Don't, Don't, Don't Let's Start
A brief note to anyone dating me in any fashion:
In the course of your life, you will do things that make me paranoid, jealous, and upset. Your flirting will make me feel second-rate. Your friendships will sometimes make me concerned that I’m not enough for you. Your need to concentrate on, you know, your money-earning tasks will occasionally make me feel neglected and lonely.
Don’t change your behavior unless I ask. Please.
Look, it’s bad enough that I have these unpleasant emotions boiling within me, but I’ve learned that I can’t control my emotions. Emotions arise spontaneously, like the weather, and there’s not much I can do about them. I’m often seized by petty, unworthy, shitty feelings.
The only thing I can do is to control my reactions.
So I may be a little upset, but that’s my problem. I love you. I don’t want you to feel bad, because you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s just the reflex of a fucked-up brain reacting from an artificial feeling of scarcity and a poisonous sense of Impostor Syndrome. So I’ll be a little down for a bit while I wrestle these feelings back into the snake pit they emerged from.
The worst thing you could do when I’m mopey is to take responsibility for these emotions and change, simply because I’m upset.
If you start feeling bad about my feeling bad, and legitimizing these riotously poor gut reactions by changing your behavior, then basically you’re allowing yourself to be enslaved by my pettiest instincts. And it’s not your problem. It’s my problem, and if you start cutting back on the things you enjoy because Mister Insecurity Risen here is nervous, then I’m going to feel monstrously shittier in the long run…
…and it won’t make me feel any better. I’ll just find something else to feel nervous about. This is how broken I am.
Trust me. I’m monitoring myself, and if it gets to the point where I think you doing X is a legitimate problem, then I’ll come to you and talk about it. But lots of things make me feel like I’m a fraud – writers having big novel sales, women who don’t even know I crush on them finding partners, folks who earn more money than I do. The aspect of me that envies those triumphs is a twisted, awful part of me that I want to starve, not feed. I’ll feel better if I can shield you from this Godawful part of me.
So please. Don’t change your behavior. Occasionally I’ll withdraw for a bit when stung so as not to infect you with my silliness, because gimme a bit of time and I’ll recover.
This is a flaw of mine. If you must fix it, just kiss me on the cheek and tell me you adore me, and continue doing what you’re doing. Because I’m the one who’s fucked up, not you. Okay?
Love,
Me
A Brief Explanation of Terms
Every once in a while, it occurs to me that new readers might not know my cast of characters. So in an attempt to summarize Who I Am and What I Do for everyone, I’ve written up a brief explanation of who’s who around here.
My Wife Gini, a.k.a. Zoethe.
We met online in a Star Wars chat room, and proceeded to tear each other to shreds in political debates for five years straight without a scrap of romance in there anywhere. Then my fiancee (correctly) dumped me just as Gini was getting divorced, and when I found out Gini was flirting with someone else, I sent her an email that said, summarized, “Don’t you realize the reason I’ve never flirted with you once is because I’ve been half a heartbeat away from falling in love with you?”
Her response, summarized, was, “I’m very flattered, but before I continue and potentially embarrass myself, answer one question: were you drunk when you wrote this?”
Of such greatness was a grand relationship made. It’s been twelve years and is still awesome.
Erin and Amy
While technically my stepdaughters, I consider them my blood-kin. Close to my heart, sadly far away in the physical world, as Erin works and Amy goes to college. I do not blog about them much because a) I don’t consider myself a good enough parent to expound on parenting theories, and b) if they want to write about their own adventures, they should get to decide when and to whom.
La Casa McJuddMetz
Our Cleveland house, where we’ve lived for ten years now. Named as a mashup of all of the family’s last names. A small house, it’s been renovated recently – in fall of last year, we painted all the walls bright colors and stripped the awful rugs from the floors, and this summer we turned our kitchen into a fabulous open-area space. Now we’re getting a new bed. It’s like we don’t even know our home.
The Friendly Ghost At La Casa McJuddMetz
Referenced in my author profiles, we never blog about the friendly ghost.
