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Aug. 6th, 2019 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. 20 % of millenials say they have no friends
Curious? How do you define friendship?
I sometimes think I have no friends. Yet, I talk to people on DW constantly, and some of the people I've been corresponding with -- I've been doing so for well on twenty years. We've been corresponding since 2002 on voy forums, and then since 2003 on Live Journal, and since 2008 on Dreamwidth. And in some respects share things I wouldn't share elsewhere. Does physical proximity necessarily equal friendship? Or being physically close? Or physically intimate (not sexually, there are other ways of being physically intimate -- like hugging)? But I've had people online pull me out of a depressive spiral. In 2004 -- people advised me to check the medication that I was taking -- and I did, I stopped one (a progesterine pill) and scaled back on another...and well, I was no longer suicidal.
And I've exchanged gifts with people online. I remember when I quit my job at the evil library reference company, a Navy Nurse in Japan who I was corresponding with on Voy Forums and by email (we'd write long emails to each other) sent me flowers on that very day -- all the way from Japan. And when her husband came to town, he took me out to a restaurant -- during Navy Week to thank me for helping her stay sane.
Meanwhile, there are people I'm in close proximity to at work that don't speak to me. And others, like Lando, who I've become friends with. We banter. And we've bonded. We don't see each other outside of work at all -- he lives on Long Island, I live in the City.
I just visited "friends" in Martha's Vineyard -- it didn't go as well as I'd hoped, but I wouldn't say we weren't friends. Just that maybe we don't want to visit each other or stay with each other?
My mother is my best friend -- I can talk to her about anything on the phone. But I can't live with her. And distance has helped.
And I've reunited with people from college on FB, I never see them, we don't visit each other -- but we do talk on FB. Is that friendship?
Or is friendship something we see defined in books, in movies, and television shows -- where people go on vacations together, sleep over, go out drinking nightly, talk endlessly on the phone and celebrate all their birthdays? I don't know -- I've had that sort of friendship and found it to be fleeting and weirdly empty.
Also, friendship sometimes seems transistory...people jumping in and out of one's life...as if I'm a pit-stop to somewhere else or they are. I can say that each person I've met has enriched or changed me in some way -- off or online.
Is friendship just bringing people food when they are ill, and going to visit in the hospital? Or is it going to a movie every so often and chatting? Or is it just talking to each other in each other's journals -- electronic correspondence?
Or all of the above?
Several of my co-workers bought my book -- wouldn't that make them friends? Two wrote positive reviews. Members from my church did the same. One had her book club read it. And there were people online who read this journal, who did as well. Doesn't that make us friends?
I don't know. When I'm alone in my apartment, without voices of people present, inside my own head...I think I am friendless...but am I? If I were to dissolve into dust tomorrow -- would people miss me? Would I miss the people I correspond with? Yes.
I think...words can be defined in so many different ways...and friendship like most things may well be in the eye of the beholder.
2. The Editor in Chief of the X-men Comics is...a Hannibal/Will shipper and a Xander/Anya shipper...LOL!
AiPT!: As we wrap up this week, it’s interesting to learn what may be inspiring the creators behind the X-Men. So let’s look outside of the X-Men universe for a moment. What are some of your favorite pop culture romances in other media?
Jordan: I am currently in the process of rewatching one of my favorite shows of all time, Hannibal, and… the romance on that show between Will and Hannibal is amazing for so many reasons. First of which is that it’s so amazingly ballsy to take what would be, in so many shows before, a fan-based ship and it made it canon, it put it on the screen. They started out just knowing one another, became “friends” and then became a romance. It helps that Mads Mikkelsen is amazing and could probably make everyone on Earth fall in love with him. I know it worked on me.
Another one that got me very emotional was Anya and Xander in Buffy. I really honestly do not know why I got so invested in their relationship, but I really did. I guess I just loved both of their characters so much, and I was really invested in Anya’s redemption. When (SPOILER!) their marriage did not happen, I was FURIOUS! I was so mad at Xander for being a coward and screwing up that relationship. I don’t really think I ever fully forgave him, even though I did come to be ok with his relationship with (ADDITIONAL SPOILER!) Dawn in the Dark Horse Buffy comics. I still think Anya got done wrong and deserved more.
