It’s Going to be a Hot, Sweaty Christmas

By Rashell; https://diaryofanunbreakablesoul.wordpress.com/

I apologize to anyone reading this and thinking, gross. What do you mean?

I live in the South, so that’s one reason why it may be hot and sweaty this Christmas. I remember one year before when it was so warm on Christmas Day that I was out driving with family, and we saw a father and his son ride an ATV (all-terrain vehicle) around the roads like it was a regular summer day.

I also have a faint memory of driving by a house one time that had a snowman made out of hay. (that may or may not have been a fever dream though.)

It’s currently 75 degrees in December right now. As much as I don’t know how to feel about that, I have so much more and so much less to worry about at the same time.

Yes, I have bills and stuff to do and Christmas presents to buy and probably a floor I need to mop. But I’m worried about so much other stuff, too.

the subtle art of shutting the f*ck up

By Kirby; https://aviewfromtheocean.wordpress.com/

I remember when I came across the book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” and like you should do to the many books that proport to revolutionarily change your outlook on life by forcing theirs on you, I took it with a pinch of salt.

Although, there was one statement that stood out to me in an extraordinary way:

“you’re not special”

Whilst it would rightfully constitute as a harsh thing to say to someone, it was one of the things I saw that changed my outlook on the way I saw myself.

I was not special, but in a good way.

Consider this example, if you’re someone who has terrible social anxiety you’ve a 100% had this thought in your head – You know someone who is totally obnoxious, rude, annoying, any other negative adjective you can think of, but yet you wonder why people still like them.

And you think to yourself, its precisely because I’m scared to be like them I have social anxiety, I’m envious that they don’t care how obnoxious they are.

Gender is – some personal reflections

By Emy: https://oneemy.wordpress.com/

It has been over a year now since I changed my name and asked those around me to refer to me in neutral terms. However this year of visibility is but a scratch of my experiences over the years. Gender in definition, much like my experience of it, is boundless, polymorphic.

Gender is power. This is what I have come to learn. It may enslave us or set us free. And though I have been publicly non-binary for a year now – still I swing between ensnarement and relief.

My perception of our world is grounded in its construction, or more precisely; in the knowledge of our construction of it. When I first read Judith Butler’s ideas on gender, they resonated deeply (gender is a social construction – not some imposed and objective truth). Yet I made no effort to share this truth with those around me, and certainly no effort to share the validation it provided my own identity. Around the same time, when the term non-binary entered my sphere, I was reluctant to validate it. Bitter with my own ineptitude to express myself, I instead convinced myself that this was just one more pre-constructed category to place oneself into.

Intimate Strangers – mutual support

By Ben; https://awfulcarnival.wordpress.com/

Margaret Thatcher said that there is no such thing as society. I can’t help but think that was just for the rubes, because she was smart enough to know better. Who made her clothes? Who grew the food she ate to survive? Who did her hair and make-up? Who made the microphone she said that into, and who recorded it? Perhaps most importantly, why does what she say matter any more than what you or I say? All of those questions can only be answered if you admit that Thatcher was part of and dependent on a vast, intricate web of people far beyond her family and friends, even if she denied it. We are all in that web, we cannot live without it, and I believe, contrary to Thatcher, that we all have a responsibility towards it. Pretending it doesn’t exist is only a ruse that is employed to justify antisocial behavior on a grand scale.