lefthandactivist

[lefthandactivist]

Safety, and everything else

Sorry it took so long for me to get here.

The last few weeks have been a little rough. If you haven’t heard yet, the United Methodist Church - the denomination I’ve been a part of since forever - has made its decision regarding same sex marriage and LGBT clergy. That is to say, they’re taking a ‘traditional’ stance and disallowing either.

Some would argue that this doesn’t make any change. the written rule is the same now as it was, they’re just reaffirming it. But things have changed for me, so now I have to deal with it.

As we’ve discussed before, I’m gay. Or I feel sexual attraction to some men that I don’t feel towards women. I’m also Christian. Or I believe in God in a way that wavers but doesn’t die out. These both feel like axioms - we can’t prove or disprove them, so we’re going to take them as true and see where it gets us.

There’s many different brands of Christianity, but Methodism is what I’m most familiar with. Many of John Wesley’s original teachings align with my worldview, and all my other-generational friends come from my home church. There are plenty of Methodist allies, and I’m sure some members are LGBT. This is to say,  that my church is a place that I’ve felt relatively safe. But that safety requires me to be careful. And ‘careful’ here means to be closed.

I’ve talked about being bullied as a kid often here. A lot of my approach to the world grew out of the teasing and negative attention I received. It didn’t feel safe to be myself at school. So I learned to not be myself, learned to hide myself from people until I trusted them. I hid being too silly, misbehaving, being a snarky know-it-all. And later I hid my fears, my anxious overthinking, my dark winters. When sexuality became a thing to worry about, I hid my thoughts on that too.

But do you see the problem here? By the time I might trust someone, they had already learned this put on version of myself. I became worried about overwhelming people with myself. Worried about losing people over my changes. Keeping secrets became the norm.

So to be safe I have to be careful. Have to be closed. I feel myself relax when I become the only person in the room, sometimes. I can’t think of a public place I’ve ever been able to be myself, a capital S ‘Safe Space’. For a time I tried to have that here, but as long as the price of admission is cheap, online spaces can become corrupted. I want a community where all the parts of me are accepted, and I didn’t know where to look for that.

I took all of this turmoil and this closed off feeling with me and I met with my pastor. Telling them everything became the third hardest thing I can remember doing, but at least it’s gotten easier. I told them about my journey and my internal struggles. I told them how I felt like the people who are my people are fighting the others that are also my people. I told them how finding LGBT voices and Christian voices is easy, but finding one that comes from both is difficult. I talked about how staying with the church felt like supporting this decision, but leaving would mean giving up the closest thing I had to safety. They helped me work through some things there and promised to find some resources. They helped me realize that it’s okay to seek out places that I can be my whole self in, that being open requires safety.

And now? I have some books to read. I have a place to check out when I get the courage to. I’m still going to church since it’s going to be a process, but I know that I’ll have options when I’m ready for them. More than anything I feel less stuck than I have for a while. It honestly feels like one of the worse chapters of my life is coming to a close.

But about everything else: This place was helpful for a while, but as long as admission is cheap, online spaces can become corrupted. I’ve learned that what I’ve been looking for isn’t attention or an echo chamber, it’s feedback. So I’m closing up shop. I’ll be going through and saving some of the works I’m proud of, but the rest will go the way of old notebooks and deleted emails. I want to close this chapter proper, And I don’t think I’ll need LHA anymore. But talking here was a good place to start, so thanks for listening.

[lefthandactivist]

Ways to lose yourself

Sometimes my fingers itch. So I pick up my guitar and play. Sometimes it’s a song I know. Sometimes it’s a song I don’t know. Sometimes it isn’t a song. But I pick up my guitar and play because it’s a safer way to lose myself.

It’s safer than the other itch. The one that tells me to get up and move. To go for a walk or a drive. Sometimes it’s to go somewhere. The forest. The farm. Some city. Sometimes it’s to go anywhere. But I ignore that itch mostly. Because the places all only mean people. People who won’t be there. Won’t always be there.

People say emotions are irrational. But it’d be better to say they’re arrational. That they’re alogical. In the same way that logic is said to be apathetic. Like rays at right angles they don’t mean anything to each other. They just happen in the same space. So when I feel like losing myself I can’t really explain why. I just feel why. And when I get in my car and drive the where doesn’t really matter. Places only mean people.

Sometimes people ask how I’m doing. And beyond the toss of a “fine” I start to think about it. I wonder if I’m projecting “fine” or if they read me as something else. When posts online say to hang in there and that it gets better I wonder where I’m at on that. Whether I’m at “better” or if I ever got that bad to begin with. I think about this a lot while going to the places that mean people.

And I’m able to tell you when my head’s doing fine. I can explain where it went in a day and what problems it tried to crack. Thoughts can always be described with thoughts. It’s the heart that gives me trouble. But if my heart and my head are at right angles than do they mean anything to each other? or do they just happen in the same space.

All I can tell you is sometimes my fingers itch. So I pick up my guitar and play. But when I want to go to the places that mean people I know the people aren’t always there. So I really should just write instead.