3. One of my fav's Toni Morrison died at 88.
I loved her book "Beloved", and others.
Her narratives mingle the voices of men, women, children and even ghosts in layered polyphony. Myth, magic and superstition are inextricably intertwined with everyday verities, a technique that caused Ms. Morrison’s novels to be likened often to those of Latin American magic realist writers like Gabriel García Márquez.
In “Sula,” a woman blithely lets a train run over her leg for the insurance money it will give her family. In “Song of Solomon,” a baby girl is named Pilate by her father, who “had thumbed through the Bible, and since he could not read a word, chose a group of letters that seemed to him strong and handsome.” In “Beloved,” the specter of a murdered child takes up residence in the house of her murderer.
Throughout Ms. Morrison’s work, elements like these coalesce around her abiding concern with slavery and its legacy. In her fiction, the past is often manifest in a harrowing present — a world of alcoholism, rape, incest and murder, recounted in unflinching detail.
It is a world, Ms. Morrison writes in “Beloved” (the novel is set in the 19th century but stands as a metaphor for the 20th), in which “anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind.”
“Not just work, kill or maim you, but dirty you,” she goes on. “Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it up.”
But as Ms. Morrison’s writing also makes clear, the past is just as strongly manifest in the bonds of family, community and race —
bonds that let culture, identity and a sense of belonging be transmitted from parents to children to grandchildren. These generational links, her work unfailingly suggests, form the only salutary chains in human experience.
My fav's were:
Toni Morrison's Beloved
Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
Alice Walker's The Color Purple
Octavia Butler's Kindred
Also Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
4. At work, coworker was highly rec'ing "The Boys" and "Umbrella Academy" which I call millenial anti-superhero television series. Co-worker hates superhero films and shows, and these were made for her.
I told her I was the opposite.
I don't like dark and gritty, anti-hero shows, about whiny entitled characters. That's reality. I'm trying to escape reality when I watch movies and television shows, not fall into it. Hyper-realism and me are unmixy things at the moment. (She totally got it.)
I was trying to read "White Fragility by Robin D'Angelo" - I think that's her name, and it reads like a psycho-socioligical text on racism from a white perspective.
But fails to accomplish it's overall goal in that it generalizes and is sort of racist in of itself. That's the problem with discussing racism, even on an academic level, is you can't help but fall into generalities and assumptions based on generalities and limited perspective -- in this case the author's. When you write a non-fiction book on racism in this manner, setting yourself up as a pseudo-authority on it -- you will fall into the trap of making broad generalizations. Some of which hit the mark and are true, many exaggerated, and many true to certain people and not others.
I think she'd have been better off -- wandering about and interviewing folks about racism. And asking different people across a broad spectrum to write essays on the topic, and then edit said essays, analyze them with various others, and come to a consensus. In short -- I want more voices on the topic, not just one, discussing in a volume.
But I will push forward and see if it gets better. Right now she's discussing identity politics and what that means from various points of view.
It's nothing new. But then I know a lot about the topic. So it's nothing new so far to me. That most likely isn't true of everyone.
Racism is a difficult conversation to have. But I wouldn't say it's just hard for whites to discuss. I think it is hard for whites and POC to discuss together. Mainly because there's a lot history and most of it pretty bad, between the two groups. Also racism can sometimes get intermingled with nationalism. Nationality isn't the same as race or ethnicity. (ie. My Nationality may be American, my race is Caucausian).
I would prefer racism or race didn't exist. But it does. And being white, I can afford to be colorblind or pretend it doesn't exist. If I were black, yellow or POC, I wouldn't have that luxury. I know this -- because I've been close friends with enough POC to observe how people respond to us when it's well, when my friend is the only black person on the train or room, or when I'm the only white person on the train or the room -- and we're sitting together -- clearly chatting as friends. More than once, I've gotten judgemental looks, which I've returned with the look of death.
And I did pick up on it in Martha's Vineyard. Also I've picked up on it in Hilton Head and in upstate New York, and at my work place, and on the train. It's everywhere. And I'm tired of it. It's exhausting. And every time I've tried to discuss it -- the air in the room grows thick with tension and no one can breath.
