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Two important things this week. The first is that I took a day off on Tuesday to counter my palpable burnout (following up on last Thursday when I walked out at 3:00, too freaking tired to go on). I did not crack open my work laptop, and did nothing but self-care: an acro lesson with the Monk, a lavender biscuit at 3 Little Figs, a haircut, Botox, a new fuzzy sweater from Macy's, dinner with Lion, a cryptic crossword with the bug. It felt great, and was worth burning a day of vacation for.
Somewhere in there I also finished reading Whipping Girl, which I'd been slowly working on for several weeks and which got pretty good right at the end... I found myself highlighting stuff. Summary: "As an MTF transwoman I have basically seen it all in terms of misogyny. And I will depress you by telling you all about it. But the big thing I figured out is that lots of people, folks who would never say a bad word about the female of the species, are still pretty anti-femininity. And this actually hits men harder than women, if they dare to show a feminine attribute. We need to stop being anti-feminine too, damn it."
I read another important book this week after that, Educated by Tara Westover. This one kind of fucked me up, I'll be honest, because my childhood was a lot like hers except not as bad: I also had poverty, the isolationist religious-nut emotionally abusive father, the mother who seemed to be an ally but couldn't stand up to him, somewhat dangerous/dirty work in a junkyard (and, in my case, a machine shop), the neglect-style homeschooling (but only one year). There were severe differences, particularly in the fact that this author had abusive siblings too (gah!) and the family refused medical care, which got shocking in light of some really nasty injuries. Still, there were enough similarities to make it exceptionally triggering. Last night at 12:30, after a long description of bad 3rd-degree burns (from which the affected person cruelly didn't die), sleep was not easy to come by. :-/ I wonder if I should write some things down someday myself? What a lovely bonfire such stories would make.
Work continued, of course. Email forever. My group also moved to a new location in a new building; the seating is denser than it was before, and there are some settling-in pains. Not least is the holy war that the facilities people have decided to wage over coat racks... of all the petty removals of basic worker autonomy, they chose to ban coat racks. They sweep through at night removing them from desk areas and putting them into closets. It's basically too ridiculous to take seriously, but I'll play: nobody said anything about Command hooks, and I'll be installing some of those on a pillar next to my desk on Monday morning.
Somewhere in there I also finished reading Whipping Girl, which I'd been slowly working on for several weeks and which got pretty good right at the end... I found myself highlighting stuff. Summary: "As an MTF transwoman I have basically seen it all in terms of misogyny. And I will depress you by telling you all about it. But the big thing I figured out is that lots of people, folks who would never say a bad word about the female of the species, are still pretty anti-femininity. And this actually hits men harder than women, if they dare to show a feminine attribute. We need to stop being anti-feminine too, damn it."
I read another important book this week after that, Educated by Tara Westover. This one kind of fucked me up, I'll be honest, because my childhood was a lot like hers except not as bad: I also had poverty, the isolationist religious-nut emotionally abusive father, the mother who seemed to be an ally but couldn't stand up to him, somewhat dangerous/dirty work in a junkyard (and, in my case, a machine shop), the neglect-style homeschooling (but only one year). There were severe differences, particularly in the fact that this author had abusive siblings too (gah!) and the family refused medical care, which got shocking in light of some really nasty injuries. Still, there were enough similarities to make it exceptionally triggering. Last night at 12:30, after a long description of bad 3rd-degree burns (from which the affected person cruelly didn't die), sleep was not easy to come by. :-/ I wonder if I should write some things down someday myself? What a lovely bonfire such stories would make.
Work continued, of course. Email forever. My group also moved to a new location in a new building; the seating is denser than it was before, and there are some settling-in pains. Not least is the holy war that the facilities people have decided to wage over coat racks... of all the petty removals of basic worker autonomy, they chose to ban coat racks. They sweep through at night removing them from desk areas and putting them into closets. It's basically too ridiculous to take seriously, but I'll play: nobody said anything about Command hooks, and I'll be installing some of those on a pillar next to my desk on Monday morning.
