d be surprised at what you can tolerate so long as you’ve got the little luxuries in life. I think I stole that quote from a Vin Diesel movie Pitch Black. And I’ve found it to be quite accurate. Travel is the sort of experience where misery can be overcome by a decent pillow and room service.

I am emerging from some time on the Ionian Sea that happens to be on the wrong side of some of modernity. And let me tell you my appreciation for capitalism has been rekindled a thousand fold.

I did a layover in Heathrow overnight and I’ve simply never been more relieved to be in a decent business hotel. I must have looked a wreck as I got upgraded into a king suite with a soaking tub. And I just say I feel much more human after an hour in the bathtub, a night of sleep with multiple decent pillows and room service.

A good long soak and a full English breakfast has done much to improve my overall spirits. And my general condition of itchiness has gone by the wayside. The blue bags under my eyes are merely visible as opposed to horrifying.

I’ve got another leg of the journey ahead of me but I’ll be in business class and that’s a luxury of the sort that I very much crave at the moment. A flat lay, endless hydration and a bunch of saved Netflix shows is a creature comfort of the highest order. If the empire is going to decay I’ve got to savor every last moment of little luxuries before they are gone.