Scratch marks

It took me a long time to accept I probably have ADHD (autism was easier, go figure). For decades prior, I simply thought of myself as lazy and scatterbrained. And you know what? Had to cope somehow anyway. Learned to double- and triple-check that yes, the stove is off. Yes, the door is locked. Yes, the keys are in my pocket. Learned to fight my own brain when this pesky body simply wouldn't bend down to grab that piece of litter from the floor. Gave up my last shreds of mental comfort to do all of the above for two people, because guess what.

I don't know about others. Just saying.

Speaking of which: wish I could spend all day being creature with my online friends, pampered by sci-fi robots. And never mind that's likely not possible with any amount of high tech¹. Doesn't it sound creepy?

All I ever accomplished in life was by gritting my teeth and scraping my hands. Call it a tragedy. Call me broken. I literally never saw anything get done in any other way. What am I supposed to do? Pat myself on the head? Life is just behind the corner in clown shoes and boxing gloves. Ha ha.

Corollary: if you can't or won't do the thing for any reason, someone else will have to, or it won't get done. Blame, guilt, judgement, cost: these are details. In other words: you deserve help and support, but someone has to provide it.

Automation is an euphemism for shifting work around while obscuring the trail.

¹) No, really: there's growing consensus that tasks like housekeeping and caring for the elderly are too complex, varied and delicate to automate, unless your robot is no longer a robot, but a person. In other words... a personal assistant. One might ask why so many people have to toil for a billionaire instead of being available to help their less fortunate neighbors. The real sci-fi here is imagining a society organized to make that possible.

We have an old tradition in SpinDizzy Muck: every year sometime in February or March we elect a mayor. It's a purely ceremonial position, yet it makes a big difference. Trust me, we tried going without. It sucked.

When I first got there (fifteen years ago, yikes!) it was right in the middle of the electoral campaign. My first instinct was to stay out because I was a newcomer. But Jaxen, one of the candidates, told me: "you're here now; it matters to you, too". So I read up on everyone who was running, and their platforms, and cast my vote. We do instant-runoff in SpinDizzy, by the way. That rules.

And you know what? My first or second choice actually won, and they were a fine mayor (Jaxen also won a term later). But as time went on, I became less involved, and one year I was too depressed to vote at all. Can you guess what happened? The candidate I was kind of rooting for lost by one vote.

Granted, we're a small community, but it's that much more important. Community is what we make it, all of us together and each in their own corner. And communities need a focus, or beacon. Not necessarily a leader, but someone who represents them. Someone to rally around.

There's "politics" of the kind that rhymes with "blech", and politics as in the fabric of social life. And someone has to weave the latter, too, because it doesn't happen by itself.

Oh no, has it been three months again?! Right on time to post my latest work:



It's made with a fun little tool called Goxel (picked because it's in the Debian repositories), and doesn't mean anything special. Just a thing I felt like making. A new medium always takes some figuring out. Hope you like it!

( Read more... )