All This Running Around, I've Never Found What I'm Running Toward

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 A list of things I care about:

1. AI not making anything better for anyone who isn't already wealthy

2. Public schools

3. Cats

4. My home being an impossibly dirty hell of my own making

I think my partner should be on this list, but sometimes I don't know how true that is. Or maybe it's just that I don't know how true it is that I care about him in a healthy way. I don't think caring about something should only be about the way that it makes you feel. Although, I guess that is why I care about my home being an impossibly dirty hell of my own making, so maybe that should also be off the list. 

I think a lot about the definitions of things lately. What is the definition of caring versus the colloquial definition of caring? Do definitions matter as much as the common use of a word or phrase? Can we redefine things for ourselves without buy-in from other people? Is that what movements are? Any question now tends to spiral into a thousand little meaningless questions like the mindless chatter of a 5-year old. 

Mindless is the unkind way of viewing it. Perhaps there's a level of curiosity one can only have when so much of the world is undefined. Once you begin to know how things work does it make it harder to wonder? That seems like a trite thought process. Nothing feels worth revisiting and I'm sure I've used so many words incorrectly in this small paragraph. I can only hope that some AI learning model is picking this up so that someone who writes much better than I do can remain employed in the future.

A list of things I miss:

1. Song writing

2. Painting

3. Feeling certain I know how to read

4. Feeling energized by reading

5. Movies before I knew movie nerds

6. Having favorite things

7. Wanting attention

I wonder if I was conditioned for compassion. I don't feel like I was compassionately conditioned through any of the traditional forms of learning: family, friends, media, educators, society...all interactions feel fraught and as meant to deter as they are to empower. Every second of life feels like touching the proverbial stove. And it feels so much worse now that I don't know what words mean. 

Language and history are always shaped by culture right? Is it the dominant culture? There're so many cool things that have been taken from people I wouldn't count as the dominant culture, but I'm not even sure what I should be counting as the dominant culture. The more I have learned in life the less I feel sure about anything and the more distant I feel from an activist populace that seems really sure they're on the right side of history.

Is whiteness the dominant culture? We have terms like "global majority" and "global South" to reframe political power, but is adopting new language to say "actually, there's more of us" helping? We've changed the framing of equity to "economic mobility" but is that doing anything to change anyone's mind? I'm so mired in conversations that I'm not even a part of where people say they're experiencing harm because they're discriminated against for being "rich", "white", "having money", or "privileged". I sort of understand the hurt that comes with being told you shouldn't be trying to take up as much space. So I wonder, was I conditioned to be compassionate to people who have similar experiences but better outcomes? Through a childhood of seeing young, attractive, wealthy, white people as the "norm" to aspire to have I been bound to empathize with them? Or is it because I'm hearing the language that was used by people who wanted more for the "others" parroted back after being ripped from their original meaning. Sometimes it feels like language shifts because once someone identifies a way to describe their experience someone else inevitably finds a way to misuse those terms.

But maybe I still like to just hear myself ramble more than I like to admit I want to hear myself ramble. Was I conditioned towards compassion, or outrage?

Frequently, it feels like the most compassionate and well educated people I know don't understand me. 

So, I have to assume that I'm being conditioned for outrage.

I've been pretty obsessed with the new Metric album, and it's been nice to fixate on something someone else is feeling.

I also think if I was oh so invisible then, I'm invisible now more than before.



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