Saturday, April 23, 2022

The tension of becoming a Reorder Youtuber

 Being a self taught recorder player there is always the question of who my "audience" is.  It's well enough to play for my own pleasure but performance gives a certain excitement, a sense of purpose for pursuing excellence, and a community.  Playing as part of a school band or orchestra always has performance built into the model somehow but there is nothing automatic about it.  I've enjoyed performing at church a few times, but it's been a struggle to find my comfort level with it.  Our society largely uses recorders as  educational toys with no intention that anyone actually learn how to play properly, so if you announce a recorder performance a lot of people will expect nothing but what they've experienced before.  I didn't want to play in public until I could smash away people's expectations.  Also, my experience is that many music performers aren't really that good until they've been playing for a fair number of years, so I have had trouble believing that my playing is any good.  Early on I felt like I was playing quite well but I assumed that was just the Dunning–Kruger effect in play, the overconfidence of the beginner.  I am quite aware I'm prone to such over confidence so I made a point to find recordings by actual professional players to compare myself with, which was both inspirational and quite sobering.  Erik Bosraaf, Lucie Horsch, and Michala Petri sound amazing and often given me whole new perspectives on what the instrument can sound like.  But, there is no way I'm ever going to perform like people who started serious performance practice as young children and went to world class conservatories for training.  Continually comparing myself to them isn't healthy, but as a self taught player I struggle to find many alternatives.  When I do perform in public I often feel like I need to practice for months before I'm worthy to present my art and I'm so obsessive about it I struggle to practice anything else in the meantime, giving public performance a really high cost both in terms of time and emotional investment.

The other performance venue I've had consistent access to is posting video's online.  I didn't want to do much of this to begin with.  I've had my share of experiences with internet trolls and again even when I felt like my performance was exciting and excellent I knew the Dunning-Kruger effect was altering my perceptions.  Nothing seemed likely to draw trolls as much as an overconfident beginner playing badly without knowing it.  But on the other hand people did seem to appreciate seeing what I was doing, so I mostly posted video's in private chat messages and only occasionally posted them for everyone to see.  As my equipment improved my recording files became too large to send in private chat messages and sending videos became very cumbersome.

While learning to do live broadcasts for my church I had to learn to use YouTube.  Posting on YouTube has been the perfect solution to the difficulty of uploading video files for every person or group I want to share with individually.  It's been a big step forwards emotionally to post performances there, a statement to myself that what I'm doing is worth showing to the public.  To begin with it was mostly only a few family and friends looking, but recently the audience has expanded and my video's are getting many more views.  That is emotionally exhausting and exhilarating at the same time.  I don't want to get sucked down the track of trying to compete for attention on the world stage, become hooked on giving YouTube free labor on the possibility that I could become monetized, or spend enormous sums of money setting up a home recording studio.  But on the other hand it feels like validation that all of my obsessive practice has actually started to pay off and I'm musically maturing.  I'll never be a professional, but I can now consider myself a mature beginner.  It's nice to feel like I've finally arrived.

Saturday, May 30, 2020

Learning Recorder - One Year retrospective

When life took a few wrong turns I stopped being able to play trombone, it felt a bit like part of my life had gone missing.  I've been living in apartments ever since and I've always been afraid to start practicing again because it seemed inevitable my neighbors wouldn't tolerate the loud noise.  There isn't really much of a way around it, trombones are loud.  With my career not really moving anywhere in a hurry and housing prices raising much faster than my income does it doesn't seem likely I'll be in a house where I could practice trombone in the forseeable future.  So it had felt as if playing music just wasn't going to be part of my life anymore.

About a year ago that changed.  One was a friend gave our son a recorder as a birthday present.  My father, who is a recorder player, mentioned he was a self taught recorder player and suggested my son could self teach as well if he was motivated enough.  This took me totally by surprise.  When I learned to play trombone I had never heard of anybody seriously attempting to self teach an instrument if they wanted to play it properly.  I hadn't known the recorder had a reputation for being an instrument that you could self teach.  Also, we learned one of the main reasons the recorder fell out of favor as an instrument was that it was too quiet to compete in the orchestra's that developed during the romantic era.  But a quiet instrument is just perfect for us.  Once we knew, my wife and I decided it would be fun to learn how to play together and we started down a new road together.

