skip to main |
skip to sidebar
That was the Twitter "trend" last night that piqued my interest. Except on Twitter it looked like this:
#ImSoSickOf
and so it began. First I tweeted [that's a word which means "typed in 140 characters or less" or sometimes "microblogged"] that:
#ImSoSickOf Twitter Trends.
Then I thought some more and tweeted a whole bunch more stuff. They all start off with #ImSoSickOf:
not fitting in.
people fighting on Twitter. And then picking others to group-block until they get banned. Not just the Christians doing it.
all of us fighting instead of finding some common ground to talk about. We can do better than this.
the U.N. trying to run the Internet. Agenda 21. Illegal immigrants. the Gun Wars. Let's enforce the laws we have b4 making more.
not being able to translate my talents into work that I love.
people who assume that they know me.
injustice. The women of the First Nation deserve to have the crimes committed against them fully investigated. #Rape is never ok.
watching people continue to promote abusive behavioral mod programs and send their kids or someone else's kids to them. #FAIL.
people justifying the evil that they do.
people demanding that I be grateful for the crumbs. I'm baking my own loaf of bread. Ain't no stopping me now.
professionals believing that they know what's best for me as if I don't. Look, if you don't want to help me, get outta my way.
people demanding that we all fit into nifty little political molds. I don't. I suspect most aware people don't. So go away.
having to deal with a society that is content to let their privacy be snatched away. Privacy is necessary for true security.
living in fear whenever I exercise my first amendment rights. The terrorists of 9/11 have won. Our rights [are] going #DownTheTubes.
religious people assuming that without any gods, morals and conscience do not exist.
people who judge my #AnonFamily. We are all humans trying to live on this planet without blowing each other up. I <3 b="" you="">#anon
.
winter. Waiting for spring so I can travel.
everyone calling each other names. Liberals, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Christians, Muslims, Atheists, etc. Stop it.
bullies, drama queens, snotty neighbors, snitches, informants, spies, and drones.
There was one more trend that I tweeted for:
#ThingsSarahPalinHasNeverDone offer to sleep with my dad who I am quite sure would say yes.
Then I went back to #ImSoSickOf:
Twitter asking me to import my contacts from my e-mail. That's a big fat NO @twitter. READ ME NOW? #JustSaying.
exclusionary tactics.
what the politicians are doing in their belief that we need protection from our selves.
trolls with no skillz.
calling tech support and finding out that I know more than they do. So like, I quit calling. And I don't even know enough yet.
people going to jail for civil disobedience getting more jail time than rapists and human traffickers and homocidists[sic]. #FAIL.
people who don't understand the first thing about #Anonymous bashing my #AnonFamily.
the woo-woo.
people who try to take over public space with their private sentiments.
people on all sides blocking each other. @twitter, how about NOT using how many times someone gets blocked as suspension?
the insanity.
Because #ImSoSickOf the politicians giving it to us, I support #Anonymous. Because #ImSoSickOf business as usual, I'm changing how I live.
these meaningless trends-- who is jennette and why should we love her, what is snl, oomf, turnup, eureka7, symbiotic titan???
the BS & lies that politicians on all sides tell us. I don't need platitudes. Anything worth having is worth working for.
people trying to dictate to me what I should believe, think, or how I should behave. Civil rights for all civils.
the hate.
I recorded all of this here as stuff I may write more about sometime. Or maybe not. Last night I also had a bit of a melt-down over a wi-fi problem that I wrestled with for an hour and a half. But I did get it fixed. And as a bonus, I found a security flaw in my system. Or rather, found a security flaw in my system that I actually recognized as being a security flaw. I fixed it.
sapphoq itching for a coffee
C.O.W.S.
Crazed Obligants Wanting Something
I've known people who expect others to do and do and do for them. In my experience, they are stuck in the emotional stance of a baby. Rightfully so, an infant is dependent upon others for care and nurturing. As the maturation process takes hold, that infant becomes a child, teen, adult who hopefully has moved beyond the "Love me! I am loved!" stage of identity. But this is not a perfect world. Some percentage of the time, human beings get stuck.
Viable adults have certain obligations. As Victor Emil Frankl said in his book Man's Search for Meaning, "Freedom is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half
of the truth. The positive aspect of freedom is responsibility." Without including responsibility as an integral function of freedom, freedom becomes a slogan without meaning.
In twelve step programs, the Second Step talks about a restoration to sanity. The version I prefer is "If I want something different, I gotta do something different." Saying it that way is an admission that I have to do something other than passively wait to be restored [usually by a deity of one's choice] or pretend that I am mentally getting myself ready to be restored [usually by said deity]. The father of self-esteem, Nathaniel Branden, tells us that doing more of what doesn't work just doesn't work. If I don't like the stuff I have-- whether it is material stuff or the way that I live my life-- then I have to choose to do something different or to try it another way.
Enter the crazed obligant from stage left. The obligant has binded to us and we have allowed this binding. In order for there to be a taker, there has to be a takee. And that takee has agreed on some level to be taken. The obligants in my life were like Jupiter when I first met them. Usually they come with a coffee pot, a homey and cozy kitchen, and the gift of gab. Everything works for the first two weeks. The honeymoon phase gets itself over with. The hooks drill inwards. Suddenly I have a project.
In one memorable instance lasting a year and a half before I caught on, I was invited over for coffee over a particular talk show host on television. Funny that. The schedule turned out to be always at the later half of any given month, several days a week. When she was running out of money. "Oh, I need cigarettes. Can you go to the drugstore up the street and get me some?" she whined. Like a fool, I did. Because Jupiter is jovial and I got sucked in by the gaiety. Quem Jupiter vult perdere, dementat primus.
