Not Karen

Cartoon rendering of green-eyed,
 dark-haired face peeking
through green blinds.

Yeah, I'm not calling them Karens anymore. I know too many decent people named Karen to lump them all together like that, even (gasp!) a Republican or two. The same goes for the term Republican, honestly; just because the GOP as a party has gone off the rails entirely doesn't mean individual people who still identify as Republicans are awful humans. 

So, yeah, I'm using the TV Tropes phrase for it - Obnoxious Entitled Housewife - even though housewives are not all like this either. The keyword here is entitled, with the qualifier obnoxious. I do encounter a lot of people who - according to their online profiles and behavior - are very definitely this.

You may have met them - the parents who are totally privileged, who have the money, and who are just too cheap to pay for the private education they’re always touting as so much better than what they have. These are the same people who try to suggest they know more than the people who do this for a living, whose apparent need for the (public) school to do it their way without ponying up any actual workable suggestions, who think that their child's 3rd-grade education is more important than the teachers' life and health (but not enough, apparently, to do anything about it; they just complain), and especially those who belatedly try to frame it as concern for the “less fortunate”.

That would be my kids, the less fortunate ones, who don't live in a McMansion, have a stay-at-home parent (or two parents, for that matter) and enough income to support that, as well as assorted neurodiversity issues that make distance schooling a really, really bad fit.

You may also have met them outside the school system. The people who think that they don't need to mask up or follow the rules because they're basically healthy, who will call names and sometimes actually threaten people because mask-wearers are sheep, and who will begrudgingly wear them when required and dramatically pull them off the instant they are outside. The ones who stalk the vaccination openings instead of waiting for their turns, but would be completely defensive at the mere suggestion that this is unfair. The ones who refuse to wear the mask over their nose until someone reminds them and then huffily pulls it up while rolling their eyes hard enough to sprain them. They may or may not believe that 45 is a good Christian who was unfairly abused by his country. 

• Common phrases:
• "I want to speak to the manager."
• "What do I even pay taxes for?"
• "I pay your salary."
• "The customer is always right."
• "I'm not X-ist; I have an X friend."
• "If you would just do it my way..."

These people are so tiresome. Passive-aggressive, tiresome, entitled, obnoxious bullies.

Just stop it. My God, don't you have anything better to do than to complain?

I'm Still Here

Don't worry about me; I'm still here. 

I took a break from here the day after the Capitol siege because it was just too much. I wasn't even on Facebook much for a few days after that; deliberately protecting myself by running for cover (aka playing video games instead of dealing with the real world) for several hours every day.

Then I started writing on Vocal, and while I intend to keep doing that as well, the GamersBabes space is my home. Vocal is for my opinion on the Outside World, except for the first post introducing me and the kids. I only have three posts over there so far, and I will put a link along the side here to click if you want to read those pieces as well.

But for now, I just wanted you all to know I'm good.

Just Stop with the False Equivalencies

Angry cartoon of me surrounded by flames

 Not that any of you* will listen, of course, but I have to get it down, get it out, let it out of my head.

