on things productive and non-productive

i can't remember how i found my way to this piece about the closure of the sepia mutiny blog, which was a pretty big american blog run by people of colour. but it's hardly surprising. i'm feeling pretty demoralised just now, after a pretty meaningless discussion on my latest post at the hand mirror, and i think this sums it up pretty nicely:

“Just writing and covering and talking about racism daily is exhausting and really emotionally taxing,” Peterson adds. “I think people don’t realize that we aren’t desensitized—reading about these horrific things happening or reading yet another mind-numbing report on how systemic racism screws us all does get to us.”

trying to explain that the way we phrase things, the things we miss out, the things we minimise, all have an impact - well i guess some people just don't want to hear it. and they certainly don't care about what impact their words have:

These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun—and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed and why, Why do you have to take this stuff so personally? ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that's so much fun for them is the stuff of my life.

except i wouldn't even call them intellectual or clever in this case, just bloodyminded. just trying to prove a point that has no meaning while conveniently ignoring the things that matter. or twisting them into simplistic statements that mean something else altogether to what i said. maybe it's just a fun game for them. but i don't have the energy to play along. i don't even see why i should have to.


in happier news, i've had a really productive weekend. maybe that post about procrastination last week jogged something subliminal in my brain. i did manage to put in the application i was thinking about, got done two sets of accounts, one GST return and one tax return for various charitable organisations.

i managed to get on top of my technophobia for a short period. i was given a printer/scanner/copier machine last year by a very nice person, and had help in getting it set up - which ended up being no easy business. but there were a couple of bits left to do, and i sat there yesterday actually feeling physically afraid of dealing with it, even though i knew the machine couldn't hurt me. it's such a strange feeling to have the logical part of your brain being over-ridden by an irrational emotion in that way. but i managed to ignore it, sort out the problem and get something printed, which left me on a high for the rest of the day. yeah, wierd, but i guess it was just the feeling of overcoming my own internal fears.

so i'm finally starting to feel that i'm getting on top of things, which is good. i hope it lasts.