Sincerely,

[lefthandactivist]

When my dad first had a phone that could play mp3′s, he downloaded several Aesop's fables for us to listen to. It wasn’t till after recording this that this story fits well into that genre. Apologies for bad voice acting

[lefthandactivist]

I got a mandolin for Christmas. This is some of the fruits of my labor so far.

[lefthandactivist]

You

I read a book of You But the book was not You I thought it was about You And it was enough for me.

I wrote a letter for You When I thought I knew You But the work was not You It was only for me.

I sang a song about You And through it I could feel You The lyrics took me to You But they were not from me.

I shouted, cried out for You Wanted to believe You Though I doubted that You Would ever believe in me.

But in the world I see You In others, joy for You This idea I mad of You Became to big for me.

I read a book of You but did not understand You It took me when I lost You And through it I found me.

[lefthandactivist]

Busy week this week, so have some of my old work. The first is what I’ve been using as an “album cover”, and the second follows similar rules.

[lefthandactivist]

Ashokan Farewell was the first real song I learned for guitar. It’s usually played on violin, so it has a lot of sustained notes that lend a somber feel to the piece. After practicing it for a while, I wanted to make it sound more hopeful, so I experimented with adding notes from the chords to the slower parts. I was a little worried that I would be told off for messing with the song, but instead my instructor encouraged me to add these notes for the whole song, acting like it was normal to adapt a piece like this.

The recording is me playing it through once the traditional way, and then adding those extra notes the second time.

[lefthandactivist]

Leaving my writing here was helpful in more ways than I realized. In honesty, the main reason I stopped being as consistent was because I worried about running out of ideas. So now I’m going to try something different.

I’m reinstating my one post a week goal, but I’m not limited to writings. There may be posts of doodles, recordings like these, or whatever else fits a “creative” requirement. A few times I may cheat and share something I’ve mad in the past, since a few of those I’m actually happy with.

With this comes some fun new challenges. I recorded this many times, and I’m still not exactly proud of it. but I’m ready to be done with it. I imagine that’s how a lot of these things will go. (also considering I started writing this last week that doesn’t bear well for my self-imposed rules)

I talked a bit with a friend about my odd hangups with poetry, which may become a post all its own, but for now I’ll leave this here and move on. And also test how the audio upload feature works.

[lefthandactivist]

In February, my church will make a choice. Not just locally, but the whole of the denomination. The international body, in which I was baptized as a baby and confirmed as a youth, will make a choice. This will have involved many months of thought and prayer and discussion and debate. And it will have already have been left to the side before, to be focused on later. But ultimately a group representing an entire people will make a choice, and there’s not much I can do about it.

Because in February, what roles anyone identifying as LGBT+ can play in my denomination will be discussed. And they’ll have to come to a decision.

I get stuck feeling like hope is something childish. Hope is something I held when the new school year cam along, and I had no control over whether any friends would be in my class. Hope was my response to not wanting to run into certain kids, or that a snow-day would let us skip a day of boredom.

Because hope is what you’re left with when you run out of options. Adulting is supposed to mean being in control, and so hope is the last resort.

But even in high-school I held on. I kept it for classes that I always slacked the homework off in, that they would give me another chance. I used it when trying to find new people to put my hope in, and kept putting it into those I already knew. For a time I kept hope in conversations and notebooks, quotes and musings for where things would go and what my life would point to.

And even now I have only hope sometimes. I only hope that I’m doing enough, that I can make it to a place where success and comfort don’t have to be weighed against each other. I only hope that the world gets better, that we fix the broken pieces together. And I hope that I won’t have to one day choose between two worlds I belong in.

But the sky is blue and sometimes gray. That is to say that the sky is always blue, but only sometimes gray.

[lefthandactivist]

I’m no good at nice, but I try to be kind.

What I mean to say is, I forget to be nice, but kindness is something I circle around mentally.

Niceness is rules and etiquette. It’s remembering to open doors and ask how someone’s day is. It’s recalling a coworker’s name, or offering up small talk. It feels plastic.

Niceness feels like pausing on your task to make a person feel temporarily better.

Kindness is making that person’s concerns your task.

It’s hard to talk about strengths without it sounding like bragging. Talking about myself being one of the ways I forget to be nice. But kindness is important and I won’t claim to be great at it, so indulge me.

Niceness is giving everyone equal attention: high-fiving every coworker or bringing coffee in for all. to do less would be favoritism or discrimination.

But kindness is discriminating. It cannot be applied evenly. something I learned is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease because the one that doesn’t squeak needs no grease. To apply a fresh coat everywhere to treat a small mark is to be wasteful.

So when one person needs special attention I try to give it. If I hear about a problem, I want to help with it. I don’t want to get over-involved, and suffocating the person won’t do. But the world is scary to go through alone, so I hope I can be kind.

And sometimes I need kindness. I forgive because I often need forgiven. Some people have been kind to me in ways I’ll never deserve, so in a way I’m trying to pay my debt to the world.

People deserve better, so I try to give them the best I can. The rules just get in the way - better to be done with them. Drop the niceties,

and be kind.

