The Introverts Advocacy Group hits a few hurdles
I keep trying to write a post and keep being stymied by my inability to muster words in anything approaching an order. I had things I wanted to say about the various fannish crises and about writing and I kept reading posts which implied if you weren't speaking out you were a bad person/fan/ally. Coupled with one minor incident of 'if people don't respond to feedback I generally assume they're not interested in getting it'. Oh, and 'please stop misusing spoons terminology.' (None of this aimed at me, I should say.) And it just frustrates me. Or makes me feel guilty and then frustrated. Because I made a promise to myself a while ago that I wasn't going to let anyone force guilt upon me, and it still happens every time.
It's upsetting because it shows just a fundamental misunderstanding of the fact that people are not the same. That just because you find leaving feedback/replying to feedback/jumping in on the latest discussion/posting about the latest discussion easy, that doesn't mean everyone else does. You don't get credit for finding it easy, and the rest of us don't get shamed because we find it difficult.
These are the facts.
- I do, in fact, feel uneasy about claiming spoon terminology. It's not mine. But I have used it in my profile statement on AO3 here and may use it again if I ever figure out how to say that on DW/LJ. It's hard to convey it's 'not you, it's me', in a polite way, but I'm working on it.
- I haven't seen a doctor (as it would involve, try and keep up, talking to someone. I'm reasonably sure that if I visited one and said I sleep all the time, I want to beat my head against things, and by the way I'm increasingly fixated on bridges, they'd be okay with me saying I've got a problem.
- But I don't have a problem, you see. I go to work, I pay my bills on time, I mostly remember to eat, I call my parents every week. I don't cut myself and I've never tried anything. I'm functioning, so apparently that means I'm a bad friend because I don't engage and a bad human because I don't jump in. I have the temerity to fake it, most of the time. I'm not ____ enough.
- I ignore my phone when it's ringing, I ignore text messages, I ignore emails. I come straight home from work and sleep four hours so I can wake up later and cook dinner without having to talk to my flatmate.
- But I'm good in a crisis. It burns up all my energy reserves all at once but I can deal with that. I can't deal with sustained low-level crisis because I end up with nothing left.
- I work in customer service, yes really. I'm very good at my job. But not good enough that they'll hire me to do anything else, because I can't interview and I don't do smalltalk. So I, as an introvert, am stuck talking to people. All day. Imagine that feeling just before you scream, when all that hysterical panic is surging up your throat and your heart's racing and you make fists under the table to see if you can hold it in. You claw your nails into your hands, you tap the bench, you tug at your jewellery. You do yell, when you get off the phone or away from people. You sit behind a counter with customers looming over you and there's too many of them, there's too many of them, they're filling up the foyer and that one's raising his voice and if he wanted to ge could just lean over the counter and- And you can't get out. Because of the door, but mostly because it's your job and no one will pay you to do anything else. And because even in the other jobs, there are still people to deal with and at least this is the devil you know. And sometime you walk home and your fists are still clenched and you stand halfway over the bridge and think: at least it would be quiet. At least I'd get some peace.
Cause you see then you go home. And assuming you're not so exhausted you sleep straight through to morning, there are things to do. Now, do you:
a) reply to five comments
b) leave one piece of feedback or
c) email your landlord.
Pick wisely, you can only do one. Because after that you're ruined for anything else. If you're really, really lucky, you may still be able to do the one thing that might one day get you out of this (job/flat/spiral) - you might have enough left to write. Of course, if it's fic, then you'll post it and the whole feedback/not-feedback issue starts all over again. But fic is patient. It lets you write it in your head for months before you get a word down. It doesn't need other people, it exists in the idea-place all on its own. Sure, when you post it you'll stay awake all night in case someone replies to tell you they hate it, but in the writing part all that is required is the writer and the words. Easier said than done but at least the only demands are your own.
Now, sometimes fandom goes into overdrive and keeping up with meta-fandom becomes an activity in itself and there are discussions which somehow it's now a moral imperative to join. And I absolutely believe that they are discussions worth having, and that someone should be having them. But you know what I do when I need to engage in a dialogue with fandom or my source? I write. When I'm angry or upset or curious or I need to fix the world? I write. (Sensing a pattern?) That's not a better way than discussions but I can't see how it's a worse way either. Discussion creates stories creates discussion and hopefully by the end of it we all come out better. That's what lgbtfest and Racebending Revenge and the Awesome Women Ficathons are about. Acknowledging that comment threads are not the only test of what's going on. We'll know if these latest discussions have had any impact when we start to see better stories. (Or art, vids, meta... whatever it is that you choose to do).
