There is a person in my cohort who is a figure of some controversy, for various reasons. He doesn't speak the language of therapy school and has, somewhat inadvertently I think, rubbed a number of people the wrong way. As a result, some people feel less than friendly towards him, and I suspect he's having trouble making connections with our other classmates. I've talked to him a couple times now and he seems pretty sad about his life at the moment, and disappointed in how school is going. He had different expectations for what things would be like, and I think he feels pulled to continue his button-pushing behavior despite not wanting to be outcast.

Today in my T-group, this person became a topic of discussion. He's not in my group, but there are some people in my group who feel uncomfortable with his presence, and so they started talking about him in the circle. Yesterday he spoke in the big class (20+ people) most of our cohort is in, and he said some things which came off the wrong way to a few different people. Some of my classmates felt triggered by the event. As they spoke about their experience of him yesterday, I felt tension building in my chest at first, until it seemed to float up into my head as a massive buzzing.

The people who voiced their opinions all seemed to be more or less on the same page about him-- that is to say, they felt put off by him, and didn't want to hear him or be around him. I was afraid that sharing my take of what happened yesterday would put me at risk of being ostracized, but it felt like the right thing to do, so I told them that I had experienced his presence in our other class very differently than what had been shared. I thought he worded what he was trying to convey poorly, but I agreed with the sentiments behind it. What I didn't share was that I thought people's emotional reactions to their stereotyped image of him were blocking them from actually trying to understand what he was saying. That would have been too far, I think.

My group mates' response to me was not quite as negative as I'd feared it would be, but I don't think I inspired compassion in them either. Some of them commented on feeling like they should be able to find empathy for him, but not wanting to or not feeling capable of it.

As a child, I felt drawn to the people who were outcast by everyone else. I wanted to be friends with them, and I tried at first, but withdrew before too long because of a fear of becoming outcast by association. I've thought about this countless times since. It feels unquestionably wrong to me to abandon people, or not speak up for them, when everybody else is against them. I regret that I didn't have the strength or confidence to stay that course when I was younger. I don't want to make those mistakes again if I can help it.

I feel secure enough in myself and my friendships to not go along with what I perceive as the majority opinion now when it seems wrong to me. I don't want to succumb to das Man. I want to be authentic, and part of that means public exposure, however uncomfortable it might be. One of the biggest challenges I've informally set for myself in this program is being open about my dissenting opinions. I'm not interested in playing devil's advocate just for the sake of playing devil's advocate, but I don't want to lie if I disagree or feel differently than the other people expressing themselves. It's scary, because I don't like having a lot of attention on me, but it feels important.

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I was watching a video the other day about millennials and some of the patterns of the generation, and a minor point that came up in the video was that it can be a really big deal to some people to be unfriended on social media. This makes sense to me in theory, but I guess I just don't... share that feeling.

"Millennials in the Workforce, A Generation of Weakness - Simon Sinek" by After Skool.

I've been contemplating a number of the habits I've cultivated that have been protective, mostly unintentionally. My attitude towards social media is one of them. I didn't get Facebook until I was 19, which, while still within the crucial developmental period of my life, wasn't early enough for a lot of social media habits to become ingrained in me. Obviously I've been blogging on here for 10+ years, and I've felt some things come out of that (a pull to write in ways that attract more comments, for one), but I feel like I escaped the brunt of social media's influence during my adolescence. I've protected myself, but also isolated myself from the experience of my peers by doing this.

So in theory I do understand why unfriending is a big deal, but I don't have the up close sense of it that I wonder if I need to truly empathize. I unfriend people all the time, and keep my Facebook friends list very small-- it's limited to people I'm actively talking to, essentially. And actually, I regularly go through my list and unfriend people I haven't been talking to. I don't see unfriending as a definitive comment on my relationship with someone-- if at some point we talk regularly again, I can just add them back. That's what happened with Trevor. We had a break in our friendship, but now we talk again. It seems rare for friendships to survive like that, though. There's rarely enough investment for one or the other person to keep trying to reconnect, or that behavior gets shamed as clingy/aggressive.