It's as bad as discussing politics.
The other non-fiction I've decided to attempt is Emily Bernard's memoir, about being female and black in the South, over a long period of time. It's a series of personal essays, circling around when she got stabbed in the Kidney. It's easier and more compelling a read that White Fragility -- but that may be because it's more personal and less academic, so I'm less skeptical and my brain doesn't feel the need to analyze and debate every point. Academic text tends to bring out the lawyer in me for some reason.
5. Other conversation, somewhat triggering, had with co-worker today was...well career we wished we had. She'd been talking to a woman who was a victims of sexual crimes and human trafficking advocate and wrote nonfiction books and fictional ones about various things she was interested in -- and made a living doing what she loved. Co-worker wondered where she went wrong. And I said that's not how it works exactly -- people tend to fall into things, and you don't know what career you may end up in.
I also said that while I didn't intend on doing this, and had grown tired of it at times, I did like trains and did feel I was making a contribution -- even if I wished that I wasn't constantly stealing time to write. (And losing track of my novels in the process).
I don't know. Is anyone doing what they planned on doing? Or did you fall into it too? And do I want to know if you didn't? Having enough trouble pushing away the envy I felt towards the woman my co-worker was discussing (much as my co-worker was doing) or the envy I feel at times towards my brother and his wife, who are both doing what they love.
I don't hate what I'm doing. If I break it down, there are aspects of it I enjoy and maybe even love? I like analyzing things -- and I do a lot of analysis. Also, it employs my critical brain -- which I enjoy. And I get to do a lot of writing -- albeit technical and financial and legal writing -- but still, not a bad thing.
Forces me to do math -- which is a good thing, I guess. And I love trains. So I get to work with that -- and ensure they can run safely and on time. I also help clean the environment. Plus, I get to work with a lot of different and interesting people.
But there are aspects I could do without. Unfortunately, you don't get to pick your co-workers. And work is stressful due to all the rumors in the air about the merger and stream lining policies and procedures. But, I've seen worse.
Would I prefer to be left alone to write my novels? Better yet, writing them in cool places...and getting to visit those places to do research? Yes, and yes. But I worked in publishing -- I have no illusions regarding that business. (IT sucks balls.) And I follow a lot of professional novelists -- and I have no interest in living their lives -- which is 40% writing and 60% promotion, traveling about doing book signings and conventions, and catering to fans. It's not sitting and just writing like Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy and others did in the past. No. It's traveling about doing weird conventions and panels. (Shudders). Marketing and promotions and fandom have destroyed the professional writing business. If you want to know why you don't have a new book from so and so in that series you love, or it's not as good -- look no further than your own stupid need to meet them in person and get them to sign it. It's ironic in a way. Why can't you just read the book and write fanfic? Why break that fourth wall?
6. Been procrastinating setting up a dental appointment. Dental insurance issues. I called Metlife, my dental insurance, and asked them what network I was in. Turns out there is no such thing.
Metlife: Well, you don't have one.
Me: I don't understand.
Metlife: You are on a sliding scale -- just go to any dentist, have them send in the form and we'll decide what we pay.
Me: And I won't know until they send in the form?
Metlife: Correct. There's no ID cards or numbers, you just send in the form.
Me: The 2018 form?
MEtlife: Yes. Is there anything else?
Me: Uh, I guess not. Wait...so what would that be classified as under your site? PDP or Preferred PDP?
MEtlife: Either, or neither. Don't really know. You don't have one. Have I helped you?
ME: Yeah, thank you.
Then they have the gall to ask me to take a survey.
Metlife: Please advise the likely-hood of recommending Metlife to another person on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 that you wouldn't, ten that you would, nine that you might...
Me: five
Metlife: Did not understand. Please advise the likelihood..
Me: five
Metlife: one that you will, five that you might...
I hung up on them.
Ugh.
Curious? How do you define friendship?
