Monday, April 18, 2016

On Getting Organized for Spring and Contemplating Feminism


I don't know if it's because I sometimes get inspired to organize in the spring or what, but I finally got Google Calendar set up a few days ago. I'm not using Elance, or Upwork, or anything to deal with any of my main clients anymore. Unfortunately, that also means I no longer have a preexisting organization system that keeps me in check as far as deadlines. Instead of continuing to try to hold onto everything by memory, I thought I'd take the opportunity to actually figure out a proper system for keeping work stuff organized instead. You know... the way someone that isn't a child disguised as a 40-year-old would do. 

Now I see why respectable people do maintain day planners and appointment calendars. It's a hell of a lot easier to remember something's coming up when you have a visual representation of your life to look at than it is to just try to store it all up in your head someplace. I even created other calendars in addition to the main one I have for deadlines -- one each for deliveries, astrological events I want to remember, personal occasions, and a couple of other things. I even set up sharing on the ones that are actually relevant to Seth's life so that he can also take advantage. It's great. I feel so fucking together. Like I actually accomplished something useful for a change!


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In other news, I finally discovered Amy Schumer and her comedy over the weekend. I've been hearing about her ad nauseum for a while now, but I had yet to actually check out any of her stuff for myself. For some reason, I had this impression of her as being loud and obnoxious, which is really not my thing at all. Then yesterday we watched Trainwreck on HBO and later on (somehow) binged an entire season of Inside Amy Schumer. She's pretty outspoken, but not particularly loud or obnoxious at all. Actually, she seems... nice, relatively gracious, and like someone I could probably be friends with. 

I liked her style of comedy a lot and honestly speaking, I related to her as a person to a greater degree than I'd like to admit most days. She knows she isn't conventionally attractive and doesn't fit the stereotypes a lot of women are raised with and expected to adhere to. And she doesn't give a shit. I'm the same on a lot of levels.

Although I will also admit, that a lot of the time, I do give a shit. Even at my youngest, skinniest, and most meticulously maintained, I never really fit people's idea of a conventionally attractive woman. Even though it's never been hard to find men that were interested in me, I've still always felt like I'm people's second choice. Even in the cases of dudes that should have considered themselves lucky any woman was willing to be with them, let alone someone smart and relatively likable. I feel like I embarrass my family. I feel like I'm not even close to being what any of my partners' families wanted for their sons. 

I wonder all the time if my lack of conventional femininity is the "why" behind all of those things. I accept myself and try to stay comfortable in my own skin (because what the fuck choice do I have). But I also have moments where I feel unwanted and deeply wish I was someone else so I could feel differently. Sincerely and profoundly. I've been feeling like that a lot lately for reasons I don't really care to get into here. Amy made me feel a million times better somehow. I guess that's why people -- especially women -- like her so much. I think God knew Amy would help me and pointed me in that direction yesterday, because I honestly have no idea why I decided to spend an entire Sunday afternoon and evening watching any of that.

As an aside, I wish I had more female friends that I can actually relate to. Seth and I are best friends. We can relate to each other on a lot of levels. But it's not possible for him to understand from personal experience what it's like to be a woman in today's society, let alone a minority woman. What it is truly like to be seen and treated like you're less than a human being because you don't look like something out of Playboy and act like something out of Better Homes and Gardens. It's the cause of so much self-hatrid of a variety it's hard for me to put into words.

I tend to hate the word "feminism" because of all the negative connotations it carries for me, but... I guess that's why we need it. So that women -- and men as well, I suppose -- don't have to feel like that anymore. If God made you -- and he made us all, of course -- you should never have to feel like you need to be something different just to feel like you have the right to be alive, to accept yourself, and to be loved by others.

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