[lefthandactivist]

My grandfather, my dad’s dad, passed away a couple of years ago.

I don’t know many people who have died. Hearing my grandmother talk about it, she often remarks after telling a story about someone how they died some number years ago. She’d say this and keep talking.

Growing up knowing him, and even after he died, I thought of him little. It’s hard for me to remember a time before his Alzheimer's and loss of hearing didn’t affect him. I don’t know I can say I knew him, even as my family went out each year to see him and Grandma. I knew he worked a farm for many years, that he was retired navy, that his house had been his father’s house. My main memories were of him being happy to see our dog when we came to visit.

But now my dad tells stories, or rather he’s told stories before but now I listen. I think about the final death and when no one will know Grandpa existed. I think about oblivion and how everyone gets forgotten someday.

When he passed away I mainly felt sorry for his immediate family. My dad, my grandma, my two aunts. they were the ones that knew him. Now in a way I feel sorry for grandpa, too. It doesn’t seem fair that he won’t be remembered someday.

My dad tells stories, some of them first hand, some of them from Grandpa himself. I listen because I want to remember him at his strongest. My dad talks about writing some of it down, and has somewhat, but it’s hard and that makes sense. So maybe I can do some of the work.

I may not remember all the details properly, but as my grandfather would say, “Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story” (apologies, Mark Twain, or whoever first coined the phrase)

My grandfather held many jobs in his life. He was a farmer, and worked at a sugar beat factory, but also had joined the Navy, and worked in the tool shop of a Uranium Mine. When he was in high school, Uranium wasn’t a known element, the kind of mining they would use hadn’t been invented, and neither had the  equipment he would go on to use. 

For a farmer, My grandpa had a lot of tools and modern equipment at hand. My dad was even able to teach himself basic coding on a home computer they had while growing up, typing in programs line by line from a pamphlet. My grandpa’s shop- or honey house, as it is sometimes called, as it was once used to make honey - is especially full of all sorts of machinery and work tools from decades of collection. Not in the habit of throwing much away, Grandpa would still make use of many of those tools for as long as he was able. My dad describes it looking as if a man had finished up his work for the day, set down his tools, and would be back to find some new project.

While working in the Navy, My grandfather was stationed along the east coast to train and work. In this time, telegraphs were still in use, but new technology allowed someone to type a line of text using something similar to a typewriter, hit send, and have it translated to Morse before being transmitted. The system of wires was also very complex, and operators were able to connect calls to travel further than one line would allow. One night while being stationed with one of these machines, prepared to report weather or any issues that came up, he was quite certain it would be safe to make a connection. He found the furthest west station available, and typed a message to that operator. they connected him further west, and he repeated the process. eventually he got a line to the western half of his home state, as close to his home as any line would take him. He chatted with the operator there, happy to have some connection to the home he had not seen for some time.

Stories are important to me. They have a kind of magic to them, they convey meaning without having to say it. They are housed in action and reaction, swells and luls, ups and downs. 

I wish I had more stories. Not just of him, but of people I know hand have not known. I wish I could tell more than my own stories more often. These stories belong to my grandpa, but they also belong to my dad, and in a way they belong to me. Now they belong to you as well.

Maybe we can trade. I’m always open to new stories.

[lefthandactivist]

back in Junior high, I received a fortune cookie from a Chinese restaurant. This is not notable, as any person in the US (or many other countries, I’m sure) who has been to a Chinese restaurant has likely gotten one, if not several fortune cookies in their lifetime - I even manage to get some on occasion when I haven’t had Chinese.

And this would have been easily forgotten if it weren’t for the fact that my fortune was incomplete. Even though in a way it wasn’t

“Not to decide is a decision. You have an important new”

Speculation has been had on the how of this fortune, or what words may have completed it, but as there is no way of checking, and it is yet to repeat itself, I must simply focus on the effects of this phenomenon. Because the fortune was incomplete, I’ve managed to remember it for many years (Because it gets to be a story I tell).

As I was younger, I didn’t quite get the advice of the first half for a little bit. Now I have years more information and a helpful thought experiment (that is quite a bit more famous than my incomplete fortune). Say you have a train (trolley) heading down a track, and you happen to be nearby the controls to change what fork it goes down. currently the track is set so that the train will end up hitting five people that are unable to move or help themselves. But switching the track will cause a similar fate for one person on the other line, also unable to move. 

These trolley problems (there are many) are used to analyze ethics of an individual and how people react to making tough, high stakes decisions. But the part that is helpful to us is this fact: doing nothing is the same as decidedly walking away - either way, the five people die. Not deciding confines you to a decision.

Now there is discussion to get into with intention Vs. results and how we define guilt, but that requires more in itself, and might as well be left alone for now.

I’ve had trouble with decision making in the past. Sometimes it’s been hard to key into what I truly want from a situation or what will result in better outcomes. One thing I tried was flipping a coin. The key was that I didn’t have to do what the coin told me, if I immediately had a negative reaction to the result (because then I probably preferred the other option). A funny thing happened with that, though, as I would start to assign my preferred result to “heads” automatically, removing the need for the coin flip. Unfortunately, this was only useful for lower risk options.