So now that it has been a year, what is it like to try to learn the recorder without a teacher?  In some ways it is a lot harder than learning to play the trombone.  There is no one to catch it when you hold the instrument incorrectly unless you catch it yourself.  There is no one there to diagnose what isn't working when a technique just fails to come together.  There is no schedule of performances to prepare for through the public school system.  But, there is the internet.  There are online web forums where people discuss learning the recorder, where people swap self recorded videos of there own playing for feedback, and where you can find information about what books to buy and what brands to favor.  There are high quality youtube channels where professional recorder players share tutorials.

Unfortunately the internet isn't as convenient as it could be, especially if you are new to the recorder.  You can't trust amazon product listings or reviewers to know whether a method book is for Alto or Soprano recorder.  Some listings will claim a book is for both when it isn't.  Some enthusiastic but ignorant product reviewers will claim that as well.  Online sheet music dealers will claim to be able to special order books they can't actually get their hands on.  Many recorder method books are bad quality or are written for children who can't read music or both.  Many of the good quality recorder method books published more recently are only in foreign languages.  Many of the good English books were published in the 1960's or 70's and have gone out of print or are only available from specialty stores that charge high prices.  But with determination it is possible to get your hands on good quality English recorder method books meant for adults who don't want to relive their elementary school glory days of playing nursery rhymes.

What is it like cost wise to pick up the recorder?  Comparatively speaking, very cheap, especially in comparison with other hobbies or instruments.  Just for a quick comparison, many video games can be completed within 60 hours of playing and cost $60/ea.  So video games as a hobby often can cost around $1/hr even before you factor in the cost of buying and periodically upgrading the video console.  If you buy a $300 nintendo switch and then a new video games once every month or two your first year expenses will be between $720 and $1,020.00.  For comparison, a good quality resin alto recorder can cost between $25-$60 depending on the brand and model and for all practical purposes they don't wear out.  I bought a $25 dollar model and have been very happy with it.  The  two volumes of Hugh Orr's basic recorder method for Alto cost me about $40.00 and I still haven't finished them after a year of steadily studying them.  So the core expenses for my first year of music study have been only $65.00.  Sure, there are side expenses on top of that such as a book of scales and arpeggios, reference materials, additional sheet music etc.  But most of those we didn't strictly need and our total expenses aren't in the hundreds of dollars and won't get anywhere near the cost of a video game hobby.  In comparison with other musical instruments, a good quality recorder above a student model generally costs between $300-$900.  Most good quality musical instruments easily cost much much more than that and even the student models often cost that much.

So if you love to play music but are stuck in an apartment like me, a quiet instrument like the recorder is a wonderful choice.

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Lonely Panic

Maybe it was last week, maybe a few months ago, maybe in 4th grade.  It makes little difference really.  I'm lonely.  I'm so different that most of my peers won't have anything to do with me, nothing personal but I'm just that weird.  If I relax at all and just act me it almost always goes wrong, so I've been hiding for a long time.  Long enough to lose touch with the part of me that is hiding and I'm not even sure what that part of me looks like anymore.  That leaves me... hungry...  Most people I've ever tried to explain this to simply don't understand and might even make insulting comments about how its my fault for not smiling enough.

