Why I decided that unfriending people was the way to go

There came a time, I think it was in April, or maybe May, when I decided that I didn't need to be "friends" with certain people I know.
Heck, maybe I had made this decision by late March.

For a long time prior to this, there were people I was "friends" with whom I didn't actually like.
Mostly, they posted stuff like "Liberals this, that, and the other."
As if they know the hearts and minds of every single person who considers her/himself liberal-leaning.
Or they would post stuff about what Thomas Jefferson said about the republic, even though I know they didn't study history; they majored in business administration and maybe read a book or two about Jefferson.
Or they would argue with me, but arguing with me wasn't the problem.
It was their name-calling and willful fucking ignorance.
I can handle someone arguing me if they are presenting data or analysis or something more than, "But, but" and "Ok, then how about..."

I decided that in the world before FB existed, I would only raise my hand to wave at these people if I saw them in the neighborhood.
I wouldn't spend any time with them beyond a courtesy greeting once a year.
If I saw them out in public and knew they didn't see me, I'd probably also occasionally turn around and visit a different section of Home Depot to avoid speaking with them.

There is a whole mess of family that I am unfollowing and getting fairly close to unfriending since I haven't seen many of them since I was a child.
And they continue to post ridiculous stuff like "I don't see color" and "Christians are persecuted in the US" and other things that make me want to roll my eyes until they get stuck in the back of my head.

I had thought to myself that I was being open-minded by being "friends" with people who I strongly disagree with, but I finally decided that I was simply being driven crazy by people I don't actually care about.

And if I was gonna die during a pandemic or watch people die during a pandemic, I wasn't going to spend one extra second more than I had to being subjected to viewpoints that just make me angry.

I am all for having peaceful conversations because I am willing to learn from others and listen, but the truth is that there are some people whose minds are closed.
Having an argument with them is simply screaming into a void of nonsense or stupidity or derangement.

I determined that my own mental health was more important to me than making an effort to be "open-minded."

(I also deleted dead people because that just seems obvious.)

Pandemic parenting expectations after reading a novel about a pandemic

I finished Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel a few days ago, and it made me feel much better about my inability and/or refusal to even attempt to make my kids' lives normal right now.

Normal is over.
And I don't know if this is temporary or permanent.

I do not have the mental energy to do anything more than keep my kids fed, relatively clean, and ensure they survive.
I'm not worried at all about whether their reading or math scores decline as a result of NTI this past spring.
I'm not worried that they aren't reaching whatever "potential" they might have.
I don't know that too many people right now are meeting their greatest potential.
Because self-actualization becomes not so critical in unique situations such as these.
Maybe there are some people, but I'm not one of them.

In St. John Mandel's novel, the pandemic that impacts the world kills somewhere around 99% of the population, and it does so within 48 hours, which I think is a mercy.
There are few things worse than unknowns and uncertainties as far as I'm concerned.
If COVID-19 were far more deadly, perhaps people would be taking it more seriously than they are.
Although I doubt it.

When my kids were younger, it was easier to have "engagement" summers.
They were happy to play in the backyard or go where I thought would be a fun spot.
Now they are older; they don't care, and I don't care enough to fight with them about it.
And during a COVID summer, my anxiety at being out among other humans, most of whom aren't wearing masks, is greater than my desire to have my kids doing self-actualization activities.
We won't be going to museums or malls or anywhere that we don't absolutely have to go.

A parent I interviewed for a magazine article recently said that either she or her husband go to the store "as tribute," which I thought was the most brilliant thing ever and am now applying to my life.

We have always kept the bar pretty low for entertaining our children, and I am so glad for that practice now.

As I read the aforementioned book, it occurred to me that kids in this pandemic mostly 1. died or 2. had to survive in ways that were probably horrible.
Their parents, were they even still alive, were far too busy finding food or drowning in their own psychological trauma to worry too much about their kids being engaged.

We had a meeting about field hockey, and while I will support N, I also am the type of person who doesn't like to invest too much effort and energy into something that seems fairly unlikely to happen.

