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Saturday, February 25, 2017

Project and Politics/Social Justice Update: Productive but Normalized Complacency?


I have plans to do some tabletop gaming tomorrow (D&D 5th Edition), so I want to try doing my usual Sunday night stuff tonight. That way I hope that I can get to bed at a good time tomorrow. Hopefully I won’t have to squeeze a bunch of maintenance activity into the night before having to get up early the next day. One of those activities putting together this weekly update (even though I’d prefer to do the update on a Friday or Saturday, anyway).

Not a ton of progress on project stuff occurred this week, but the progress made had more quality than quantity. I edited a couple more pages in the novel on a couple mornings before work. The most significant update yet least in volume came this morning. I added three lines inspired by a combination of the ”Hybrid Viewpoints” episode of the Writing Excuses podcast and one of my favorite TV shows. I look forward to hearing how my beta readers will react to it.

I added a couple good points to the outline of the current essay during lunch hour at work. Essays become pretty easy once I have a good idea where I want it to go. At this point, I have more problem figuring out the particular words to use. I don’t get caught up trying to figure out the right word, either, since I don’t expect anyone to see these outlines. My word recall has just gotten a little foggy these days. I think it took me about ten minutes to write an outline sentence during the last session.

Writing narrative or stream of thought like these updates doesn’t give me much issue. Working on informal social media updates or arguments doesn’t cause me much trouble, either. Maybe this word recall comes from a little bit of perfectionism. I don’t know. Nonetheless, I like making sure I can understand my own words and intent when I come back to it.

Uncanny Magazine took up much of my free time this weekend. Specifically, helping with a final run through to help very obvious typos and such. After looking at the many, many words in the magazine for around two months, the editors can become too familiar with the material and start missing that type of thing. The same thing happens to working long and hard on something. The brain can do weird tricks where it sees the end result rather than the real thing on the page or computer screen.

Issue 15 has a lot of good stuff in it this month. It comes out on the first Tuesday of March, the 7th. Get ready for a bunch of different feels in the fiction, from sad to whimsy and even some anger. I don’t get the majority of any poetry, so don’t come to me for opinions on it. Most of the essays revolve around protest, resistance, and the representation. I think the Uncanny Team has put together another solid, excellent issue that fans will enjoy.

POLITICAL/SOCIAL JUSTICE THOUGHTS

I feel myself falling into complacency and normalization of the Trump Presidency and his administration. Other than donating to some worthy causes, re-tweeting and sharing some articles, engaging in conversation, and tweeting at politicians to show my displeasure or to offer my support to their actions, I haven’t done much to change my life and habits.

Part of me tells myself that I’ve gotten bombarded with too many causes trying to get my money, my signature, my action, my letter writing, my attending meetings, and all sorts of my participation. I’ve also gotten overwhelmed by all the Administration gaslighting along with the media and other politicians trying to keep up with the group of machine cronie throwing all types of garbage out at the world, from words to Executive Actions to tweets and all sorts of other horrible things. It’s exhausting.

But I’ve more often than not mostly been on the sidelines, in the first place. I participated in one protest march back around the Boston Common to protest the start of the Iraq War that has ended (but we’re still dealing with a lot of aftermath from it).That action didn’t affect anything.

Also I had made something of a vow to myself how much I would focus on my project back in 2001 or 2002. I find myself telling me that I’m doing something to add to the efforts and body of works to try affecting the Collective Conscience and (Un)Consciousness. As I’ve gotten older and seen how much progress I’ve made over the last 15 years, I have to question how much impact I’ll have as some sort of thought leader or in the “Information Industry”.

Those last two paragraphs don’t really go anywhere. I’ve just thrown out on the computer screen some of the thinking that goes through my head when it comes to resisting and protest. I ask myself what will it take for me to act on my principles and beliefs. Do I do that now? Do I have little when it comes to them?

Am I looking for someone to inspire me, not in a drill sergeant kind of way, but in a gentle, indoctrinating way that doesn’t make it sound like a duty and compulsory thing to do, but as an activity to express what I have deep down. Sometimes I feel like political activism comes out more as a “doing the right thing to do the right thing” rather than coming from an actual basis. I think the reasons for protest are right, but I think of them more as assumptions of mine rather than actual beliefs and convictions down in the depths of the core of my being. How do I transform those thoughts into beliefs and conviction?

That being said, my political/social justice tweets for the week:














I’m not really a fan of Trump sending the “Feds” to Chicago, but I find it telling that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has asked for help from the President, but the President hasn't provided any assistance.




Posted by The_Lex at 8:59 PM

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