I sometimes think I have no friends. Yet, I talk to people on DW constantly, and some of the people I've been corresponding with -- I've been doing so for well on twenty years. We've been corresponding since 2002 on voy forums, and then since 2003 on Live Journal, and since 2008 on Dreamwidth. And in some respects share things I wouldn't share elsewhere. Does physical proximity necessarily equal friendship? Or being physically close? Or physically intimate (not sexually, there are other ways of being physically intimate -- like hugging)? But I've had people online pull me out of a depressive spiral. In 2004 -- people advised me to check the medication that I was taking -- and I did, I stopped one (a progesterine pill) and scaled back on another...and well, I was no longer suicidal.
And I've exchanged gifts with people online. I remember when I quit my job at the evil library reference company, a Navy Nurse in Japan who I was corresponding with on Voy Forums and by email (we'd write long emails to each other) sent me flowers on that very day -- all the way from Japan. And when her husband came to town, he took me out to a restaurant -- during Navy Week to thank me for helping her stay sane.
Meanwhile, there are people I'm in close proximity to at work that don't speak to me. And others, like Lando, who I've become friends with. We banter. And we've bonded. We don't see each other outside of work at all -- he lives on Long Island, I live in the City.
I just visited "friends" in Martha's Vineyard -- it didn't go as well as I'd hoped, but I wouldn't say we weren't friends. Just that maybe we don't want to visit each other or stay with each other?
My mother is my best friend -- I can talk to her about anything on the phone. But I can't live with her. And distance has helped.
And I've reunited with people from college on FB, I never see them, we don't visit each other -- but we do talk on FB. Is that friendship?
Or is friendship something we see defined in books, in movies, and television shows -- where people go on vacations together, sleep over, go out drinking nightly, talk endlessly on the phone and celebrate all their birthdays? I don't know -- I've had that sort of friendship and found it to be fleeting and weirdly empty.
Also, friendship sometimes seems transistory...people jumping in and out of one's life...as if I'm a pit-stop to somewhere else or they are. I can say that each person I've met has enriched or changed me in some way -- off or online.
Is friendship just bringing people food when they are ill, and going to visit in the hospital? Or is it going to a movie every so often and chatting? Or is it just talking to each other in each other's journals -- electronic correspondence?
Or all of the above?
Several of my co-workers bought my book -- wouldn't that make them friends? Two wrote positive reviews. Members from my church did the same. One had her book club read it. And there were people online who read this journal, who did as well. Doesn't that make us friends?
I don't know. When I'm alone in my apartment, without voices of people present, inside my own head...I think I am friendless...but am I? If I were to dissolve into dust tomorrow -- would people miss me? Would I miss the people I correspond with? Yes.
I think...words can be defined in so many different ways...and friendship like most things may well be in the eye of the beholder.
2. The Editor in Chief of the X-men Comics is...a Hannibal/Will shipper and a Xander/Anya shipper...LOL!
AiPT!: As we wrap up this week, it’s interesting to learn what may be inspiring the creators behind the X-Men. So let’s look outside of the X-Men universe for a moment. What are some of your favorite pop culture romances in other media?
Jordan: I am currently in the process of rewatching one of my favorite shows of all time, Hannibal, and… the romance on that show between Will and Hannibal is amazing for so many reasons. First of which is that it’s so amazingly ballsy to take what would be, in so many shows before, a fan-based ship and it made it canon, it put it on the screen. They started out just knowing one another, became “friends” and then became a romance. It helps that Mads Mikkelsen is amazing and could probably make everyone on Earth fall in love with him. I know it worked on me.
Another one that got me very emotional was Anya and Xander in Buffy. I really honestly do not know why I got so invested in their relationship, but I really did. I guess I just loved both of their characters so much, and I was really invested in Anya’s redemption. When (SPOILER!) their marriage did not happen, I was FURIOUS! I was so mad at Xander for being a coward and screwing up that relationship. I don’t really think I ever fully forgave him, even though I did come to be ok with his relationship with (ADDITIONAL SPOILER!) Dawn in the Dark Horse Buffy comics. I still think Anya got done wrong and deserved more.
3. One of my fav's Toni Morrison died at 88.
I loved her book "Beloved", and others.