This is, of course, the exact opposite of sports enthusiasts who want to be prepared and "ready to play" should the season actually happen.

My personal feeling is that the schools are going to find it difficult enough to figure out how to educate during COVID; I think they aren't going to think it is worth the effort, headache, and liability of extracurricular activities.
I just don't think they are saying this as yet.
But I suspect they will.

Whatever conditioning occurs will be an effort in "pretending to care about sports during pandemic" for me, although this, in truth, isn't too far from my normal "pretending to care about sports" status.

There is an awful lot of going through the motions for me now.
Which may also be permanent or temporary.
Uncertainty is cruel. 

The close-to-home vacation during COVID

We had originally, back in December, hoped to go to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons in 2020.
However, we had been hemorrhaging money in 2019 so decided a big trip was irresponsible.

In January of this year, I booked 4 nights at Land Between the Lakes in western Kentucky at a private home for June.

When COVID came along, we didn't know what we were going to do.
Eventually, we decided that since it was in-state, we wouldn't be violating any executive orders.
We also determined that even if we sat inside that house doing exactly what we'd been doing inside our house, it was, at least, a change of scenery.

We had planned to take my MIL, my niece, and my parents, but in March, April, and even May, we didn't know if that would happen.
Heck, to be honest, we didn't know how things would shake out for certain until we were on the road.

Ultimately, we told them that the five of us were going, and we left it up to them whether they felt comfortable going with us.

Our trip was nice.
We took our own food and never ventured to a restaurant even for curbside pickup.
I stopped in a small corner store for Hershey chocolate bars (for s'mores) and wore a mask.
I used my gas-pumping gloves the one time we stopped for gas.
We wore masks when we went into LBL buildings/nature stations and kept our distance from others.
We spent most of our time at the house, swimming, fishing, kayaking, or eating.

Was it the most stellar, scenic, mind-blowing trip?
No.
Was it simple and relaxing and based on realistic expectations?
Yes.
And in a year like this one, that is downright delightful.

My thoughts on COVID have changed in some ways since March.
What hasn't changed is my feeling that it is serious, warrants life changes, and requires vigilance.
What has changed is my feeling that being careful cannot equate putting life entirely on hold.
If my parents, or kids, or I end up getting COVID, I will be glad to have had special memories of time spent together.

Fishing with Pa

 Masks were at the ready before we walked inside. 

Take your uncomfortable feeling and sit with it

Affrilachian poet Frank X. Walker published a poem this week.
Reading it made me feel uncomfortable.
That uncomfortable feeling was me recognizing that the poem's sentiment was honest and accurate.
What role do white women play in the raising of men who perpetrate brutality against blacks?

From my experience with OCD, I know that one of the ways to make it better or lessen its impact is to do what is called "sit with your anxiety."
Part of the reason people with OCD do their compulsions is to reduce the uncomfortable feelings they have.
The problem of giving in to the compulsion is that while it makes a person feel better for the moment, it makes the anxiety worse overall, which requires you to do more compulsions or new compulsions to make the anxiety go away.
"Sitting with your anxiety" is extremely uncomfortable but it is what is necessary to help truly master OCD and not be controlled by it.

I have seen at least two instances this week in which white women I know have posted their thoughts and/or feelings on social media regarding protests or wishing all this what they call "meanness" in the world would go away.
When their comments were challenged, they did not "sit with their feelings."
They deleted what they wrote and went back to "only happy, positive posts now."

While doing this may lessen their negative and/or uncomfortable feelings, it is indicative of white privilege.
They have the luxury of not dealing with the meanness of the world because of their color.
It is easy for them to slip back into the comfy, secure confines of whiteness where life is, perhaps not always easy or simple, but easier than if their skin color impacted how they were treated or viewed by others.

Sitting with the uncomfortable is, in my opinion, part of the hard work of understanding what your bias and prejudices are.
It isn't fun.
But it is necessary.

This week, a teacher friend posted the Harvard Implicit Bias Test.
There are numerous tests a person can choose, but I took the race one.
And before I took it I was scared.
I did not want to know what it would tell me.
What if what I thought I knew about my bias/prejudice was not accurate?
What if I had to look my bias/prejudice in the face and see myself for what I am?

