Your Best American Girl/I Should Do a Better Job

 I need to write more often.

I feel like this is one of those things I say all the time. And think of a lot. Like I gained back all the weight I lost from having an eating disorder over quarantine and it was like "ugh, what was even the point?" I know that's a bad joke. It's like- only half a joke. But it's another thing I think about all the time. I should start to do yoga. I should eat better. I just weigh myself constantly and pray "please don't be fat" which is pretty fucked up. I also think about school a lot. Reading books. Cleaning. A billion things that are pretty easily within my grasp but I tend to brush off in favor of following random articles online (as I mentioned in my last post.) And then I need to spend time being silently (or not so silently) outraged by the articles I read. So much time can be wasted being scandalized.

I have been eating better.

When I was worried that democracy was going to collapse and there would be violent mobs roaming the streets I cooked like all week because I insisted we couldn't leave the house. Looking back it's kind of funny that we were afraid of the same thing Donald Trump and Fox News and all the other conservative pundits have been trying to make everyone afraid of, but like those people actually nearly made it happen. I'm not the first person to point this out, for sure. I just feel like it should be something everyone says regularly. Maybe if people mention it enough it will sink in that it's not okay. Probably not. But this post isn't about how the people who freak out about terrorists imposing Sharia law want to kill all the Democrats and take us back to the "Christian roots America was founded on."

I do almost all my writing now for my International Business class' online discussion board. Obviously because I am forced to. I would never participate in a discussion board if there wasn't a grade or check on the line. What is this 2000? Yahoo Groups isn't a thing anymore~ Anyway, this forced participation means that I almost all of my writing now is contrarian bullshit. All my classmates take the easy route of comparing American individualism with Chinese collectivism so I freak out about how American individualism has led to people fighting mask-wearing public policy which effectively tanked our precious capitalist economy. I'm so aggressively anti-American in my posts I'm sure people are going to wonder why I'm in business school and assume I'm a communist spy. It's not like I think any other country is better, though. For as much as I say I love the world and believe it's trending toward good through the long arc of history, I also widely regard it as garbage. I'm just as cynical when documentary filmmakers go on about how Europe and Japan have all the answers. I worry sometimes.

I have been listening to Conspirituality and it's an interesting enough podcast by three white yoga instructors who worry about people being taken advantage of by mystics. There's an interesting balance of self-awareness and complete lack there of. One of them calls themselves a professional skeptic and my reaction was an audible "ughhhh..." probably accompanied by an eye-roll. I'm weary of anyone who makes skepticism their whole personality. I feel it's even worse if those people also claim to be very "spiritual." I worry that I'm just as cringey and lacking in self-awareness because there's so many things I openly scorn. I think I might take my view that people "take things too far" too far. 

I've also probably developed an unhealthy distaste for cis-hetero white men.

Maybe for the same reason some of them hate people like me- I don't have any in my life right now.

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I probably spend too much time sitting with my insecurities.

I spent all morning on the most tedious project just numbering cells in Excel I couldn't think of a better way to number. I know you can drag to populate numbers, but the cells were already filled with other information- before you give me a hard time about this. There probably still was a better way. Especially because it took hours and part of that was because I did some of it wrong and had to redo it.

It's just another point of lag in life. I am becoming one of the old people who can't do the simplest computer tasks that I got so annoyed at having to do things for and show stuff repeatedly. I am destined to live the horrors I have thrust upon others with my ill-temperament. I'm lucky we're not working in offices right now. I would still be annoyed if someone older than me asked them how to resize something. I still can't use VLookUp. Theoretically I know how, but like many things, I have never been able to execute it correctly.

Collin only works to further frustrate me with his technological prowess. He spends all day coding like someone with a real job and I just plan on how to kill him and absorb his knowledge as I watch from my periphery while I slog through something stupid in Excel. All I do is pull reports and make spreadsheets. 

At least I'm more engaged in work now, I guess. It's a small victory to be reengaging with anything.

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Yesterday, when I started this post, I was reading bullshit on my phone as I have done regularly for the last few weeks to no further betterment. The world is so vast and yet my knowledge of it remains as small as I am. I wonder if I'll ever learn enough. My friends are brilliant an educated. Collin is brilliant and educated. The Kitten is a world of untold depths unto herself. I often think it's possible I'm not thinking, which is a ridiculous thought. It's like the mental equivalent of those moments when I say I can't breathe but I clearly can because I can articulate my fear fine. Which is also a ludicrous mental construction.