But is not deciding a decision? Sometimes it feels more like I get stuck. The options don’t go away when I don’t move. They just sit there. Sometimes I demand the world pick for me, and the world refuses. 

And even when I think I’ve made my choice, I feel that call to turn around, to run the other way, to explore the other options. Always wanting to double back on everything. But time is finite. I can’t second guess forever.

Eventually, I have to make a decision. Not deciding won’t get me anywhere.

[lefthandactivist]

So in grade school we would have these days that were less about learning or school work and more about activities and interacting with classmates. They usually fell on lesser holidays, but would vary in timing and purpose year to year. At least a few of these asked us to think positively about our classmates and put adjectives into paper bags with their names on them. Feeling like I lacked insight into some of my classmates and associated worry aside, this gave me one of my few earliest looks into how people saw me as a person.

It never failed; any time we did this activity, the vast majority of my classmate’s answers for me were some version of “smart”.

I think at first I thought of it simply. I enjoyed reading from an early age, I often did well on tests and quizzes, and I even managed to grasp ideas in math and science - fields that to this day, if you tell someone you’re interested in them, they assume that you must be intelligent.

But after it happened a few times I started to worry. From what I could see of other people’s answers, they would have more variety in descriptors. And even the traditionally “smart” kids would usually be accompanied with “funny” or “nice” or some other characteristic. I would get a couple like that, but most people’s gut feeling on how to sum me up positively was “smart”.

And like what does that word even mean? Are we talking about knowledge? that I just had a lot of facts already learned? Or did they mean that I learned quickly? or did they use it in place of “nerd”? That I was excited about knowledge or fields of study? Why did so many of them put the same thing?

The insults and name calling in grade school I learned to handle. I owned words like “nerd” and “weird”. Anything serious and I knew what teachers would have my back. But it was the complements that stuck, because I looked at them and felt 2-D. Like all my self was in that one word. Which became worse when it stopped being true.

I still knew things, and reading and tests remain my forte, but I’ve always been a slow worker. As early as 3rd grade I remember having work that needed done outside of class that most of my classmates got done in the provided time. The worst of this was when I had a particularly bad substitute, who sent me home with a note explaining to my parents that I had home work because I didn’t use my time wisely and was not working fast enough. My parents let me rip up that note, and then I sat down to work on homework like I normally did.

Classes started demanding more of me, and I wasn’t prepared to step up to the extra dedication. I was able to get by with my normal “pay attention the first time” study method, but I was no longer anywhere near the top of the class grade-wise. And the students around my grade seemed to have a much better time with it all than I did - they took their effort and placed it elsewhere. Meanwhile I just wanted to get by, and had to face the annual “you can do better” lecture from every teacher and parent.

And now it seems so silly to me - why should I have done better in 5th grade English? I learned it all anyways. It just took longer. And I’m feeling that weight again that yes, I could do better, but at what cost? Between everything else asked of me, sometimes all I want to do is get by, and save myself some stress in the process.

But all this taught me the lie of words at an early age. Taught me that people won’t see me for me without a lot of effort. Taught me that “smart” doesn’t even mean the same thing to them as it does to me.

But because I learned all that, taking a compliment is something I find very hard to do. It becomes hard to believe about myself when the one word that anyone could go to for most of my childhood didn’t fit when I tried to wear it. And honestly most of the words never fit. I’m only nice part of the time, I’m not particularly funny. My physical attributes have never been anything above average. “Good problem solver” is only good when it’s on a resume. 

A friend at a past job wanted to do a project with giving people words, like the roles or strengths each person brought. What they gave me was “ponderer”, which was better than I expected really. And the way they did it, it felt pretty close to a compliment. Like a “this is a good thing” to one of the core ideas of my self.

I think maybe, when I can get someone to smile. When I think I’ve made their day better. When I’ve been of service at a job or explained something well to a classmate. When someone goes out of their way to spend time with me - those are the times when I feel it. Because I don’t know how to trust their words. I can only trust their faces.

[lefthandactivist]

I was visiting an art museum recently that had a surprising number of famous or notable works. I’m certain that many of them already have essays and articles written all about them, their history, their painters. Because that’s what people do with famous art - they pontificate, using the perceived value of the piece to crutch the value of their writing.

I was told once that a good rule of thumb for a novel being considered literature is whether people have published works about the book in question. So we safely say that Huckleberry Finn is literature simply because plenty of people have found value in writing about it. But surely most will just choose to write about what is already famous, what is already literature.

I should say that I’m not trying to be noble, not saying that writing about unknown works is better. But these were some of the thoughts that came shortly after my trip to the art museum. Because as I rounded a corner in one of the exhibits, entering a room that had yet another famous work, I looked back and saw on the wall by the entry a painting that no one was paying any attention, and immediately fell into it.

The painting in question is “Fisherman’s Cottage” by Harald Sohlberg - which I didn’t register at the time because I was too busy looking at it. The contrast is what grabbed me at first. I’ve always been a sucker for negative space in works. But here it isn’t any second image, just the result of looking at a pale blue sky through a darkened tree line after sunset. I barely noticed the titular cottage, as it comes off as minor detail when compared to the rest of the scene.