Her narratives mingle the voices of men, women, children and even ghosts in layered polyphony. Myth, magic and superstition are inextricably intertwined with everyday verities, a technique that caused Ms. Morrison’s novels to be likened often to those of Latin American magic realist writers like Gabriel García Márquez.
In “Sula,” a woman blithely lets a train run over her leg for the insurance money it will give her family. In “Song of Solomon,” a baby girl is named Pilate by her father, who “had thumbed through the Bible, and since he could not read a word, chose a group of letters that seemed to him strong and handsome.” In “Beloved,” the specter of a murdered child takes up residence in the house of her murderer.
Throughout Ms. Morrison’s work, elements like these coalesce around her abiding concern with slavery and its legacy. In her fiction, the past is often manifest in a harrowing present — a world of alcoholism, rape, incest and murder, recounted in unflinching detail.
It is a world, Ms. Morrison writes in “Beloved” (the novel is set in the 19th century but stands as a metaphor for the 20th), in which “anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind.”
“Not just work, kill or maim you, but dirty you,” she goes on. “Dirty you so bad you couldn’t like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn’t think it up.”
But as Ms. Morrison’s writing also makes clear, the past is just as strongly manifest in the bonds of family, community and race —
bonds that let culture, identity and a sense of belonging be transmitted from parents to children to grandchildren. These generational links, her work unfailingly suggests, form the only salutary chains in human experience.
My fav's were:
Toni Morrison's Beloved
Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
Alice Walker's The Color Purple
Octavia Butler's Kindred
Also Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
4. At work, coworker was highly rec'ing "The Boys" and "Umbrella Academy" which I call millenial anti-superhero television series. Co-worker hates superhero films and shows, and these were made for her.
I told her I was the opposite.
I don't like dark and gritty, anti-hero shows, about whiny entitled characters. That's reality. I'm trying to escape reality when I watch movies and television shows, not fall into it. Hyper-realism and me are unmixy things at the moment. (She totally got it.)
I was trying to read "White Fragility by Robin D'Angelo" - I think that's her name, and it reads like a psycho-socioligical text on racism from a white perspective.
But fails to accomplish it's overall goal in that it generalizes and is sort of racist in of itself. That's the problem with discussing racism, even on an academic level, is you can't help but fall into generalities and assumptions based on generalities and limited perspective -- in this case the author's. When you write a non-fiction book on racism in this manner, setting yourself up as a pseudo-authority on it -- you will fall into the trap of making broad generalizations. Some of which hit the mark and are true, many exaggerated, and many true to certain people and not others.
I think she'd have been better off -- wandering about and interviewing folks about racism. And asking different people across a broad spectrum to write essays on the topic, and then edit said essays, analyze them with various others, and come to a consensus. In short -- I want more voices on the topic, not just one, discussing in a volume.
But I will push forward and see if it gets better. Right now she's discussing identity politics and what that means from various points of view.
It's nothing new. But then I know a lot about the topic. So it's nothing new so far to me. That most likely isn't true of everyone.
Racism is a difficult conversation to have. But I wouldn't say it's just hard for whites to discuss. I think it is hard for whites and POC to discuss together. Mainly because there's a lot history and most of it pretty bad, between the two groups. Also racism can sometimes get intermingled with nationalism. Nationality isn't the same as race or ethnicity. (ie. My Nationality may be American, my race is Caucausian).
I would prefer racism or race didn't exist. But it does. And being white, I can afford to be colorblind or pretend it doesn't exist. If I were black, yellow or POC, I wouldn't have that luxury. I know this -- because I've been close friends with enough POC to observe how people respond to us when it's well, when my friend is the only black person on the train or room, or when I'm the only white person on the train or the room -- and we're sitting together -- clearly chatting as friends. More than once, I've gotten judgemental looks, which I've returned with the look of death.
And I did pick up on it in Martha's Vineyard. Also I've picked up on it in Hilton Head and in upstate New York, and at my work place, and on the train. It's everywhere. And I'm tired of it. It's exhausting. And every time I've tried to discuss it -- the air in the room grows thick with tension and no one can breath.
It's as bad as discussing politics.