But I think a lot about how potentially vapid I am. I wonder and hope that my brain just isn't processing thoughts going too fast when I'm not actively engaged in reading about serial killers, political nonsense, or TV. I desperately want to believe that I don't just sit with songs stuck in my head and nothing in the background. I'm even more terrified for the moments there's not even song. Sometimes by brain feels numbed by thoughts of itself. But in between thoughts I feel so hollow.

Anyway- I was reading through things on Facebook or tabs I already had up in Chrome and there was a lot of news about the second impeachment trial. I don't think I even told you how I felt about the first one, but I imagine it was a lot like how I feel about this one. I don't expect much and I'm sad about this resignation. I would guess that at least 5% of my day since January 6th has been spent on reading about something related to the event or concerned with the ramifications of it and potential for further violence. I read the stories of Congresswomen of color who were worried that because they were women of color they were likely targets and reflected on being a woman of color in a very white city. It didn't help that I started reading First They Killed My Father. So I wondered if people came knocking on doors whether I am white passing enough to be left alone. I should probably have taken stock of this level of societal privilege by now. I watched AOCs video about how she felt while she was at the Capitol and the reactions of people trying to diminish her experience and felt incredibly sad because I was scared for weeks and I was so much further removed from it. I read about the Congressman whose son was buried the day before after committing suicide who had to compound his mourning with fear. What incredible bleakness created a world where after that he had to return to work with colleagues who propagated the lies that put him and his family in danger. So many people who were afraid they were going to be killed for their political views are having to work with people who are telling them to get over it over experiencing the same fear. I read about the Congressman who died from COVID-19 that based on the timeline he probably contracted during the Capitol riots where many other Congresspeople contracted the virus because their colleagues refused to wear masks while they were all brought together in close quarters for their safety. I read about the people who have been arrested and charged with participating in an event that cost people their lives and injured many others. The Q-Anon shaman is being fed organic food when there have been complaints before of inmates being given things that were rotting and inedible. The woman from Midland who asked to go on the vacation she planned (DURING A PANDEMIC) is being allowed to go. Another man who planned to go to Peru to get married (again, DURING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC) is likely to also be allowed to go. This is apparently not uncommon. People often get to travel internationally if they're not considered a flight risk and they get approval from the court. But I just think of Kalief Browder who was held in Rikers without trial for allegedly stealing a backpack and suffered so much in that time he committed suicide. These people recorded themselves trying to violently overturn an election. The woman from Midland went on local news later and said she'd do it again. There was never the same amount of self-incriminating evidence against Kalief.

All of this deserves more time and better reflection than I'm offering.

It deserves better than to be clutter in my head that I later fill with the knowledge that Rebecca Black actually continued her music career and is kind of good. 

I worry about how many people are like me and will lose sight of these things when the next bit of information about newer scandals comes out. The country is probably filled with too many people whose memory will also fade when the next Animal Crossing update is released. Or maybe it's just me. That would be a relief in its own way.

I spent some of my lowered TV consumption on the Britney Spears documentary. I performed Hit Me Baby One More Time at my very first failed talent show. There was video of it that is probably lost to time. I don't remember what my feelings or statements were toward Britney in the following years. I loved Toxic and Circus. She's still a karaoke staple. But how did we all gloss over people threatening to kill her because of her break-up with Justin Timberlake? Were there people who still held on to Diane Sawyer seeming to defend that stance? America just let it pass in the collective consciousness and then our future president attacked Kristen Stewart after her break-up because it is not something we established wasn't okay. Then people attacked Ariana Grande over the death of Mac Miller because we still hold female popstars responsible for the feelings of the men in their lives. Yet, Chris Brown still has a career. We have so much information that's so often not put into perspective for years, and sometimes it seems we don't ever reflect on it or learn anything.

So I look back on my last post and wonder if my insistence that there's reason to hope and believe things will get better isn't partially driven by a very imperfect and quick-cycling memory.

God, I hope I'm the only person with this problem. Then I can keep believing the rest of you will do a better job.