And looking at it online doesn’t do it justice either. the background is smooth and even in its color, but the black of the trees is cracked with white. In another work the effect could be sinister, but here it makes me think of a difference in textures. the trees should look rougher than the sky or the distant mountains, and so they do.

But none of this is why I spent so long looking at this piece in particular. Other uses of contrast were available, and so were other images of nature. It wasn’t until I stopped staring and thought about it that I made a few connections. 

I’ve talked before about my summer job. We were often in the forest or passing between the trees and the open fields. this painting captures a feeling of that boundary - what it’s like to look out from the forest at an open space. Nostalgia is definitely one word for what I was feeling during that time. The trees are different from the one’s I’m used to, but they’re still trees.

But then why look out from them? I’ve thought a lot about my relationship with knowledge. I love to collect it, but I only give some of it away for free. What I mean to say is I think of information as being powerful - you can blame a grade school song for the planting of that idea. And while it’s important to me to learn and understand it, I also tend to be rather protective of the information I have - especially about myself.

It’s easy to sit in your own head, think and doubt and question yourself. So easy that I often fall into it without trying. But telling someone about all of that would be overwhelming and unhelpful, I think. So the me I project isn’t always the me that’s in my head, especially when I’m given time to edit and redact (eg: right now). The me in my head is turbulent and sometimes contradicting. The me I get to project can be collected and certain, at least some of the time. This is also why my shaking hands bother me more than they should - it reminds me that my outward self control has it’s own limits.

So the idea of looking out from the forest is inviting to me - I can see clearly to the horizon, but someone looking in on me would have some trouble. And even though the view out there is so inviting - clear blue sky and water and mountains - the painting is still from behind those trees. Even when conditions are as good as they could be, stepping out from that shelter of obfuscation would be hard. taking off the mask is always hard. 

I can think of it as selfish or controlling, wanting to collect but not be open myself. I can be really hard on myself for continuing to shut ideas in, for keeping secrets. But that just dead-ends with me shouting at myself. It doesn’t make the act any easier. 

What does Is trust. I’ve let cracks open before, when I can trust the people looking in. I don’t know how to mesh that with my other ideas. maybe it’s a distraction. or maybe it’s looking at the risks and accepting them. I can’t even be certain enough to say that it isn’t some other thing.

And even in my uncertainty, sometimes not knowing can be okay. Stories never get told of the people who have all the answers.

[lefthandactivist]

Honest(l)y

My summer boss infected me with this focus on honesty. It was one of his big hills to die on, and I do respect him for that. But I have a complicated history with truth; talking on all the important details may take a while.

Oh would you look at that.

Growing up, I often lied to authority figures. My mom insisted this would get me in more trouble than telling the truth outright, but about 5% of the time I was successful at obfuscating the truth and wouldn’t get into any trouble, so lie I would. This spread to other situations as well. Easier to lie or keep secrets than be truthful, than to own up, than to be yourself. I lied about the kind of person I was, lied about caring what people thought, lied that I was okay when I wasn’t.

So here’s a truth: When I was growing up and started unloading the dishwasher, we had five metal cups: two red, two green, one blue. I always put them away in a stack of red-green-blue-red-green. not only did this have slide symmetry and portrayed my favorite color most predominately (red on top, on the outside of the stack), it was tactical as to afford me a red cup most often. See I usually was the first to get one of the cups, and so I could take the top red one pretty regularly. then, while my dad and sister worked through the less-good green cup and blue cup, I would take the bottom green, unless the two top ones were already gone. this meant the next time I would likely get the red cup, or the stack would have been rebuilt.

This is the easiest kind of truth for me to tell. I take stories like this, break them down and think about what it’s telling me. I decide what it means, then when I share the information, it’s back in story form. This lets others draw their conclusions, but it also means that part of the blame of them getting it is on them. I’m not responsible for how they un-package the story. 

Maybe you look at this story and you think it’s quaint. Maybe you think it’s obsessive. maybe you have a strong opinion on the order of the cups or the best color. I’ve changed how I think about this story myself. Storing it as complete gives me the added benefit of changing my mind with less confusion. But this is limited.

So here’s a truth: red is my favorite color. My reasoning has changed over the years for this but after looking out for it for so long, it just has a tendency to stand out to me more than even other primary colors. I like the color red because I have liked the color red.

This honesty is easy, but also kind of pointless. These are my factoids: I’m left handed. I have one sibling. I sleep in a bed that My feet hang off of. These truths don’t do any good other than to flush out character or to use in truth-and-lie games. they’re back of the baseball card stats. They don’t hold a truth of me passed that.

Authors tell different truths. they take a truth and surround it with lies, weave fictions around their main ideas to the point where readers sink into the truth and let it fill them before they recognize it. this truth has a artistry to it, and it’s one that I love to try my hand at. I’ve told stories that have been fabricated, but impart some key truth: the forest is amazing, forgiveness is important. These stories are important to me, so I won’t post them here. ask me sometime and I may tell one to you, though.