Every once in a while the social deck is reshuffled a new person comes into my life.  Maybe a new student in the class, a new coworker, almost anyone.  Instead of being a novelty that I can choose to ignore or accept from a position of security I'm often so hungry for contact I can't help but hopefully imagine that this new person is going to be when I break through and the isolation will be over.  Generally speaking its a short lived hope.  Many of the people I've intentionally tried to befriend practically don't even notice me.  Others became outright hostile.  I can remember in particular one new kid around 5th grade that I tried to make friends with by trying to help him with the new kid bullying he was being subjected to and he outright told me to leave him alone and stop trying to help him.  Other kids I'd try to invite to come play on the sole basis that they never tormented me and seemed nice enough and they'd start tormenting me to drive me away.  There were a few people who would be friendly with me, mostly from the bottom of the social ladder.  Generally it didn't extend as far as being invited to come and play and since my family didn't celebrate my birthday once I got beyond the first few grades of elementary school I couldn't even build a social network by inviting people over to parties once a year.  I coped by trying to be invisible which only worked so well when it seemed some kids made fun of me not to get a rise out of me but to prove to others that they weren't low class like me.  This was before the Columbine shooting happened so there weren't anti bullying policies in place to protect kids like me.  And really, those policies came into existence more in fear of school shootings than because anybody cared, so its not as if I feel grateful to society for changing those policies after I was gone.  In any case, it was bad enough that when my parents pulled me out of school to home school me most everyone assumed it was because of the bullying that virtually everyone seemed to know about other than my parents.  For me it was a huge relief just to escape the anger and despair I had felt at being trapped in a toxic social cesspool.  It was only a short time before my home became a new hell to replace the one I had just left, but for a while at least it seemed as if I was actually free.

To this day I can find myself in the same pattern, unable to socially relate to anyone in a particular environment, becoming desperately hopeful when the social deck is reshuffled, and often being disappointed.  A few months back this happened again and a coworker seemed fairly intent on making sure I knew I wasn't wanted, making comments in front of me about how they only wanted their actual friends to talk to them, ignoring my existence if I tried to start a conversation, that sort of thing.  I started having panic attacks - feeling as if I was still trapped back in public school hell.  I was able to request a seating rearrangement to escape the situation but I was so far gone before I was able to get up the courage to ask that I could barely avoid breaking into tears while trying to make a generic request to be moved.  Apparently that part of my life hasn't really left me, one of a set of traumatizing experiences that leave me not only socially incompetent as comes with autism but practically terrified of launching new conversations.  Social anxiety might be irrational in many situations, but the fact that it develops in the first place is at times completely unsurprising.  While thanking everyone who has given me safe haven to be as much of myself as I could figure out, I also wish that more people could understand what is going on.

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Current Reading List

I've always been a bookworm.  Books are easier to understand than people and sometimes more forgiving too.  So for people who have always known me it should be no surprise that I always seem to be carrying around a small library and this has only gotten worse now that I have audiobooks.  In part this is because I can carry around a large number of books on a memory card.  In part this is because my book holds on the Overdrive app have a tendency to all show up at the same time, creating boom and bust cycles in how many books I am trying to finish at the same time.  Here is my current reading/listening list:


Fiction
  • The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
A fantasy classic, needs no explanation.  Listening to audio books at work makes it a lot easier to tackle a big series like this.

  • Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander
The Chronicles of Prydain is one of my all time favorite childhood reads that has carried into adulthood.  I've been relistening to the series.

  • Forever War by Joe Haldeman
I picked up this war in outer space audio book because it won both the Hugo and the Nebula Award.  So far it has been a fascinating and yet frustrating read.  The story seems to be a science fiction version of the horror stories I heard as a child on Christian talk radio about why women shouldn't be in the military.  At first I was wondering if this novel was the source of those imagined horrors or perhaps had been influenced by whoever invented that narrative.  Then I discovered that according to wikipedia this book is commonly interpreted as a metaphorical retelling of the author's experiences in the Vietnam War.  This would suggest that the story should be read as social and political criticism of the conditions between 1950's-1970's.  If I read the story as social and political criticism instead of as a futuristic horror story about why talk radio hosts believe women shouldn't be in the military then it is a hauntingly beautiful story about the difficulty of navigating social change and of the depressing futility of war.

  • Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
I managed to get the entire Chronicles of Amber on audiobook and started the series again when I was temporarily out of books.  Unfortunately I am very full on books right now and was caught in the middle of the book.  I am very fond of this series.


Non Fiction

  • A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
When I am in between books I often like to listen to a book on history.  As a result I work my way through them very slowly.  This book is at once fascinating and very frustrating.  The author proposes to write a history of the United States where the story telling emphasis of what gets included or not is based on an allegiance to the working class rather than on the rich and the powerful.  This is at once extremely enlightening and frustrating.  It exposes the ways the government of the United States has often worked against the needs and ideals of the common people in favor of the needs and ideals of the rich.  It is frustrating because for one that isn't always a pleasant part of US history to look at and also because sometimes I think it stops being a history of the common working class and almost feels like the author is instead giving a frustrated rant complaining that there hasn't been a worldwide communist revolution yet.