I just don't see a lot of people fighting for their friendships or relationships, I guess. Not to say it doesn't happen, but for whatever reason, it's not represented well in the sample size I've gotten in life. I am appalled by what I perceive as the attitude many people take towards others-- that the relation is disposable, because they can always find a new one. The availability of instantaneous gratification and its degrading effects on the depth and strength of relationships is disturbing. Maybe it works for people, but that's not how I want to live my life or conduct my friendships. I wish there were an easier way to identify the people who didn't view things that way.

This latest person I've been having an intellectual discussion with-- maybe he gets it, we'll see. He's definitely intelligent enough to understand, I think, but this isn't something that is related solely to intelligence.

Another side of things is that I feel heavily discouraged from attempting to patch things up with people who were formally significant figures in my life, for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest is that there's no point if they're not also interested, and many people aren't because they ultimately treat people as replaceable, whether or not they realize it. I also don't want to face scoldings from my friends about "hanging on" to things, even though that mindset feels terribly wrong to me. They're coming from a place of good intentions, I think-- they want me to be happy, and they think that being happy means "not thinking about it" and "getting over it"-- but we don't have the same goals.

I think something that hasn't changed about me in a long time is that none of my goals include "be happy" anywhere. This seems like something people easily forget about me, or don't understand to begin with. Happiness has been a fortuitous side effect of my other efforts to be a better person, but that's it.

Whether or not it feels good or is easy, I just want to try to do the right thing, the way I've defined it for myself.

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I got to have a conversation tonight about personal philosophies and ethics, which was heartening. It's been awhile since I met someone I could talk to about that on a more equal level. Usually the people I talk to fall into one of a few categories:
-Pseudo-intellectuals who use unnecessarily flowery language to convey poorly-thought-out ideas
-People who haven't thought about things and aren't interested in getting deep into a discussion
-Interested folks who are impressed by my perspective but don't have much to reciprocate with

It turned out that this person and I actually had some fairly similar ideas, but we worded them in different ways, so some of the conversation was a bit redundant until that was pointed out. Still refreshing, in any case. I meet plenty of smart people, but not that many who are also interested in talking about the things I am interested in. It's a particular flavor of thoughtfulness, I suppose. There are a lot of intelligent people, and a lot of people who think about philosophy, but for whatever reason, I don't meet the folks in the middle of that Venn diagram much. Just get all those annoying pseudo-intellectuals instead.

For example, today a guy messaged me and told me he had a thought experiment that could disprove the existence of God, then threw some inane garbage propositions at me that were full of baseless assumptions. His argument was too stupid to reproduce on my blog, but take my word for it when I say that it had more holes than substance.

Anyway, here's a picture I took of an oystercatcher when I visited the Sutro Baths last weekend.

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It's fairly mild this time, at least so far, but I seem to have caught a cold or something, which I can't say I'm particularly pleased about. For some reason I've also been ravenously hungry these past couple days, so maybe that has to do with being sick.

I've been listening to this on repeat:

"56k (song made entirely from dial-up modem sound)" by RAC.

My dad called my name and asked if I was playing a song and how long it was. I said I just had it repeating and he was like "okay, well it's kind of annoying." Guess he doesn't like my beep boop music.

I attended a Mickaboo basic bird care class today, as the first step to potentially adopting some birds. The place it was held at had pigeons/doves and bunnies for adoption, and now I'm thinking about what it would be like to have pigeons as pets. I like pigeons, but they're not as cute as budgies. On the other hand, they are less work apparently, and are more cuddly. I mentioned thinking of adopting a bunny to my friend Henry, and he gave me a load of info on bunny care because he has a bunny. While I wasn't really looking for a ton of advice on the subject, it was helpful stuff to know if I ever do decide to get a bunny.

