On fucking up, a guide

More 101-y stuff. I apologize. When I want to write about something, I want to write.

When you fuck up, do not say "I'm sorry if what I said/wrote/did offended/hurt you, I apologize."

Say instead, "I'm sorry that what I wrote/said/did hurt/offended you." It is also highly recommended that "I'll do my best not to let it happen again," or "how can I make this right?" be tacked on to the latter.

This shifts the burden off of the person who was offended &/or hurt (for being too sensitive, PC, crazy, whatever) to the offensive &/or hurtful person (for being thoughtless), where it belongs.

Pure Joy

I have a long, obnoxious post about navigating my hair and trying to transition to natural, but in the meantime, I wanted to just make myself feel better on this cold, windy day. And that means posting pictures of the most beautiful child ever, my nephew. Here he is with his mother and her mother in Guatemala visiting Mayan ruins, and again with my sister-in-law at Lake Michigan last summer. And oh hey, what's that behind him? Why, it's the Mackinac bridge! Then he's napping with my brother and dressed up as a lion, oooo scary, for halloween.

Cabin fever

I have been feeling disconnected from everything lately. My friends - in person and online, my online communities and message boards, the S.O., my family, feminism, progressivism, my body, the physical world around me, and my dog. Everything.

I am tired. I am tired of not seeing the sun for 5 days a week in CubicleLand. I'm tired of arguing, and I'm tired of not being heard. I have had it up to here with sexism, racism, materialism, and all the rest in 'progressives,' mostly in an online context. But, living as I do, in ann arbor, there is enough bigotry and ingrained oppressive tendencies to go around in person as well.

So, if I haven't been responding very often, or in a very tolerable way, well, I apologize. I'm in a funk. And I don't see a way out right now.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling very low, I wish I could remove the lens that I see the world through, and just continue on in blissful ignorance of the oppression and discrimination that shape practically everything in it, except for maybe the Mariana trench. Is that place free of oppression? I hope so.