There are many reasons to vote besides electing officials. You might also, say, still technically have slavery in your state constitution that needs to be abolished.
MMMMMHM. Wanna know what’s worse? This is the second time in the last few years Colorado has voted on this because last time IT DIDN’T FUCKING PASS.
If you want to get really technical on it, this is a “the language just never technically got removed” sort of issue. But it is obviously still a huge fucking issue.
Really damn ashamed of my state on this one, honestly.
It’s not just a technical language issue. This would affect prison labor- prison is where legal slave labor happens in the U.S. There’s a lot of corporate interests- private prisons, for one- who don’t want this amendment to pass, because it would cut into their ability to profit from the labor of prisoners. I’m no longer a Colorado voter since I moved to Montana, but if you live in Colorado, vote yes on amendment A!
Hey, Colorado! You have an opportunity few of us do: YOU CAN VOTE AGAINST SLAVERY! I mean, it’s horrifying that prison slavery is a thing, but how great is it that you get to go to the polls and say “no more slavery”? Show the country that you really do believe that slavery is bad!
Is it bad to gift someone with something you think they’ll like?
Is it bad to enjoy the reactions of others when you have specifically set out to do something for them?
Nope. Not at all.
In his address to the Oxford Union Society, Patrick Stewart relayed a story from a Boston Conservatory opening-year speech, in which a pianist said to the students:
“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician–that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school. I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than as a musician–and they love music! They listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function….
“If we were a medical school, and you were here as med students, practicing appendectomies, you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that on some night at 2:00 AM, someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you’re going to have to save their life.
“Well, my friends, someday, at 8:00 PM, somebody is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you perform your craft.”
Everybody has their reasons for making art, and for some, that reason is reaching out to others, establishing contact through the works they do, finding others who enjoy the same things they do. Writing is no different than music in this respect. It has enormous power to reach others and make an impact, and it doesn’t matter if that impact is large or small, on you or on the audience–it’s all worth it. No one’s reason is inherently better or worse than another’s, and wanting to touch those around you is not petty.
My sister’s household has set up an Unnecessary Apology jar in their apartment in an effort to break several of the folks living there of the habit of feeling bad about perfectly normal, acceptable things, and literally apologizing for everything. I admit that they yelled for me to contribute to the jar several times over the three days at Christmas we were together, despite being 4 hours away from that jar. I apologized for liking something and my brother-in-law would shout, “Unnecessary Apology jar!” I would apologize as I second-guessed myself gifting something I thought someone would like and my sister would shout, “Unnecessary Apology jar!”
So to you, my dear anon, my lovely writer, my great source of imagination, my star in the sky, my gift-giver and my gift itself,
Unnecessary Apology jar!
And now? Write. Write for what you love, for the smiles and the kudos and the comments and the likes. Write selfishly, for the reasons that keep you writing and the things that keep your stories growing strong. Thrive off your food, whatever that food may be, and never feel bad for it. We all live off something, and you should never be ashamed of what that is. So go. Go write. Go share. Go grow.
Good luck. -Pear
The reason some of my longer stuff is done and not WIPs and some of my shorter stuff isn’t? Feedback. I literally wrote 400k in 3 months because I have a great writing partner and we give each other feed back on our projects. End result? We both write more.
When I was younger I was very right-wing. I mean…very right-wing. I won’t go into detail, because I’m very deeply ashamed of it, but whatever you’re imagining, it’s probably at least that bad. I’ve taken out a lot of pain on others; I’ve acted in ignorance and waved hate like a flag; I’ve said and did things that hurt a lot of people.
There are artefacts of my past selves online – some of which I’ve locked down and keep around to remind me of my past sins, some of which I’ve scrubbed out, some of which are out of my grasp. If I were ever to become famous, people could find shit on me that would turn your stomach.
But that’s not me anymore. I’ve learned so much in the last ten years. I’ve become more open to seeing things through others’ eyes, and reforged my anger to turn on those who harm others rather than on those who simply want to exist. I’ve learned patience and compassion. I’ve learned how to recognise my privileges and listen to others’ perspectives. I’ve learned to stand up for others, how to hear, how to help, how to correct myself. And I learned some startling shit about myself along the way – with all due irony, some of the things I used to lash out at others for are intrinsic parts of myself.
You wouldn’t know what I am now from what I was then. You wouldn’t know what I was then from what I am now.
It distresses me deeply to think of someone dredging up my dark, awful past and treating me as though that furiously hateful person is still me. It distresses me to see others dredging up the past for anyone who has made efforts to become a better person, out of some sick obsession with proving they’re “problematic.”
Purity culture tells you that once someone says or does something, they can never go back on it. That’s a goddamn lie. While it’s true that some remain unrepentant and never change their ways and continue to harm others, it’s important to allow everyone the chance to learn from their mistakes. Saying something ignorant isn’t murder. Please stop treating it that way. Let people grow.
Still call it out and question it ….
Bruh. No. Listen. Call out what people do now, absolutely. If they haven’t changed, call them out on their record. This post is explicitly not about people who HAVEN’T changed. What this post IS saying is, if someone is making an effort to be a good person, don’t go digging around in their past for evidence that they were once for what they’re now against, or once against what they’re now for, as “proof” of what they “really think,” because people’s opinions and beliefs can change.
The obsession with finding shit in someone’s past and then claiming that a questionable or even sordid past negates all possibility of a good present needs to become extinct. Gold-star activism and purity culture are bullshit and we need to collectively reject the fuck out of them.
If someone has changed for the better, don’t harass them about what they were like before they fuckin’ changed. That’s shitty and it needs to stop.
Maybe someone else who was there can say for sure that I wasn’t just hearing things, but apparently Mark wrote the date scene between Lady Smallwood and Mycroft, there was just no room for it in the episode?
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 