1. No, breaking into the Capitol guns-a-blazing while congress is in session is not the same thing as property damage during actual protests or even riots. 
• No, not even if some sympathizer who a) should know better, and b) promised to protect people and property lets you in.
2. No, you are not being targeted by the press because you're straight, white, conservative, or male. You're being described by the press because of your violent actions. 
• Unlike, for instance, the folks actually being targeted by you for having the temerity to be not straight, white, conservative, and male.
• On that note, conservative is no longer the correct term. Reactionary or bigoted or even ridiculously immature might be more accurate. Actually conservative people try to - you know - conserve things (other than their own privileged status).
3. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's wrong. Change is not bad in and of itself (and there we go, back to reactionary).
• Good examples of this are gender expression, sexuality, and pronoun use.
4. Science and Religion both have good qualities, but they are not equivalent.
• Perhaps God is protecting you from Covid-19... by giving us the science and technology and tools to protect ourselves. 
• Or maybe you should use religion's most positive quality - a sense of community - to help others instead of judging them.
• The "masks don't work" and anti-vax arguments are specious. They do work - if everyone who is able to follow the guidelines follows them.
5. Your business is not more important than me breathing in and out.
• And if you had followed the guidelines immediately when they were given, there wouldn't be a question. But you're too 'rugged individualist' for that.
• There are no goddamn bootstraps. If there were, you still couldn't pull yourself up by them.
6. That sneering, sarcastic "So much for liberal tolerance" is bullshit. We are tolerant of things people are, but not tolerant of bad things people do. 
• Is your color, sexuality, gender, neurotype different from the most common ones? Cool, you get tolerance and acceptance and maybe even celebration!
• Are your behavior and attitude violent or unkind? Intolerance. 
• See how that works?

*Where "you" refers to people who don't even try to understand. I'm not talking about Actually Conservative and Decent™ people here.

Permission to be Human

When I started planning this not-a-resolution post in my head, I thought Oh, I'll just reuse last year's post; it's not like I've mastered the art of enforcing my own boundaries while also not being a jerk.

But then it occurred to me that although I have not mastered it, I am getting pretty good at it, and besides, just linking and calling it good would be a cop-out for what I want to work on this year: being kind to myself. I don't mean being kind to me and ignoring those around me; that's not useful. I mean being aware of me and my relationship to the world around me - even when it's safer not to go out in it - and understanding that turning it off entirely is not self-care.

See, my tendency when attempting to practice self-compassion or even self-care is to either a) beat myself up for being "lazy" by doing "unnecessary" things or b) fret because I didn't get done what I wanted to get done (or thought I "should" get done).

I've talked about this before, on both counts, but I'm trying to get it straight in my head. The best way for me to do that is to write it down in my blog. And if I can come up with a good summation - such as last year's Do No Harm But Take No Crap - so much the better.

Let's take B first in this case. I have a spreadsheet for the winter break schedule (that the kids will probably only read if I force them Clockwork Orange-style). Mostly this is so I don't forget what I'm bringing to Christmas dinner, for instance, or which assignments Lizzy is behind on and needs to make up before January 4th. And although they're unlikely to read it, I do include the kids so they can't claim they were never told.

But I tend to make it a hard and fast, set-in-stone task list, and it doesn't have to be. This is where I fall down because of B above: I tend to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff and throw up my hands and then I get pissy with myself and everyone else (for not doing everything on my list) and violate the first half of last year's not-resolution. 

So I'm trying to be more aware of priorities as part of this year's not-resolution. Yes, we do need to go through the kitchen cabinets before school is back in, both to throw out expired stuff and because my mom wants her Tupperware back... but the world will not end if the Christmas decorations aren't put away until the weekend of January 9th. In a similar vein, I doubt we're going to get to shoveling out the coat closet in the next few days, but I went through every single sock in the house, paired them up, tossed the ones with holes or no matches (or near matches; as long as they're from the same set the kids prefer wearing mismatched colors), found storage places for all our towels and bed linens that are not in a laundry basket in the middle of my living room, and reclaimed two laundry baskets in the process. That wasn't even on the list.

So suck it, Task List; I am the boss of you, not the other way around.

Then we have item A above, wherein I find myself treating things like meditation or reading or video games or Netflix or anime with the kids or board games or even my constant quest for better sleep as self-indulgent crap, not worth the time, energy, or money I may spend on it.

This. Is. Ridiculous. Those things are part of what makes life life, not mere survival. They're entertainment and rest and community and self-improvement.

So basically? This year - in addition to practicing last year's not-resolutions - I will remember that I have permission to be human. To do me, while allowing myself to do me and not to beat myself up for it.

And if I can improve on this as much as I did with the boundaries last year... goal accomplished.