  • Paul: A Biography by N.T. Wright
N.T. Wright is a prominent Anglican theologian who specializes on, among other things, the writings of Paul.  This book focuses on Paul from a biographical perspective and sounded like fun.  It is quite interesting so far, discussing the theological, political, and mystic influences Paul likely interacted with.  I listen to this when I'm tired of listening to fiction.

Spiritual
  • The Contemplative Journey by Thomas Keating
This is a lecture series discussing the practice and theology of a Christian meditation practice as interpreted by Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk.

  • The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith by Marcus Borg
In this book Borg, a recently deceased prominent Episcopalian theologian, explores a theology of God based on a renewed emphasis on God's immanence and how a renewed emphasis on this concept affects religious beliefs and practices more broadly.  This has been a fascinating read, though slow since I mostly read it while I'm on break at work.  I've almost finished it.

  • Too Deep for Words: Rediscovering Lectio Divina by Thelma Hall
Lectio Divina is a traditional practice of reading the bible as a form of meditative prayer.  This short book teaches the ideas and practices involved in this form of bible reading.  I mostly read this on Sunday's when the kids give me a break to do something on my own and that isn't often.  So far the ideas presented have been very similar to concepts I've encountered in Thomas Keating, probably because they are both building on the ideas of Thomas Merton.

  • The Bible
I've been reading the bible in a cycle known as the Daily Office Lectionary.  It has been one of my most enjoyable times reading through since I purchased an NRSV study bible which has much better study aids than I grew up with.  For example, I think this is the first time I've ever read through the Book of Judges and actually understood the narrative themes that tie the entire book together instead of viewing it as bunch of mostly disconnected stories.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Autistics Speaking Day

What is it like to me to be autistic?  Well, have you ever had writers block?  I mean those times when you sit staring at a piece of paper for ten minutes, an hour, or maybe even days knowing that you should have something to say.  Or maybe you even need to say something because it is a school assignment or a work evaluation and just nothing will come?  Maybe your earliest experiences with writing were attacked by a grammar Nazis who couldn’t tell the difference between cultivating the creative process and the sense of power it gave them to point out all your misplaced commas?  And after their loving attention, every stinking time you try to write it is as if your middle school English teacher is staring over your shoulder, telling you your formatting is wrong before you’ve even written a single word?

That is how I feel when I try to do “small talk.”  Like staring at a blank piece of paper that just won’t let itself be written.  When I do try to talk it often doesn’t go well.  I’ve probably been asked more than a thousand times if I could “say that again in English.”  It’s probably been more than a thousand times that people tell me “stop making me think.”  It has probably been more than a million times that people have told me to “stop using such big words.”  While there generally have always been some people who could accept the way I spoke without criticism, these were very common reactions and they even happened routinely within my own family.  While there are people who try to impress others by "talking smart" I am not one of them.  I can't turn it off.  Compared to a typical mind I tend to understand and describe the world in its “details” rather than in its “big picture.”  The literal meaning of words is just as obvious if not more obvious than the social meaning.  Connections between ideas that seem obvious to me are at times obscure to other people.  All of this spills over into how I speak.  To successfully talk with other people I often have to consciously “translate” my natural language into “normal people” language.  If I get excited by an interesting discussion I sometimes forget to “translate” and sometimes people stop being able to understand me at all.  It is easier for me to talk about specific ideas and concepts than it is to perform the “talk about nothing” social ritual that normally lubricates social interactions.  The larger the group of people, the harder it is for me to do small talk.  I also have very little feel for guessing in real time how people will react to the things that I say, often only realizing afterwards if something would be likely to come across wrong.