Here’s another truth: I may not answer your question, but if I do, I will do it fully and honestly.

I decided at one point to let questions be asked and try to answer them. It took a while before anyone asked me anything, because at that point I had done a great job of avoiding confrontation. Or maybe nobody cared about my truth. When the questions did come, I had to be careful. I had to be honest. but I let myself say no sometimes. Too many questions too quickly can be overwhelming. My summer job was good for this.

Sometimes the questions don’t make sense, though. I only have my own life to draw from, and certain lines of thinking got me nowhere. I imagined myself in a field of grapefruit, and you asked me for an orange. I can only offer you grapefruit. it may be bitter, but I can’t give you any oranges, I can only offer you grapefruit.

I have to be careful with metaphors. they work wonders in both directions. I have to be careful about poetic statements all together, really. Emerson had another point when he was talking about saying what you think in strong words. Not just that your opinions can change, but that you need to make your opinion clear.

So here’s one more truth: I have lied to you in the past. Both of you. I have misled you or kept secrets from you or outright said a false thing to you. I have done this enough times that I don’t know what those lies may even be, just that they have happened. I’m terrible at talking in person because I still want to lie to make it easier. I try to make up for it in writing because here I can stop myself. And because here I don’t have to look at you to say the hard things. I started this because I knew it’d be easier to share my truths in writing, when talking to no one in particular, when I can pause between sentences for seconds or hours.

I will try to be better at this. I have tried to be better at this. I will be better at this. I need input, though. My brain loves input. So give me feedback, okay? I’m ready to be done talking out to the void. Help me be better. Honestly, I’d rather have that than anything.

[lefthandactivist]

Wow okay I need to write something a little more upbeat after those couple of posts. How about we look at some personality quizzes? (because why not)

I’ve looked at quite a few personality tests before; I don’t know what about them grabs me. Although looking at my previous posts, it’s probably not all that surprising. Anyways:

Lets start with this one. According to Pottermore, I am a Ravenclaw. Also my patronus is apparently a Pine Marten. When I first took this quiz, I didn’t quite agree with my sorting. Honestly I didn’t think I was smart enough to be a Ravenclaw. Later I realized that I was a huge nerd and that would probably work out fine for me. Also I’m not brave enough to be Gryffindor, Don’t have enough ambition for Slytherin, and while Hufflepuff is supposedly the catch-all, they seem a lot calmer (*cough* stoned *cough*) than I’d ever be. I’ve heard there is some level of randomness to what house you get sorted to, though. Also I’ve never heard of a Pine Marten before, but they’re pretty cute so I guess that’s fine (Lets be real, though; my Patronus is an axolotl).

Meyers-Briggs Is likely the most popular personality test out there (and is the first result when you just google for some). The quiz assigns you four letters, each out of a pair of options, depending on your answers. I’ve heard others talk about their scores changing over time for this one and others, but each time I’ve taken it, I’ve received INFP - Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving. Effectively, this is saying I keep to myself (yes), Use intuition or thought to discover truth (fair), make decisions emotionally (okay), and improvise rather than plan ahead (sure). Some sites will go further to describe what each of these 16 personality types are effective at and what kind of relationships they should seek out, but that typically gets into fortune-telling territory - generalized statements that are hard to disagree with because they are so vague. There has been some criticism on the structure of the Meyers-Briggs over time, that it wasn’t as Psychologically rigorous as it should be.

Which is why the OCEAN exists. A team of Psychologists took a lot of data on what questions tend to separate people the best and what personality traits had the strongest effect on the general behavior of a person. The OCEAN, or big five project, is the result of these studies, and ranks by percentage five different traits. My results here are Open-minded-93 (relating to exploration of new ideas and creativity), Conscientious-8 (Disorganized, Forgetfulness or neglectfulness), Extroversion-16 (Reserved, Quiet), Agreeable-71 (this one varies the most for me, but is >50, meaning I tend towards good-natured and courteousness), and “Negative emotionality”-94 (sometimes called Neurotic, relates to anxiety and nervousness). The main differences here seem to be less focus on a input-to-decision process and more on separate factors for behavior. 

But these quizzes still aren’t telling me much I didn’t already know. Like, duh I’m Introverted I’ve known that for years. Maybe since I already think about these things regularly, the tests aren’t as useful to me. Or maybe taking Internet quizzes isn’t the best way to learn about yourself.

There’s a family of story personality tests that typically ask you to decide which character(s) were in the right. These can help get a more nuanced feel for how you react to blame and moral ambiguity. Most of these Involve a bridge over a river and two lovers on either side, so use those keywords if you want to find some examples. Sharing your results for these ones tend towards large arguments, but what I got out of my experience with them is a focus on forgiveness and careful thinking.

The last test I want to talk about is a bit different. Strength finder tests have been around for quite a while, and if your public education was anything like mine, you’ve probably taken a couple of similar tests to help you find a career path. The most popular of these tests is the Gallup test that unfortunately has a price-tag to completion. I had a book around with a code in it, but if your curious I would suggest looking into it. The test in question gives you your top 5 of 34 strengths based on your answers, with the idea that all people show some signs of any of these strengths, but have more affinity with some (for example, no organizational-related terms were in my top 5).