Cleveland
Cleveland’s the butt of jokes, but realistically it’s also a major food capital. Clevelanders go out to eat more than just about any other city, and the rent is way cheaper because the city’s still imploding from a lack of industry, so all of the New York chefs are coming out here to start expensive restaurants on the cheap. Basically, Cleveland has a lot of culture (great food, arguably the third best orchestra in the world, a thriving theater district) – we’re just not snobby about it.
The Velvet Tango Room
We don’t go as often as we’d like, maybe once every two months, but Paulius serves the best drinks in the world. They’re fifteen bucks a glass, but are designed to be stand-alone drinks with the complexity of a meal. It’s a surprisingly low-key institution – you’d think it was a liquor store, viewed from the street – but manages to cram a casual elegance that makes it one of Cleveland’s must-stops.
StarCityGames.com
The largest independent Magic: the Gathering site, where I work as a webmaster/programmer. I wish I played Magic more, but I haven’t the time to muscle a social group back into play – and sadly, the closest store looks like this.
Clarion
A six-week science-fiction and fantasy writers’ workshop, where I was reborn as a writer in 2008. Before that, I’d been writing for twenty years, and I knew I wasn’t good enough, but I didn’t know why. Clarion dissassembled me and put me back together, and since then I’ve published nineteen stories. Hopefully a novel. My life’s goal is to publish a novel. At which point I’m sure my life’s goal will mutate into publishing a successful novel. (I note they’re accepting applications right now.)
Polyamory
Gini and I are polyamorous, and while I’ll discuss aspects of polyamory, I tend to be very low on the personal details of who I’m dating, mainly because my blog’s a relatively big stage and I don’t like dragging people on here. I’ve seen some high-profile bloggers have problems with rhapsodizing about Their Glorious New Poly Love and then when the breakup comes, everyone takes sides and I suspect it’s that much worse for the poor bastard who’s now broken up with… so while I have lots of love, I don’t go into specifics. I’m convinced this is the reason our poly relationships last so long, because polyamorous relationships are like dog years in that one year equals seven.
I have two “core” relationships, who are sufficiently close that they have veto power over who I’m allowed to see because a) they’re entrusted with my best interests, and b) if they’re not happy, I’m not happy. Gini and I also see other people, who we love, but we don’t necessarily have to run things past them, just keep them apprised.
Bec
Bec is our local “core” girlfriend, who Gini and I have been dating for about three years now. She lives in Cleveland, and we have weekly dates as well as doing much Stuff on the weekends.
Angie
Angie is our long-distance “core” girlfriend who lives in Detroit, and we’ve also been dating for three glorious years. We see her maybe once every two months, which is never enough.
That’s pretty much a summary of what’s going on. Any questions you have about my life you wanted to have clarified? Now’s your chance.
In Happier News….
Yesterday, our girlfriend Bec got us our matching Christmas presents. And this immediately ensued:
Yes, I know – as jenphalian, that crazy SCA nut told me, my form is horrible, I’m leading with my face, I don’t care. I’m using JEDI MIND POWERS, forcing Gini back with MY BRAIN. And then we made a very Christmassy display:
Also, thanks to some Christmas financial assistance from Mom, I got my main gift of a king-sized bed. From a mattress expert.
SIDE NOTE: Seriously, what is it about mattress stories? If you’d asked me, I’d told you there was maybe one mattress store in all of Cleveland. But the minute I started seriously thinking about purchasing mattresses, suddenly there was a goddamned mattress emporium on every corner. They must have teleported in at my psychic beckoning; surely, I can’t be that oblivious.
But this store held a goddamned mattressing wizard. She took us to the bed we’d requested to see, a quilted brick, and then carefully showed us to the bed we wanted. She accurately predicted the kinds of pains and aches we’d have if we slept on the bed we had, guessed our bed’s age within two years, discussed how the hips work when you’re lying down. When she was done showing us through, I had no choice but to buy a bed to reward her.
So what did we get? A king-sized latex mattress with an inch-and-a-half thick top to support our fat bodies. The Mattress Queen loves fat people. Apparently, skinny people lay on all kinds of mattresses and can’t feel a difference because they weigh as much as a leaflet, but fat people? Fat people know the distinction. She can sell to fat people. And so she did.