So what does it do to you to be different like that?  It makes you into the mostly silent kid who “talks like a professor.”  Most people are not ready to be friends with someone who has trouble doing small talk because small talk is the language they use to navigate the early stages of relationship.  If you don't do it, they might assume you don't want to have anything to do with them.  Even if they know that you are technically part of their social group, they have trouble viewing you as anything other than the "smart person" whom they only talk to if they want to know something.  I was lucky growing up to have a good friend who excelled at connecting me with larger social groups, so as a I child I was nowhere near as bad off as I might have been.  There is unfortunately a limit of what one person can do.  In many social contexts I became the lonely kid who is told over and over that if they don’t have friends it is their fault for not smiling enough.  That is about as useful as telling someone in a wheel chair that if they really wanted to be included in the party upstairs they’d just quit whining and walk up the stairs like everybody else.  It isn’t that I don’t want friends or that I don’t smile at people.  It isn’t that I don’t want to talk to people.  But even holding what to someone else seems a “normal” small talk conversation can be a good deal of work.  It can be a relief to hang out with people who are well educated enough that they’d never think to complain that talking to me makes them think too much.  Well educated people are also much more likely to enjoy talking about ideas (easy for me to do) rather than endlessly talking about nothing (very hard for me to do).  For all the honor students, graduate students, and college professors who might wonder why I hung around you so much, now you know why.  People who actively accept people who are different than them are also a joy.

I do have autistic traits other than difficulty socializing.  I have poor executive functioning skills, stims, sensory sensitivities, and obsessions.  For the most part, however, these don’t interfere with my life as much as the social anxiety and awkwardness.  My poor executive function, or inherent ability to organize myself to get things done, is no where near as bad as some people have.  My sensory abnormalities, which used to make warm water, beans, and sales tags attached to clothing unbearable, diminished in severity during adolescence.  My stims, including sequentially touching each finger to thumb or tapping my feet are noticeable to those who know me.  I can’t pretend these don’t impact me at all since I was once  told by a man that if I were to apply for a job from him he probably would not hire me because he thought my stims would be unsettling to customers.  However, in my daily life they don’t get in my way.  No one has ever made concerted effort to “cure” me of stimming, so unless I am in a job interview, interacting with police (who might think I look nervously guilty or on drugs), or doing public speaking I rarely feel insecure about stimming.  Other autistics aren’t so lucky, having had doctors and family go to great lengths to try to cure them of their stims to the point where they have debilitating anxiety just being in public for fear that someone might see them fidget.  My obsessions, which at times have made it difficult for me to talk about anything other than birds, telescopes, armadillos, or whatever idea had come to me recently, come with less frequency and intensity now.  Instead of hardly being able to talk about anything else, I now often find myself able to talk about other things if someone else starts the conversation.  If I am starting a conversation I might have trouble thinking of anything to say outside of my obsession.  If my particular interest at any given time is socially inappropriate for the situation, like say talking about exercise routine design with obese people for example, I generally stay silent.  Silence is easy, except for bit where you are automatically isolated from people who don’t accept companionship in silence.

It is often difficult to talk about how I am affected by being on the autism spectrum even when I am prepared to describe it eloquently.  Many people can accept it without difficulty, but it is common that some people just don’t want to believe that my life is in any ways substantially different from theirs.  When they see that  I obviously can socialize to some extent, they can’t accept that it might still be difficult in a meaningful way.  Jane Meyerding, writing in the anthology “Coming Out Asperger” (p. 254) describes the problem well:
The only way to escape the generous NT assumption that “we’re all alike” - and that the only acceptable way for a decent person to react to difference is to refuse to acknowledge it - is to “hit them over the head” with an example too outrageous to be reinterpreted as “normal.”  And that’s a shame.  As Larry Arnold has written, “nobody turns around and says to someone that they can’t have arthritis because they are not in a wheelchair”
Some people who don’t understand autism or who don’t want to believe that I am autistic will think I am whining or being a wuss about having had a bad childhood.  They might think that everybody struggles in middle or high school, right?  So I should just move on with my life like everybody else.  Or they accuse me of having a bad attitude, telling me the lie from childhood that if I just smiled at people more I’d find more friends.  Or they tell me that I am gifted in life to be able to make it my life mission to socialize with other misfits to make them less lonely.  I don’t think people who say this realize they are asking me to take on the social work they would rather not or cannot do themselves and that unless the misfit in question is a misfit in the same way I am, there isn’t any automatic reason I am particularly suited to the task.  While I am happy to try, as part of being an ethical person, if we are misfits in different ways I might even be worse at trying to reach out to them than other people would be.