But it wouldn't matter if I never wrote another word. I still get to draw a line and say 'this is what I can and cannot do'. That might just be what being a 'grown-up' (used ironically) is. I'm sure if I had actually engaged in any of those conversations that so frustrated me and said all this, most of those people would have apologised. "Oh but we didn't mean you/them of course. Only all those regular lazy non-engaging non-replying people". And so we draw a little ring around those who have been diagnosed/outed themselves/posted all about their reasons. Instead of assuming that a lot of us have reasons and some of us don't want to talk about it. For some of us, talking doesn't help. I try to explain to my parents why I need them to call me, instead of the other way round - that doesn't help. I try to explain why I'm not smiling at work, or why I've gone quiet online - that doesn't help me. You know what would help? If people would stop framing discussions in a way that makes those of us who need to listen instead of speak feel like part of the problem.
I will listen to anyone who wants to talk to me about my writing. If I have failed to research properly or write responsibly then I will take those hits. I'm right here. That's how I choose to engage and the balance of that is the risk of screwing up. But for anyone who says leaving a comment or writing an email is easy... well, I'm fucking glad it's easy for you. Wanna trade lives?
So no, I'm not okay. Assume I'm not okay until further notice. Assume that if I don't respond to you in whatever form, it really isn't you, it's me. Don't assume that, if you ask your friends to respond and I don't, that I'm not your friend, or that I'm not listening. Don't feel that means you have to stop talking.
And in the spirit of writing as an equal partner in the meta critique process:
Festibility Prompt Post is here - a fandom festival accepting all kinds of fanworks (fic, meta, art, icons, podfic, vids, recs, picspams, drabble sets etc) about disabled characters. Works can focus on canonically disabled characters or canonically able-bodied characters that you reimagine as disabled.
West Wing Comment Ficathon here or on Dreamwidth here. Possibly someone could go and write Charlie.
Porn Battle X is also open for prompting here. Perhaps less chance of meta though I've used it that way and so have other people. Still a good chance for trying out characters you've never written. Some women, perhaps.
This entry was originally posted at http://blackeyedgirl.dreamwidth.org/136896.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
It's upsetting because it shows just a fundamental misunderstanding of the fact that people are not the same. That just because you find leaving feedback/replying to feedback/jumping in on the latest discussion/posting about the latest discussion easy, that doesn't mean everyone else does. You don't get credit for finding it easy, and the rest of us don't get shamed because we find it difficult.
These are the facts.
- I do, in fact, feel uneasy about claiming spoon terminology. It's not mine. But I have used it in my profile statement on AO3 here and may use it again if I ever figure out how to say that on DW/LJ. It's hard to convey it's 'not you, it's me', in a polite way, but I'm working on it.
- I haven't seen a doctor (as it would involve, try and keep up, talking to someone. I'm reasonably sure that if I visited one and said I sleep all the time, I want to beat my head against things, and by the way I'm increasingly fixated on bridges, they'd be okay with me saying I've got a problem.
- But I don't have a problem, you see. I go to work, I pay my bills on time, I mostly remember to eat, I call my parents every week. I don't cut myself and I've never tried anything. I'm functioning, so apparently that means I'm a bad friend because I don't engage and a bad human because I don't jump in. I have the temerity to fake it, most of the time. I'm not ____ enough.
- I ignore my phone when it's ringing, I ignore text messages, I ignore emails. I come straight home from work and sleep four hours so I can wake up later and cook dinner without having to talk to my flatmate.
- But I'm good in a crisis. It burns up all my energy reserves all at once but I can deal with that. I can't deal with sustained low-level crisis because I end up with nothing left.