Here are my top five: Input - focus on collection (things or ideas), finding a wide variety of topics or things interesting. Ideation - fascination of ideas, connections, deeper understanding. Looking at things in new ways to learn more. Intellection - focus on thought, on exercising the brain, and on introspection. Always thinking. Learner - focus on learning, not necessarily in a specific direction. the process itself is important. Restorative - problem solving, fixing things. Joy specifically in saving the thing in question.

So obviously there’s a lot there. some of these have had strong prominence in my other writings, and reading through them is a lot of “well, yeah” moments. What got me was stepping back and seeing these five as a unit. It’s a process: Input, connect, learn, think, fix. It’s a mental program that I’ve been running for a while and only think about when it’s put so blatantly. Other people may not do this so consistently, so immediately. And what was missing got me, too. Gallup describes 4 Domains: Thinking, Influencing, Executing, and Relationship building. my top 4 all fall into thinking, with my fifth sitting in Executing. No better way to make yourself feel like an automaton than seeing it laid out like that.

So why do I like these tests? Why come back to them if most of the time they don’t teach me anything? Because sometimes they do. Sometimes I find something new about myself. It’s the same reason I’ve taken other tests and quizzes, and later disregarded their accuracy. Back in high school, I took tests about mental health. In junior high, I took quizzes about sexuality. And now I take them on anything, but only listen if they’re helpful. The next most important thing that these top five don’t describe is my refocusing agent, my recycle bin emptier, my anti-power to the hording suggested by Input. 

My ego? Maybe. Maybe it’s just number 6. I haven’t paid the 70 bucks to find out.

[lefthandactivist]

The Beginner’s Guide

If you haven’t been able to tell, I play quite a few video games. My steam library has too many to properly pay attention to, and I have to be careful of how much time I spend gaming instead of other practical hobbies.

So when I say that I return to the same games over and over, there can be different reasons for this. Some (like skyrim and minecraft) offer a world where I know pretty much all the rules. I can do quite a bit just within those spaces, and it’s often how I cool down after a stressful day. Others, (darksouls and metroidvania titles) offer bite-size challenges that I can hit head on in my own time. 

But there are a couple of games that left me with something else, something that makes me return to them in the same way I return to certain books. One of these is “The Beginners Guide”.

Now, there are definately spoilers ahead, so if you have any interest in playing this game yourself, do so before reading please (knowing anything going in will probably color your experience, I’m not joking). Furthermore, if hundreds of words on a linear, minimal gameplay indie game doesn’t interest you, feel free to skip over this one. As always, this is mainly to get my own thoughts down (you’ll see why). 

Wow are all of my posts going to start with me telling my readers to not read from now on? Well now that I’m alone with my thoughts, lets discuss.

The Beginners Guide comes from the “same developer” as The Stanley Parable. A game that I enjoyed so much for what it does that when this new title was dropped on steam I bought it pretty much immediately, making it I believe my 300th title owned from the marketplace. I played through it not long after and then proceeded to listen to some sappy music to get myself back in order. If you let it, this game can hit you hard. But once again, I’m probably biased.

The game comes in chapters, each one a different game developed by the narrator’s friend, “Coda”. Nothing is left out of experience to suggest whether this is a true story so we’ll approach it as any other experience.

Chapter 1: Whisper. More establishing dialogue about how these games are incomplete or abandoned in most cases. The interesting points here for me are the labyrinth in the space station (reminds me of the quote “how will I ever get out of this labyrinth? Read Looking For Alaska read John Green!), and what happens when you step into the beam. floating up and seeing the whole level, I remember how these games are made, room brushes and objects, physics code and player camera. this game takes every chance it can to remind you that games have an author. 

Chapter 2: Backwards. I love the ideas in this level. the first time there was a definite “ohhh” moment when I realized what was going on. If I were to play a single level multiple times, this would be one for that, just so I can read the story written on these walls.

Entering, stairs, walls, exiting: I’m going to ignore what the narrator says about these levels. I do think they serve some connected purpose, but I like it more as an act of spite. These ideas are mine, better make the hard (or impossible) to access. as somebody who’s had story ideas floating around with them for a while, I’m always weary to share them, in case someone grabs it and runs away with it before I can do anything with it. Which probably means I should just write the stories instead of all of this..

Chapter 7: Down. The narrator finishes telling us that the engine is best at blocky empty corridors just as we enter an expansive cavern full of slanted geometry. This was the first hint to me that the narrator may not be reliable in all respects - he’s right about the engine, but that’s not what Coda decides to do with it. At the bottom we stay in a cell, which the narrator lets us out of before the allotted hour intended by Coda, which marks the fifth time he openly edits the levels to suit his need. Then we get to the puzzle.

I’m going to talk a little about this puzzle later, but when we get through it, in game dialogue keeps asking us about the puzzle, how we got through it, telling us it’s impossible. We can’t tell them how easy it is to pass through, and in some cases we have to lie to them. then the level ends with the first light post.

