My impression of interacting in the blog world today:
“I can’t tell by your tone if you’re being nice or being rude, so I’ll just assume you’re an asshole.”
Really, people? Have we moved so far away from kindness and encouragement that every fucking thing I say is assumed to be sarcasm?
*note, I was actually sarcastic in my last blog post.
If I’m being mean, I’m going to actually sound pretty mean. and there’ll probably be a fuck given.
Two things. A book reviewer had a one sided argument with me today. I even tried to be nice about how I worded an opposing point of view. Wasn’t Mercury out of retrograde here recently? *shrug* I suppose some folks just have to be right and feel like they’re always on the attacking end of something. That sounds like an unappealing frame for life, but everyone’s perfect just how they are.
The second thing. Someone posted a Jesus blog saying something like Jesus had said it. And then they responded to Jesus asking how they could get more people under his (Jesus’) protection. Answer: well, you could start by not making up a Jesus quote, but what the hell do I know?
I lied, third thing. There was this guy asking for critiques in this writers group on Facebook. I’ve started really paying attention to these groups because I need to stay on top of my shit if I’m going to finish this novel by my birthday. He writes this ~500 word tirade about how (basically) parents need to be more strict. But he used the word “independence” in describing why kids turn out poorly. I kindly said I thought he was misusing the word independence and gave him two very reasonable replacement words. His response? “I’m using it right, you just need to look deeper into it.”
Listen, motherfucker. I know what you’re trying to say and I’ve been writing about parenting for a long time and doing some parenting intermittently for the last nine years and let me tell you, teaching your child “independence” is not why these kids are turning out delinquents. Mkay?
Alright, now that’s out of my system. 30,000 words as of today, baby.
The short folks have colds. We had to convince 12 that the swimming pool in her lungs was a good enough reason to stay home and rest a second day, and she negotiated that she’d stay home this morning and sleep more, but we should reassess later this morning so she might not miss the second half of the day.
One thing that has become painfully obvious to me in my days working remotely is that our culture has dramatically set folks up for failure when it comes to illness. The expectation that people should continue to push through the cold and “go in” anyway is about as counterintuitive as it gets. How does a person get exposed to a cold? They go in to their work or school where another person has a cold, and they touch things.
Now, I understand that a huge majority parents don’t have a choice about taking their sick kid in to school. I *completely* get that. But except for someone who has hands on specialties, SO much work can be done from home. The technology is absolutely there. Why is it that we as a culture are so averse to not spreading illness? To giving ourselves time and space to heal? As a business owner, if you set the expectation that no sick people are allowed to come in, and take care of your employee so they don’t feel obligated to attend in person when they’ve got an illness, I guarantee that you’d have fewer incidences of “out sicks” and the employees would be far less inclined to take advantage of you.
alfredopotato 