A Mini Break

Because Casey Anthony is on TikTok and the world is just too much...

Writing has been my one solace, the thing that gives me joy. I’m good at it, I love the alchemy of arranging words into sentences that become paragraphs that become stories. And part of the reason I decided to stop taking on marketing projects (other than my growing disdain for how marketing has devolved in corporate culture) was to focus on the one true thing I loved.

Until that one true thing was a thing I need to manipulate to make money and it’s been making me physically ill. It seems as if there’s nothing one can’t do freely, without abandon, because capitalism is the lover who knocks knocks on your farmhouse door and refuses to leave. Kicks up their feet on the sofa and gulps down all your fancy soda drinks. It’s become such that I think first about what I can write that will pay my bills and if I have a time, if I’m not exhausted, I’ll have a little time to create the art that actually means something to me.

And when I’m too spent to create the art, I package up the clothes I’ve sold or watch, in a state that can only be described as catatonia how luminol is an excellent tool to detect mopped-up blood at a crime scene (I watch a lot of true crime). Look at the walls, the cops shout with glee, lighting up like a Christmas tree.

A break is also needed because I don’t understand the world in which we live and I need time to make sense of it. The idea that a woman would need both her passport and birth certificate to vote is chilling. The orders and laws purported are shocking. Where are we because I just watched Longlegs and it was far nicer in that world than this.

A break is direly needed because Casey Anthony decided she’d like to be social media famous too. You know, the mother who killed her child and partied like it’s 1999? Is it me or is there a renaissance of bad mothers coming out to play. Ruby Franke, the filthy houses of TikTok, and now this? When did we start rewarding people with our attention for the abuse they inflict on their children. Are we not ashamed?

See, I can’t just see things and walk away. I feel them all the way, all too much, and I blame my autism (and perhaps childhood trauma) for all of it.

A break is needed because I’m starting to see the insidious ways of the left acting just as vile and corrupt as the right. There is no common enemy because enemies exist around us with varying agendas. One could be the upholding of the entertainment media and the desire to keep legacy media relevant (left/far left)—by any means necessary. While the other side uses the bible as a Trojan Horse to hate the world and everyone in it (far right). It’s become such that I don’t trust anyone because I have to consider who funds their ventures. To whom are they tethered. What is everyone’s agenda? Because my agenda is finding truth, which has become a dangerous pursuit these days.

While the above might be deemed cryptic, let me give specifics. I find Candace Owen’s views categorically abhorrent. However, I find her takes on the whole Baldoni/Lively saga entertaining and nuanced and the woman does do her research. And this riles people up because apparently I’m dumb enough to get sucked into the “alt-right” pipeline because I watched an episode where she made fun of Ryan Reynolds. All my strongly-held beliefs and value systems? PFFT! POOF! Let’s be anti-abortion, anti-vaxers because Candace Owens made an entertaining video. Girl, please.

This is the line currently being fed and it’s dangerous because it’s not only insulting, it assumes women can’t think critically or compartmentalize their entertainment. A line fed so hard that a take-down piece was written and while I agree with how Owens is massaging some of her more horrific takes, I find it interesting that the journalist who wrote the profile is a PDF-file apologist. As written in her own words. Many times. So maybe don’t lecture us about morality when your sense of how one should protect children from predators is fucked.

But this is not about some journalist I never heard of and a right-wing pundit I could care less about, it’s about how easy it is to manipulate the media we consume. How easy it is to reduce complexity to dangerous, binary tropes. Because easy is what sells on social media. It gets people to click, clamor and react. It’s a money-maker and while I think the anger is often coming from a noble place, there’s so much noise that it clouds out the origin of our anger. It clouds arguments that have layers of issues and perspectives that can’t be covered in a one-minute video.

I feel like so much thinking is being left on the table. Even more so when you have people outsouring their critical thinking skills to ChatGPT. Is this where we are? We can’t think and form arguments by ourselves so we’ll utilize man-made, often biased technology?

Sometimes I wake in the morning and think: THIS CAN’T BE IT. THIS CAN’T BE THE WORLD I WANTED TO KEEP FIGHTING FOR.

It’s the noise that subsumes, the constant crawling through the day because I couldn’t take the easy route and get a corporate job with my dental benefits three weeks of vacations only to sell garbage to people who don’t need it. I create stories for brands who don’t want stories, they want what word will convert to sales.

And it’s this world, this demand of writing, this real life need to pay our bills, eat food, take care of our loved ones is suddenly harder than ever.

I remember being so poor that we lived on $10 a day and cooked on hot-pots. We had bags of potatoes that lasted us a summer and somehow this seems so much worse. I can’t explain it.

So much worse that it’s affecting my desire to write and it’s hurting aspects of my health (of which I won’t get into so please don’t ask) because I don’t know how to turn off bearing the weight of the world and all the sadness in it.

So, I will stay offline for the next couple of weeks trying to regroup and refresh so I can bring you wonderful essays. Trying to sell my little clothes online. Trying to stay sane. Trying to remember thinkers exist in the world. Art matters in the world when everyone, everywhere, every day of the week will shout at me otherwise.

---

I sell clothes, if you’re keen to support my cat’s diabetes meds. Here, here, and here. If not, all good. I’ll be back with shenanigans in a few weeks time.