Chapter 8: Notes. It was replaying this level that made me want to talk about this game. Here we see a world Coda says is full of other player’s notes. The narrator reveals that they were all written by Coda. It’s convincing, they all sound like they came right from a youtube comment string or reddit thread. I immediately heard this as Coda saying. “your messages into the void are messages into the void.” In a way, he’s criticizing what I’m trying to do here, talking about the game, analyzing it. But the narrator reads this as some troubled artist who needs someone to connect to. The thoughts don’t seem to be written in Coda’s voice, but the narrator sees them that way. 

The level ends with the puzzle again. The narrator sees it as a cut off point, a end of a thought so Coda can move on. I get where he’s coming from, that’s what a lot of these posts do for me, but I think there’s something else going on. this puzzle is easy to the player, but the notes in this level and the talking characters in the last have no idea how you do it. It’s like a ski’ll that other people value and desire, that just comes naturally. I think Coda, if he’s saying anything here, is saying that. He’s able to make these games and say things with them, but he can’t explain how to do it, so the attention he gets about the process itself feels a bit misplaced.

Chapter 9: Escape. Coda makes a series of “prison” levels. each one is different, but they all hold the same idea, there will be some way to escape, but then the escape fails. The narrator hates these, he thinks coda is spending too much time on these prisons, and worries that it isn’t healthy. I think it’s natural, though. Someone described writing as choosing book after book from an infinite library, picking one that added the right next word or changing a previous one, until you land on the perfect book, one that’s always been there but nobody’s looked at before, and you leave with that one. Imagine seeing the room of previous books, would you think the author was obsessed? editing and refining is a natural part of the process.

Chapter 10: House. “You can’t stay in the dark space for too long, you just can’t. You have to keep moving, it’s how you survive”. 

I really like this level. I like how the chores loop but we get new dialogue with our cleaning partner. I like the calm music and how peaceful it is. I feel Coda would’ve had a similar reaction, which is why he made it and was so happy about it. And I hate how the narrator ends it. Describing this life as stagnation, as not living. This level is a lot like the nothing I wrote about last year, or how I feel when I’m doing work with someone and just being in that moment. The narrator takes that away.

Chapter 11: the narrator hits this one pretty much on the head, and I don’t have much to add.

Chapter 12: Theater. This level got to me. The pressure to say the right thing, the yelling at your own self to do better, the solution being to withdraw and hide away. 

This is a performance. Put on your mask and play the part assigned to you.

Chapter 13: Mobius. You can’t play this with your eyes closed, as instructed. you have to see to find out what’s going on, and you have to move. and then someone tells you to tell the truth. these games are draining you, you can’t make new ideas, you don’t know where else to go. and so the level stops.

Yeah, I’ve felt that before.

Chapter 14: Island. 

There’s a lie we tell that the work you do and claim t’o love has to be easy and worthwhile and enjoyable 100% of the time. we say that relationships are only true if they are effortless, that passion is only true if it is effortless, that stumbling blocks mean you were never going to succeed because it should be effortless.

So we lie. We all lie. Because there’s no truth to that. But it’s what we say to keep others from worrying.

Chapter 15: Machine.

But sometimes that isn’t enough, you have to stop. And when an audience demands you to keep going, but you can’t, they can turn on you. Feeling responsible for your audience, needing to meet their expectations because you know they demand it. It’s notable, that whether you destroy the machine or all the things it’s created, the result is the same.

The narrator doesn’t see this. He needs that social encouragement. Coda wants nothing to do with it.

Chapter 16: The tower.

. This level doesn’t want to be played, the narrator makes it playable.

. The narrator reveals that he had to add an end to the house level. it used to loop the chores forever.

. “I feel like a failure, I guess. When I can’t fix the problem”.

. an author isn’t his works. the works are not the author.

a hallway ends with a message on a wall. “Dear Davey, thank you for your interest in my games. I need to ask you to not speak to me anymore”.

And here’s where I stopped. There are other messages, about how the light posts were added by the narrator, how Coda didn’t want him showing his work to others. Messages talking about how the narrator had taken advantage of Coda’s work. And those messages are important, at least to the narrative. But those aren’t the messages that hit me.

These are:

“When I’m around you I feel physically ill”.

“You desperately need something and I cannot give it to you. I literally do not have it”.

“The fact that you think I am frustrated or broken says more about you than about me”.

Because I’ve been there. I’ve done exactly that. And that person pushed me away in much the same way.

And I had to let them. Because what I was taking was never mine to take. And I sure as hell wasn’t giving in return.

The end of this game, what comes after the tower, is important; you should hear it. but, maybe not here? This game is about authorship, and I find it important for that reason as well, but when I reach the end, all thoughts of that are replaced with thoughts on people. I had to write this one chapter at a time as I replayed it, because here I forget ever trying to see meaning in it other than this: “What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person”.

I cite Paper Towns and Ender’s Game and Catcher in the Rye, but this game was important for that, too. It put that thought into motion, let me control the tempo. playing through it again, I remember why I closed out of it the last time.

It serves well to remember, but “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”