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Lately I've been thinking about weakness and strength and what cultivates and contributes to each of those qualities. Overall I've been feeling good about myself and my life in general recently, minus a couple things, but I have felt a bit restless. It feels like I've been getting too many vague compliments and not enough (constructive) criticisms, I guess. I want to improve, but I'm in a place where I feel like external feedback would help me out, and I'm not getting enough information in that regard. It's all well and fine for people to say "just keep doing what you're doing," but that doesn't really give me anything new to work on.

Too many compliments starts to create an expectation of praise, and I don't like feeling like I need that. Praise is nice, but I don't want to feel antsy in its absence.

School is going well so far, and I'm having a much better time here than I was at school last year. There are some things I'm still worried about though, such as being pushed to treat people too delicately. I don't want to encourage weakness in other people by implying that I don't think they can handle stuff through my behavior towards them. Not saying that I think everybody should just buck up and deal with bad situations, but like... I generally believe that people are pretty capable of getting through tough times, and I want them to believe that about themselves too. I'm concerned that an overly careful PC culture could undermine people's sense of their own resilience. This hasn't been a problem so far, but I'm wary of it happening.

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The feelings have withdrawn.

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"broken" by lovelytheband.

I like that you're broken, broken like me
Maybe that makes me a fool
I like that you're lonely, lonely like me
I could be lonely with you

I heard this on the radio, so I'm guessing it'll get spammed on the air for awhile, but I resonate with it, so I'm sharing it.

There's something very comforting, very connecting, about being with someone else who admits their brokenness and shows you their scars. It's not about being incomplete and finding someone else who completes you; I think it's just that feeling of kinship. Of not being alone in the darkness. Maybe there's also some security in it. I feel like it's easier to lay all your cards on the table with someone else who feels broken. With someone who doesn't... there's always a fear of hurting them or contaminating them, I guess. As if brokenness were an incurable disease that could be contagious. Better to associate only with those who have already caught it than risk spreading it. That's a qualm I have sometimes about certain people... I don't think I come off broken to most people, but the feeling persists, vibrating at my core, an emptiness that dodges my gaze and hides in the peripheral vision of my existence. It doesn't really go away ever, but I don't look at it when I'm feeling happy.

I don't think I'll ever feel whole, but I can always get closer to wholeness than I am already.

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This is a lovely rendition of "Pure Imagination".

"Pure Imagination tribute in memory of Gene Wilder"

I met up with someone from Reddit (my first Redditor!) today. Nothing too eventful about it, but he told me about kalimbas, so I ended up watching a bunch of kalimba videos on Youtube tonight as a result. Yesterday I also met up with someone (he kept calling it a date...) who had reaaaaaaaaally poor boundaries and kept touching me. It was super awkward. Dude was probably at least 6' tall, but he decided to greet me by hugging me under the arms as soon as I met him. He also touched my legs multiple times, picked me up to gauge how much I weighed, touched my bangs/face, and sang "Feed the Birds" from Mary Poppins to some goats, all within the span of an hour. Oh, and he took me for a five minute ride on his motorcycle. I can't really say I had a good reason for going along with all of that, but it happened. At the end of it all, the best thing I could say to him was "Well, meeting you has been interesting." In response, he told me that I was more attractive than he'd expected. So... yeah. There were other weird things that happened that I'm leaving out, but I'm pretty tired, so I'm just going to leave them be for now.

One thing he mentioned that stuck with me was that I seemed confident. I've gotten that from a few different people now. It's weird to think about, but I think I do feel confident. I wonder when that happened? I'm just... not very afraid right now, I guess. Don't think I could have fathomed this version of myself ten years ago, when I was an insecure teenager. I feel... settled in myself, I suppose. At least for now. I've met 44 people from the internet now, so maybe that's given me enough experience to feel at ease meeting new people, haha.

I don't know why I've been feeling so... healthy lately. I don't think it's just good feelings from meeting someone I like. Not to say that that doesn't contribute... but I guess it doesn't seem like that's all of it. I've just been feeling pretty decent overall? Getting back into working out, trying to eat a little better, drinking some vinegar every day... (fruit balsamic vinegar diluted heavily with water, not like... straight white vinegar). Things just feel good. Stable. I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

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