What I wish for is that there was some reliable way I could communicate to the world that I want to socialize and be friendly with them but it will help if they take the lead in starting and helping to maintain the conversation.  Or if I was not feeling up to being able to verbally socialize, that people would meaningfully include me even when I am not able to use language in a social way.  For example, when people bring treats in to work to share with the people in cubicles near them they often don’t even offer them to me, acting as if I weren’t even there even though sharing treats is not based in language.  This kind of inclusion would be exactly the same kind of politeness that nobody blinks an eye over when they hold a door open for a person using crutches.  I’ve never learned how to advertise that need for a little help to be included, though I do try.  My desk even has a sign by it saying “Say Hi to Me” on it.  People see my silence or perhaps the adaptations I use to help with my auditory sensory issues (I typically can’t filter out the distraction of background sounds and loud background noise levels can be distressing) and assume that I just don’t want to talk to them.  It is not uncommon that when I try to start conversations with people they seem unaware that I even spoke to them.  I am fairly sure it is not because they can’t hear me.  My voice is naturally on the loud side and I have trouble always even realizing it when I need to be quieter.  I can never tell for certain if I just missed a social cue that would let them know to pay attention or whether they are actively ignoring me.  I worry that if they are ignoring me and I keep trying harder to get their attention on the assumption that I missed giving the right social cue, I might make myself positively obnoxious.  I am fairly certain that at least part of the problem is that in a new social situation it can take me a long time to warm up to people, and by the time I am ready to talk to them (say after several months of sitting near them at work) they no longer view me as part of their social group and are caught by surprise when I speak.  All I know for certain is that I made a substantial effort to overcome my own social anxiety to talk to them and they acted as if I weren't there.  Trying to be socially invisible was something I did as a child to avoid being tormented by bullies.  I stopped trying to be socially invisible years ago, but I often still feel invisible.

Even though in many environments it is common for me to face some degree of social rejection, I rarely see it as the result of people being mean.  People simply find it easier to only socialize with people who are like them.  That is a natural instinct that serves "normal" people pretty well because there are gobs of "normal" people they can meet at almost any time.  For people who have never struggled to find friends, it seems almost mind boggling that only socializing with people who are like you doesn't work for everyone.  I can go years at a time without meeting a new person who I naturally get along with instead of having to work hard and long to build even a basic relationship.  For people who find friends easily, it is easiest to imagine that somehow this is my fault and they have no idea the mental toll their exclusion takes on me. 

Despite all of this, I still try to socialize with my peers at work and elsewhere.  I often feel discouraged but I still try.  Since I often have only a distant awareness of my emotions I often can't tell the negative emotions from this discouragement are building up until they are intense.  Sometimes the only way I know I am in under severe stress is because my body starts showing medical symptoms of high stress such as my jaw muscles locking up, my eye lids start twitching, and my acid reflux getting worse.  Occasionally the feelings become strong enough to directly break into my awareness and I have exhausting days where I think I am feeling fine and then suddenly find myself so deep in anxiety an depression that I have difficulty focusing.  Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg, writing in the anthology Loud Hands (p. 274) describes the emotional landscape I find myself within with painful beauty:
Put yourself in our shoes.  It is vital that able-bodied people consider how soul-wearying it is to keep trying until one finds those people who simply accept the awkwardness - my awkwardness, their awkwardness, our awkwardness - and make a connection.  It hurts the heart to keep going out and trying.  Ask yourself: What is keeping you from extending a word, a listen, a desire for connection to us?  And how does your failure to use your social skills to bring other human beings into community translate into a social disability located in autistic people, rather than in the able-bodied world?
To all the people I have known who have accepted me as I am and been willing to make space for me in their lives, you know who you are and you have my infinite thanks.  I just wish the rest of the world was just as inclusive.  And not just of people like me but for everyone.