Another instance did not involve coffee. I was working, where does not matter. I was routinely given new workers to train. The young man was eighteen and very short and slender. He looked like a boy and in many ways he was. He was from Imperial Beach and his mother found that she could not control him. He was drinking, gambling, and starting to hang out with people that scared her. She sent him to live with his uncle in the small town in the middle of nowhere that I lived in. Within ten minutes of meeting him, I knew two things. I knew he had a drinking problem and a gambling problem. He told me he did. He didn't use the word "problems" but it was obvious to me that he had them. He didn't realize how desolate our town was. He thought he was moving to a big city. He was bummed.
But who we are follows us. Very quickly, the young man found a card game and a bookie. And of course he found the bars. He became my project. He became everyone's project. All of us who worked there were invested in how much he drank or gambled on any given day. I wanted him to quit his drinking and gambling. I wanted him to find some health for himself. The workers who went out for a drink after work were saying things to him like, "You can come with us but you're only going to have one or two." Invariably, someone else would chime in with, "No, you're not going to have any." One day, he told me he had gambled away his entire paycheck. I was worried about him. But he was not mine to worry over.
I came to my senses over a period of three months. One morning, we were sitting in the cafeteria before our shift started. I said to him, "Young man, you have two hobbies. You drink and you gamble. You suck at both of them. I suggest you get new hobbies." Then I walked away. I cannot want something for someone more than they want it for themselves. He was no longer my project. Shortly after that, he came in still drunk from the night before and was throwing up all over the bathroom. I called the supervisor and demanded that she do something about it now. It was a Friday. She suspended him for the weekend.
He came back to work the following week. He told me he had to go to a series of counseling appointments at the local addiction treatment center. I nodded. He wasn't my project anymore. He didn't stick. He laughed off the information he was given by the professional helper. I had freed myself. There is no ending to the story of the young man. Eventually, he went off to find his fortune elsewhere.
There is an ending to the story of the cigarette smoking, coffee drinking, television watching woman whom I had allowed to leech off of me for a year and a half. I broke off contact. I'd heard that she had moved back in with her parents about an hour and a half away. Several years later out of the blue, I got a message on my voice mail. "It's my birthday," she started out. "Come and see me. We can hang out." I erased the message. Jupiter's path had moved on without me in tow.
I was brought up to be nice. My wise old aunt quietly watched me go through a series of hanger-on-ers over the years. Finally one day, she said to me, "sapphoq, it's nice to be nice. But sometimes you are too nice." That clicked.
As I meander along this incredible journey called life, I have an obligation to myself to remember the things I learned from my role as a takee. Everything works for the first two weeks. I cannot want something for someone more than they want it for themselves. It's nice to be nice but sometimes I am too nice. When Jupiter begins his descent, when the C.O.W.S. begin their braying, when the hooks begin seeking flesh to drill into, I am no longer waiting with a sign in flashing neon letters that say, "Here I am. Take me! Take me! Take me!"
sapphoq itching for a coffee, but careful now about how i get it
For the most part, I have been maintaining my weight with occasional lapses. There was something about the T.O.P.S. program that has been bothering me. What has been bothering me is the letter "S." That letter S stands for the word Sensibly. It is T.O.P.S. and K.O.P.S. Taking Off/Keeping Off Pounds Sensibly. Not T.O.P. Taking Off Pounds. Not K.O.P. Keeping Off Pounds. The word "Sensibly" has to count or it would not have been there.
When I go to a T.O.P.S. meeting, I do not expect to hear about how people starved themselves the day of the meeting and/or didn't drink any water that day. And I certainly don't expect to hear about how people have been skipping meals for three days before the meeting. This is not taking pounds off sensibly. This is not keeping off pounds sensibly. This is eating-disordered behavior.
Folks talk opening about that. What other eating-disordered actions are being taken and not talked about. Are there a few members who are sticking a finger down their throat and barfing before a meeting? How many members are taking large quantities of laxatives in an effort to shit the extra calories out? How many members are taking large quantities of diurectics in order to piss the extra calories out?
The silence is deafening. I'm willing to bet that there are members who elect any one or all of these things as a way to sacrifice themselves to their weight. Look people.. I cannot change the system. I've got too much other stuff on the plate. But I will tell you what. I'm not hanging where old behavior reigns supreme.
Now is the time for me to live this. To not engage in any sort of patterned starvation. To embrace who I am wholly and completely.
To make consistent healthy eating choices consistent with who I am and who I want to be.
sapphoq
"Love is my religion." Bob Marley.
Not really. I just like the song.
"Faith is the commitment of one's
consciousness to beliefs for which one has no sensory evidence or rational
proof. When a person rejects reason as his or her standard of judgment, only
one alternative standard remains to that person: his or her feelings. A
mystic is one who treats his or her feelings as tools of cognition. Faith is
the equation of feelings with knowledge."
~Nathaniel Branden
"I find the advocacy of “universal love” puzzling – if one takes words literally. Not everyone condemns sexual promiscuity, but I have never heard of anyone who hails it as an outstanding virtue. But spiritual promiscuity? Is that an outstanding virtue? Why? Is the spirit so much less important than the body?"
~Nathaniel Branden
Jeebus crackers don't taste good.
Rejection of science and medical practices based on sound science kills.
Reason Saves.
Belief in fables kills.
Rwandan genocide.
Clitoral maiming of young girls as an acceptable Muslim practice.
Some Mormons in Utah gave us W.W.A.S.P.S. facilities to which we can send our troubled teens to be tortured. [a nod to radical sapphoq there]
Life Support: Keeping the dieing alive long after they are dead.
Pedophile Priests.
"Corporations are People."
Many cultures have creation myths.
The death of Galileo.
Seeking the HERE rather than the "hereafter."
Mother Nature is a Real Muther [fecker].
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." - Carl Sagan
Atheists are sexy.
Too late. I've already lost it.