- I work in customer service, yes really. I'm very good at my job. But not good enough that they'll hire me to do anything else, because I can't interview and I don't do smalltalk. So I, as an introvert, am stuck talking to people. All day. Imagine that feeling just before you scream, when all that hysterical panic is surging up your throat and your heart's racing and you make fists under the table to see if you can hold it in. You claw your nails into your hands, you tap the bench, you tug at your jewellery. You do yell, when you get off the phone or away from people. You sit behind a counter with customers looming over you and there's too many of them, there's too many of them, they're filling up the foyer and that one's raising his voice and if he wanted to ge could just lean over the counter and- And you can't get out. Because of the door, but mostly because it's your job and no one will pay you to do anything else. And because even in the other jobs, there are still people to deal with and at least this is the devil you know. And sometime you walk home and your fists are still clenched and you stand halfway over the bridge and think: at least it would be quiet. At least I'd get some peace.
Cause you see then you go home. And assuming you're not so exhausted you sleep straight through to morning, there are things to do. Now, do you:
a) reply to five comments
b) leave one piece of feedback or
c) email your landlord.
Pick wisely, you can only do one. Because after that you're ruined for anything else. If you're really, really lucky, you may still be able to do the one thing that might one day get you out of this (job/flat/spiral) - you might have enough left to write. Of course, if it's fic, then you'll post it and the whole feedback/not-feedback issue starts all over again. But fic is patient. It lets you write it in your head for months before you get a word down. It doesn't need other people, it exists in the idea-place all on its own. Sure, when you post it you'll stay awake all night in case someone replies to tell you they hate it, but in the writing part all that is required is the writer and the words. Easier said than done but at least the only demands are your own.
Now, sometimes fandom goes into overdrive and keeping up with meta-fandom becomes an activity in itself and there are discussions which somehow it's now a moral imperative to join. And I absolutely believe that they are discussions worth having, and that someone should be having them. But you know what I do when I need to engage in a dialogue with fandom or my source? I write. When I'm angry or upset or curious or I need to fix the world? I write. (Sensing a pattern?) That's not a better way than discussions but I can't see how it's a worse way either. Discussion creates stories creates discussion and hopefully by the end of it we all come out better. That's what lgbtfest and Racebending Revenge and the Awesome Women Ficathons are about. Acknowledging that comment threads are not the only test of what's going on. We'll know if these latest discussions have had any impact when we start to see better stories. (Or art, vids, meta... whatever it is that you choose to do).
But it wouldn't matter if I never wrote another word. I still get to draw a line and say 'this is what I can and cannot do'. That might just be what being a 'grown-up' (used ironically) is. I'm sure if I had actually engaged in any of those conversations that so frustrated me and said all this, most of those people would have apologised. "Oh but we didn't mean you/them of course. Only all those regular lazy non-engaging non-replying people". And so we draw a little ring around those who have been diagnosed/outed themselves/posted all about their reasons. Instead of assuming that a lot of us have reasons and some of us don't want to talk about it. For some of us, talking doesn't help. I try to explain to my parents why I need them to call me, instead of the other way round - that doesn't help. I try to explain why I'm not smiling at work, or why I've gone quiet online - that doesn't help me. You know what would help? If people would stop framing discussions in a way that makes those of us who need to listen instead of speak feel like part of the problem.
I will listen to anyone who wants to talk to me about my writing. If I have failed to research properly or write responsibly then I will take those hits. I'm right here. That's how I choose to engage and the balance of that is the risk of screwing up. But for anyone who says leaving a comment or writing an email is easy... well, I'm fucking glad it's easy for you. Wanna trade lives?
So no, I'm not okay. Assume I'm not okay until further notice. Assume that if I don't respond to you in whatever form, it really isn't you, it's me. Don't assume that, if you ask your friends to respond and I don't, that I'm not your friend, or that I'm not listening. Don't feel that means you have to stop talking.
And in the spirit of writing as an equal partner in the meta critique process:
Festibility Prompt Post is here - a fandom festival accepting all kinds of fanworks (fic, meta, art, icons, podfic, vids, recs, picspams, drabble sets etc) about disabled characters. Works can focus on canonically disabled characters or canonically able-bodied characters that you reimagine as disabled.
West Wing Comment Ficathon here or on Dreamwidth here. Possibly someone could go and write Charlie.
Porn Battle X is also open for prompting here. Perhaps less chance of meta though I've used it that way and so have other people. Still a good chance for trying out characters you've never written. Some women, perhaps.
This entry was originally posted at http://blackeyedgirl.dreamwidth.org/136896.html. Please comment there using OpenID.