kaberett | In which I grouse about some of the superficial shit that's stressing me out

Includes current politics + mental illness, HURRAH.

Dear everybody goyisch, and especially everyone white and goyisch, who is reblogging Dear White People THIS IS US shit in re Charlottesville, without reblogging things about Jews' conditional access to Whiteness, given what was being chanted there, I see you. I am pretty sure you're just not thinking! Please think about it.
I am really struggling with the posts currently doing the rounds about how ~~engaging in gratitude exercises is bullshit~~ (specifically prompted by Gratitude Lists Are B.S. — It Was an "Ingratitude" List That Saved Me). I have been Not Engaging but it seems to me that this criticism of engaging in gratitude practices is... fundamentally based on a massive misunderstanding, i.e., it's also incredibly valuable and necessary to get validation that the shit you're dealing with is hard. "and here are three things I can be pleased about" isn't about denying that bad shit is going on! It's about defiance and stubbornness and spite and taking joy anyway. Which is another place this article goes wrong:
I started making gratitude lists every day — following the directions carefully and making sure to be specific about the reasons I was grateful: I had a loving husband who laughed at the same obscure Saturday Night Live sketches as me. I had a dirt cheap apartment in the hippest neighborhood in Los Angeles. I had a commercial acting agent and got to go on big Hollywood auditions for high paying gigs.

... that's... not actually specific. It's generalities. It's not "I saw a ridiculously bright green caterpillar on my way home, I didn't even realise nature came in that colour". It isn't "this specific thing that happened specifically today". It's trying to convince yourself that your life is ~in general~ great, which is unequivocally not what those exercises are for! And I recognise that the problem here is the exercises being explained poorly, but also AUGH, the feelings of alienation and invalidation and isolation that are coming from reading this shit when I don't think it would be kind or helpful to go "actually have u considered".
on which topic: observe me here making a list of the things that are stressing me out. observe that that is literally some of my counselling homework at the moment. write a list of the things that are shit rather than sweeping them under the carpet and then wondering why you're miserable! and also take joy in... surprise free ice cream while a group of musicians plays light jazz on top of the book barge on the canal!
Minor and petty (but nonetheless contributing to a sense of alienation): a post that is doing the rounds of tumblr that features an illustration of someone with incredibly expensive leg prosthetics using an incredibly cheap and nasty wheelchair.
OH RIGHT AND, I say, coming back to edit this in because MORE PETTY SHIT I'M ANNOYED ABOUT: the pronunciation-of-scone "debate" is not a real argument! it serves the same social function as talking about the weather! few if any people ACTUALLY CARE. it's oKAY. IT'S JUST SMALLTALK.

OKAY THAT WILL DO FOR NOW.

Thank you.

I also have issue digesting that post about the ingratitude list. It's great that that author found a way to do something that worked for them! But my 'random shiny things' AND my rants work for me! And that is okay.

I have made note of the dear white and goyisch white people reminder.

♥

Part of my frustration is that I can see what the author is getting at and why they think that! But also they have been MISINFORMED and I wish to CORRECT them, which is an impulse that rarely ends well.

I am happy to talk in more detail about why the This Is Us thing gets my back up, if you'd like. <3 It's not a thing I particularly want to ~get into~ on tumblr for a wide variety of reasons, including "if I criticise anyone for this on tumblr they will probably assume that I am calling them ProblematiqueTM and therefore Unsalvageable or whatever bullshit, and that isn't what I mean, and I think I stand a better chance of communicating that here than on tumblrs NEVER MIND the kind of attention it would draw", but... yeah. Definitely happy to talk about more here if you'd like. <3

>> Part of my frustration is that I can see what the author is getting at and why
they think that! <<

Makes sense to me.

>> But also they have been MISINFORMED and I wish to CORRECT them, which is an impulse that rarely ends well. <<

Yeeee-ah. It is VERY RARELY possible to correct someone who does not solicit your input, and even when one CAN it's generally only on narrowly specific facts and only if they, y'know, accept that fact-based reality exists, and they still resent it. In my experience.

But one wishes to INFORM PEOPLE of the CORRECT DETAILS and NUANCES and it is so very very desirable to attempt to COMMUNICATE INFORMATION. Agh, why are humans. I am particularly aggravated when I notice myself doing *both sides* of this!

>> I am happy to talk in more detail about why the This Is Us thing gets my back up, if you'd like. <<

You certainly can, either here or in a PM to me, if you like. I'm interested in the topic. But I am *not* (generally) on Tumblr or Twitter or Google+ or Facebook or anything precisely because I don't want to field any of the frenetic hyperbolic talking past one another. So I haven't seen the OP or any of the more notable responses, and I'm not sure if you would really wish to propagate (directions to) messed up content in the course of explaining to me why it is messed up. Thank you, though.

<3 I hope there are good things in your day today. Yes. *makes little fuzzy-ripply catnoises like a bubbling pot, because catperson*

<3 Experimental dinner was excellent, I got to pod a lot of broad beans, I have a pound or so of excellent greengages, and the remaining blackberries are in a clafoutis in the oven as we speak.

Also I caught a Lugia, and physio continues improving, and sunshine & social happened.

In which I grouse about some of the superficial shit that's stressing me out

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