The other non-fiction I've decided to attempt is Emily Bernard's memoir, about being female and black in the South, over a long period of time. It's a series of personal essays, circling around when she got stabbed in the Kidney. It's easier and more compelling a read that White Fragility -- but that may be because it's more personal and less academic, so I'm less skeptical and my brain doesn't feel the need to analyze and debate every point. Academic text tends to bring out the lawyer in me for some reason.
5. Other conversation, somewhat triggering, had with co-worker today was...well career we wished we had. She'd been talking to a woman who was a victims of sexual crimes and human trafficking advocate and wrote nonfiction books and fictional ones about various things she was interested in -- and made a living doing what she loved. Co-worker wondered where she went wrong. And I said that's not how it works exactly -- people tend to fall into things, and you don't know what career you may end up in.
I also said that while I didn't intend on doing this, and had grown tired of it at times, I did like trains and did feel I was making a contribution -- even if I wished that I wasn't constantly stealing time to write. (And losing track of my novels in the process).
I don't know. Is anyone doing what they planned on doing? Or did you fall into it too? And do I want to know if you didn't? Having enough trouble pushing away the envy I felt towards the woman my co-worker was discussing (much as my co-worker was doing) or the envy I feel at times towards my brother and his wife, who are both doing what they love.
I don't hate what I'm doing. If I break it down, there are aspects of it I enjoy and maybe even love? I like analyzing things -- and I do a lot of analysis. Also, it employs my critical brain -- which I enjoy. And I get to do a lot of writing -- albeit technical and financial and legal writing -- but still, not a bad thing.
Forces me to do math -- which is a good thing, I guess. And I love trains. So I get to work with that -- and ensure they can run safely and on time. I also help clean the environment. Plus, I get to work with a lot of different and interesting people.
But there are aspects I could do without. Unfortunately, you don't get to pick your co-workers. And work is stressful due to all the rumors in the air about the merger and stream lining policies and procedures. But, I've seen worse.
Would I prefer to be left alone to write my novels? Better yet, writing them in cool places...and getting to visit those places to do research? Yes, and yes. But I worked in publishing -- I have no illusions regarding that business. (IT sucks balls.) And I follow a lot of professional novelists -- and I have no interest in living their lives -- which is 40% writing and 60% promotion, traveling about doing book signings and conventions, and catering to fans. It's not sitting and just writing like Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy and others did in the past. No. It's traveling about doing weird conventions and panels. (Shudders). Marketing and promotions and fandom have destroyed the professional writing business. If you want to know why you don't have a new book from so and so in that series you love, or it's not as good -- look no further than your own stupid need to meet them in person and get them to sign it. It's ironic in a way. Why can't you just read the book and write fanfic? Why break that fourth wall?
6. Been procrastinating setting up a dental appointment. Dental insurance issues. I called Metlife, my dental insurance, and asked them what network I was in. Turns out there is no such thing.
Metlife: Well, you don't have one.
Me: I don't understand.
Metlife: You are on a sliding scale -- just go to any dentist, have them send in the form and we'll decide what we pay.
Me: And I won't know until they send in the form?
Metlife: Correct. There's no ID cards or numbers, you just send in the form.
Me: The 2018 form?
MEtlife: Yes. Is there anything else?
Me: Uh, I guess not. Wait...so what would that be classified as under your site? PDP or Preferred PDP?
MEtlife: Either, or neither. Don't really know. You don't have one. Have I helped you?
ME: Yeah, thank you.
Then they have the gall to ask me to take a survey.
Metlife: Please advise the likely-hood of recommending Metlife to another person on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 that you wouldn't, ten that you would, nine that you might...
Me: five
Metlife: Did not understand. Please advise the likelihood..
Me: five
Metlife: one that you will, five that you might...
I hung up on them.
Ugh.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-08 02:49 am (UTC)I personally think that the ideal friendship is the same as the ideal romance -- a person who is incredibly entertaining to be with but who is at the same time, a patient, reliable person who will come through for you in a crunch. My experience, however, has shown that these two things don't occur in the same person, hence the need for a variety of friends, and also a variety of expectations for what roles they play in one's life.