Apocalypse Orange

When there are forest fires in the area, it's not uncommon for the smoke to migrate into the surrounding cities, even those that aren't but so close by. Right now, there are fires in Big Sur. That's definitely close enough to have made our skies apocalypse orange for the past couple of days. That photo there is what the view outside our window is like right now. It's not edited or doctored in any way. Everything really does look like it's in sepia tone right now. The colors are all wrong. You can't smell anything but smoke.

I think it's giving me anxiety or something. The orange sky thing was in full effect when I woke up yesterday and wouldn't stop reminding me of Mad Max. (I wound up with an unexpected day off yesterday, as I was waiting for a client to get back to me with details on an assignment. We actually watched Mad Max: Fury Road on HBO.)

I didn't sleep well last night either. Lots of really weird dreams about the end of the world, messed up weather, and so forth -- definitely phobias of mine. I feel really off today as a result, as I do every so often for no real reason. I never know if feelings like that are actually coming from me or if I'm picking them up somehow from other people I know, either offline or online. I wish I had a better understanding of where my emotions actually come from, but I've gotten really used to drawing a blank by now.

On Diversity in the Media

Here's the thing. I actually don't like it when television shows and movies are "diverse", but it feels forced. I don't like it when black/gay/female/etc characters are just thrown into the mix as tokens just for the sake of being able to say "fuck yeah diversity". I very definitely feel like there's a wrong way to approach diversity and I see things being done the wrong way a lot.

But I do not understand people that actually go out of their way to complain about diversity as a concept when it comes to the media they consume. I also can't help but notice that the complainers are always people that have no earthly idea what it's like to grow up almost never seeing people that looked or acted like them when they went to the movies or turned on their television.

I know what that's like and it's really not fun. It really does give you the impression that you're an undesirable of one type or another. Or that there's something wrong with you. Or that society would really like it if you just disappeared or tried your best to hide/deny/erase anything about yourself that makes you different. The characters people rooted for in movies and on television were very, very rarely anything like me. When they were there at all, people like me were almost always the sidekicks, or the comic relief, or -- God forbid -- the villain.

Writing Lab: On Meeting New People

Prompt: "Do you like meeting new people, or do you prefer to hang out with people you already know?"

I'm more introverted even than most other introverts I know, so I'm generally not a fan of meeting new people. I have to have a very good reason to go out of my way, like actual loneliness because my existing relationships have ended or deteriorated for whatever reason. Otherwise, I'd far prefer continuing to develop deeper relationships with the people I already know.

I like not having to wear my "social face" around others. I like feeling like I don't have to watch my language or tiptoe around certain topics because they might offend whomever I'm talking to. I don't actually enjoy interacting with others for its own sake unless I can also be free, unedited, and unfiltered around them.

That said, the only time I even kind of like meeting new folks is when I'm doing it online. It seems to be more acceptable not to beat around the bush when it comes to telling other people whatever it is you want them to know about you. I haven't met a lot of people online that expected me to engage in small talk or tone down my real feelings about anything the way they might if we met in Meat World. They're usually in my vicinity because they saw me expressing something real about myself somewhere else anyway, so they already know what they're getting themselves into.

On Mixed Racial Identity and Blogging

Like many female bloggers, I write a lot about what it means to be a woman. But unlike most of the minority bloggers I know, I don't really talk much about race. I'm not completely sure why that is, but I'm sure there are a couple of reasons.

On the one hand, I just don't think about my ethnic background that often and if I'm not thinking about something, I'm not writing about it either. I'm clearly not white, but I'm also a biracial woman that doesn't fit the average non-black person's mental picture of what a black woman looks like or acts like. Because of this, I tend to go through my life without having to think much about my race, just like white people do.

I don't look so different from Seth that people stop and stare at us when we walk down the street or wonder how on earth we even wound up together. I more or less measure up to the going American standard of what female beauty is "supposed" to be -- long hair that flows, light skin, and refined, stereotypically feminine facial features. There are apparently even people out there that miss the fact that I'm black altogether, as they express complete surprise when I tell them or if they find out some other way, as when my ex-husband met my parents for the first time.

In a manner of speaking, I'm probably lucky because I get to sidestep a lot of the problems and discrimination that my darker friends have to deal with. On the other hand, not having to create my life around my ethnicity has meant that I haven't developed the same strong racial identity most of my black friends have. I think about being a woman every day. I think about being a writer every day. I think about being an introvert every day. I rarely to never think about being black. Only when something or someone calls my attention to it, which really isn't all that often.

Writing Lab: That Very First Blog

Prompt: "What was the first blog you read online?"

Weirdly enough, I still remember stumbling across someone else's blog for the first time. I didn't know it then, but that discovery would change my life, how I communicate, and how I relate to other people forever.

It happened sometime in the early 2000's -- maybe 2002 or 2003. My ex-husband and I had just gotten a computer and Internet access, the very first experience with such things for either of us. He mostly used it to email his mother and download pirated music, but I had other ideas. I was far more interested in using the Internet to learn new things and possibly to connect to new people that actually thought like me or shared my interests.

As is the case with many people that don't feel like they relate to anyone else, one of my strongest interests at the time was music. Tori Amos was my absolute favorite artist back then, but I knew almost no one in my offline life that had even heard of her. Naturally, it made sense to me to use the Internet to seek out other Tori fans that were as obsessed with her music as I was. That's how I found this wonderful fan site called A Dent in the Tori Amos Net Universe (or "The Dent" for short). At first, I just came to The Dent to keep up on Tori-related news. Eventually though, I felt compelled to start contributing to it as well. I started submitting reviews of some of the concerts I'd gone to -- my first ever experience with sharing any of my writing online.