Friday, October 20, 2017

I get it… please let me know when I don’t…

Before I started dating my wife I had an unsettling experience.  I was a passenger in a truck and a woman who was a casual acquaintance of mine was sitting in the center seat next to me.  She scooted over close to me and started unexpectedly started rubbing the side of her body against mine.  I had no romantic intentions towards this woman nor did I have any awareness beforehand that she had any towards me.  I never was an opportunist when it came to “making moves” on women.  When like me you know you can’t read people very well the idea of accidentally doing something unwelcome and dishonorable seems terrifyingly possible.  I had no positive or healthy sense of relationship with my own physical desires and here was a woman seemingly at random arousing me because… why?  I had no idea, I just froze, not knowing what to do other than to scoot a little farther away from her on the bench.  I got home and tried to imagine role plays in my mind where I could do something to stop the advance.  I felt guilty about being caught in a situation where I didn’t know what to do.

A week or two later I recall she announced she had a new boy friend, after having previously announced that she was feeling frustrated because she had no romantic prospects.  This felt very confusing to me, how do you go from being frustrated that you have no prospects to going steady with someone within about a week?  And didn’t that mean that she was already well into the process of entering a romantic relationship with someone else when she pulled a move on me?  Did that mean she made a pass at me for her own amusement, either her own physical enjoyment or enjoyment at watching me squirm?  Did that mean that she had been desperately lonely and was trying to get me to pay romantic attention to her?  Was this what my sisters meant by saying men were so blind they had to be hit over the head to see or understand things?  Was it all a misunderstanding?  I doubt it, since it is one thing to lean against someone and another to squirm back and forth in a snuggle.  The fact of the matter is I have no idea what motivated her behavior.  If she had just asked me if I wanted a hug or a back rub because she noticed I was lonely I probably would have happily accepted because those were types of physical touch I have a high craving for, can understand at a platonic level of relationship, and I had no real way of getting at the time.  It would have felt like she was giving to me rather than taking.  I still don’t know if it was meant exploitative or if she just thought that a casual opportunistic snuggle was a great way to flirt.  People rarely make intuitive sense to me.

As a man I can recognize I rarely have had to worry about these kinds of experiences.  I spend more time worrying that my clumsy social skills will make me do or say something really sexist and I won’t realize how it is going to sound until just a little late.  But I do know a little of what it feels like to be taken by surprise by an unwelcome touch, to freeze up, and then feel guilty about it afterwards.  I even know a little bit about what it feels like that nobody would really believe you.  I doubt many people who don’t know me well would believe that this is how I reacted.  Men are “supposed to” always be looking out to “get some” so how could that possibly go wrong?  So please, understand that while I might not really have felt anything like the extent to which you have experienced verbal and physical assaults I do understand some of the pieces of what those experiences are like.  And if I ever say anything that comes across just wrong, please let me know so I can do better.

Saturday, August 26, 2017

Relaxation and Productivity

One of the frustrations in my life is that virtually anything that is enjoyable enough to really make me feel relaxed is also probably something I am border line obsessive about.  Which means that if I sit down to enjoy something I really like chances are it will be difficult for me to stop.  Which means that to maintain good productivity for prolonged periods of time I have to make sure my breaks are only a little bit relaxing or enjoyable.  Because if they were I'd have trouble switching my mind back to what I was supposed to be doing.  So I get into grand swings where I can go weeks or even months without doing anything I really enjoy because I need to maintain a high level of productivity.  And yes, that tends to contribute to periodic bouts of anxiety and depression.  And then occasionally it swings the other way and I am up till 2 in the morning doing something that I love and my personal productivity tanks.  Working two jobs and trying to be a dad actually engaged in my kids lives to the extent that I can sometimes means that I totally lose track of what I might want to do for fun.  Because in order to maintain my personal productivity I often go extremely long stretches of time doing things I only enjoy a little.

Sometimes there are exceptions to this rule, like when I can listen to an audiobook I really love while working.  Only some kinds of work are compatible with audio book listening, so that only helps some of the time.  And if a good audio book is the only thing keeping me afloat I really crash when I can't find one that suits my mood or when my anxiety levels go too high for me to be able to listen to one at all.

So for those of you who don't have obsessive personalities, be greatful the next time you decide to do something you really like for maybe 15 minutes or half an hour and then walk away from it refreshed to do something useful.