And yet, that feeling of being scared that I felt was a luxury.
Feeling scared by what an online test will tell me about myself is so far removed from the feelings of fear that come from
driving while Black.
jogging while Black.
babysitting while Black.
eating ice cream while Black.
sleeping while Black.
bird-watching while Black.
kneeling while Black.

Language--what you say and what you think you say

I.
The other day, I wrote about code that white people sometimes use, and I gave "dirty" as an example.

As an English teacher and writer, I think a lot about the words that I use and the words that other writers use and how the use of those words impacts listeners and readers.

There is what is called denotation, the literal definition of a word.
There is also connotation, which is the understanding and usage of the word which may be similar to the literal definition or may be COMPLETELY different from the literal meaning.

The following words are all synonyms for the walk and describe how someone moves their body to get from one place to another.

roam
advance
sashay
shuffle

Even though these words all have the same denotation, they all connote something different. I would use the word "roam" if I was writing about trying to find my way in a city and not knowing where I'm going. I would not use sashay to describe how I get around an unknown city. Advance suggests military movement and strategy. I would not say I am advancing through the grocery store to get cereal.

When a white person uses the word "dirty" or "thug," they could be using the denotation of these words, or they could be connoting something totally different. Sometimes they do this unintentionally and sometimes they do it with cruel intentions.

Last fall, I used the word "dirty" to describe a certain type of blues music that I like. When I used that word, what I was trying to convey was a sense of rawness and stripped down(ness) to the music; music that had not been over-produced to sound full and "cleaned up."

After the words came out of my mouth, I realized that because I was talking about blue music, a form of music originated by black artists, my use of the word "dirty" could be, understandably, misconstrued from what I had intended.

Add to the fact that I was thinking about the music of The Black Keys, two white musicians, whose influences were Junior Kimbrough and Robert Johnson, two black musicians, and my usage of the word "dirty" became even further complicated.

At the time I said that, I didn't know The Black Keys were influenced by these men, but after I made that statement, I decided I needed to do some work. I began to research who they were influenced by and listen to those musicians.
I needed to internally give props to those musicians who maybe haven't gotten the credit they are due.

However many months later, I am still thinking about my use of the word "dirty," what I thought I meant by using that word, and what someone else might have understood.

II.
One of the dangers of social media is that it isn't a complete conversation and most people don't have the bandwidth to read an entire essay.
(Myself included, especially when there is no punctuation or separated paragraphs.)

Televised media is another example.
Why do people watch so much television?
Is it because the world and your understanding of it will be handed to you in short, digestible snippets?
But can we really understand anything from blurbs and soundbites and a 5-minute discussion?
For me, to understand means to read and read and read and think a lot after that and throw some experience in there, too.

So what social media has us do, myself included, is try to get everything we think into one statement, but one statement doesn't cover it.

III.
In trying to say everything we want to say in snippets, we add buts.
But is a conjunction intended to link two parts of a sentence together.

I like to eat popcorn, but it has an unpleasant effect on my digestive tract.
In the above sentence, I started out with a positive (I like to eat popcorn), but the "but" made it negative.
That is what buts can do.

Buts can also make a positive of a sentence that starts out negative.
I always hated tomatoes, but I have learned how to enjoy them on a salad.

The problem is that a lot of people are starting their comments as follows:
I support the protests, but I disagree with destroying property.
I think the police are too brutal, but I also think people need to follow their authority figures. 

The but takes your positive support and turns it into a negative, even if this isn't what you intended. Even if you say it in the spirit of goodwill.
Even if you really agree that things should change.
That but screwed up how your comment was received.

Are there other logical things potentially wrong with those statements above?
Sure, especially since some of the people who think POC should listen to authority figures are the same people who threw duck fits when authority figures instituted measures during the pandemic that impacted their ability to get their hair cut or select furniture at a discount store.

But this is simply about the power of the words we use and choose and the need to think about how our adjectives and conjunctions can impact how we are perceived.