A Brief Vomiting Of Hate Upon The NDAA
There are days where I don’t want to vomit rage all over you. Today isn’t one of those days. But I think it would be hypocritical of me to let the day pass without mentioning the passing, and subsequent failing to veto of, the National Defense Authorization act.
Fucking leprous shit-eating motherfucker.
Obama’s record on personal liberty has been pretty abysmal – I mean, I still blame Bush for starting the Guantanamo detention camps, but Obama’s kept them going. And at this point, what I’m seeing as Obama’s legacy is two things:
1) A complicated boondoggle to fund the insurance companies that he shoved through Congress without actually explaining to anybody, which may or may not work and which may or may not be dismantled in the courts;
2) Destroying habeas corpus.
Basically, by not vetoing the bill, Obama’s said, “You know what? If I think you’re guilty of something, I can jail you for as long as I want. Do I need evidence? Nah. A trial? Nah. If you fucking annoy me, I can fucking get rid of you.”
Which, as has been noted here, is not really a surprise – the NDAA merely codifies what Obama and Bush have been doing all along, a great big ol’ reacharound Presidential land grab of authority. And you know, maybe I do trust Obama not to lock up civil enemies without warning, barely, but this isn’t about just Obama. This is about every fucking President from now on being able to do this. This is handing a loaded gun to every dickwad wanna-be tyrant who walks into office.
And Obama knows this.
As I’ve said time and time again, the problem with just side-stepping the law is twofold: one, if the laws aren’t sufficient to catch criminals, reform the fucking laws. Without laws, you have abuse. And while it’s tempting to just tell the cops, “Yeah, it’s hard to play by the rules, so we’ll look away while you go beat up the guilty,” in reality what happens is the cops pick on whoever they don’t like instead of actually carrying out justice. If the current tools aren’t good enough, refashion the fucking tools, you leaking diarrhetic fuckfaces.
Two, as Irving Berlin once said, “Anything you can do, I can do better,” which is to say that every time the United States says, “Hey, we don’t need to actually follow rules or encourage freedom locally,” some shit-pot of a tyrannical dictatorship looks to us and goes, “Well, if the country of freedom can’t be bothered, we certainly don’t need to be.”
If America’s going to advertise itself as “The land of the free,” then it needs to be an example of what freedom is to other fucking countries. And freedom is not full of shortcuts. Freedom’s a hard thing where sometimes the terrorists are smarter than your laws, and sometimes you know someone’s guilty, but you let them free because it’s not about your gut feeling, it’s about proving it to other people with evidence. Because the alternative is just fucking grabbing whoever looks guilty, and feeding into that feeling that the system is rigged, which eventually leads to a never-ending series of overthrows as people come to realize that if they’re not the guy on top, they’re going to be fucked over.
Obama’s a scholar. He knows that. He’s studied what happens, and still he threw it away in a cynical, personal power grab. So fuck him and fuck his idea of freedom.
Random People I've Been Meaning To Plug Recently
1) My friend Adam Fromm has just recorded his first folk CD The Elmsley Count – which, if you’re into music in the vein of S.J. Tucker and her ilk, you should go take a look at. Fortunately, the site he’s selling off of gives you the ability to listen to full tracks, a feature which I absolutely adore, so head over, check it out, and ascertain just how much cash you want to plunk down to support a local artist.
2) My friend Perich has just released his first e-book Too Close To Miss, which in the interests of full disclosure I have not read… But I have read his blog for years, and adore his posts on Overthinking It, and so I think that given it’s a thriller novel, it’s probably worth a look. It can be found here.
3) Someone else I have not read is Terri Windling, even though all the cool kids apparently have. I’m a firm believer that anyone who influences as many people as she has must be worth reading, since my main metric for authorhood is “the love of devoted readers.” Terri is sick, and various artists are offering all sorts of things in auctions to help her out at Magick 4 Terri – and some of the things are quite tempting indeed.
Now, I am extremely late to mention this (which should show you how terrible I am at remembering things), so the auction closes tomorrow. But there is still time, as you can see by going to the LJ site right now.