Secession? It’s Not That Easy...

I know social media comments sections on anything remotely political are pretty much just a dumpster fire. However, one topic I’ve seen people bring up on both sides is ‘simply’ dividing ‘red’ and ‘blue’ states into separate countries.

I don’t have to tell most of you that this is a terrible idea.

I lived in Ohio and now Indiana. While I’d officially call myself an Independent or moderate, during crucial elections where third party voting serves no purpose, I’m a ‘blue’ voter. I used to live on Hamilton County, which covers the Cincinnati metropolis, which is among about 8 Ohio counties that is consistently blue. This is often a swing state in presidential elections and is never red or blue in general.

And now I live in Indiana so you likely see my new dilemma. Red county, red state, almost consistently. I do NOT want to be imprisoned under the authoritarian hell of a Red America.

This is what it comes to. A very stupid ‘solution’ that would effectively trap millions of Americans in absolute hell. I imagine the red voters trapped by their circumstances in a blue state terrifies them too.

Where you live does not determine your beliefs or ideals. While many take to social pressures and indoctrination, many also formed their own conclusions that go against popular beliefs. This country might be divided but it’s not a geological grouping you can just throw fences around and pretend that fixes the problem. After the tRump wall bullshit, liberals especially know better than that being even remotely a good solution.

What makes people’s knee jerk solutions and opinions so useless is that their research rarely ever includes consulting people who have dedicated their lives to that area of study. I see posts about the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine peppered with doubt about its efficacy and long-term consequences and that they’ll let the ‘idiots’ go first. The problem with people’s doubt and questions comes from the fact that they are unloading them without FIRST taking the time to do real research, to consult with healthcare workers (who not only risk their lives but have seen the full-blown horror of it). 

It’s become evident that, like forming uneducated opinions, there’s also an irresponsibility in asking uneducated questions too soon. We have the ability to find unbiased factual resources for the very nature of the virus, but it may be in language too difficult for many to follow. However, asking ‘is this vaccine going to kill us?’ is fear-mongering and inflammatory. Instead, we should be asking ‘if you’re a healthcare worker, can you tell us why we should get the vaccine?’

And it’s not enough to simply trust that every healthcare worker is going to be objective either, which is why polling is a mandatory part of research. Your doctor might be a biased idiot but it’s more conclusive if ‘7 out of 10’ doctors agree.

We all wondered why 9 out of 10 dentists recommend Colgate. It’s not because we have reason to believe the odd one out is right. He’s probably barking at the moon. He might’ve rightfully earned his degree and been educated but then started playing around on the dark web, not updating his education legitimately and now thinks that cavities are caused by 5G signals so he tinfoils his walls. 

But we’ve also seen that tens of millions of Americans also vote for a moron. While this wasn’t the majority of votes, it’s also possible to simply be surrounded by a majority of falsehoods. Which is why it’s so damned important to know HOW to find legitimate resources. It’s always worthwhile to even take the most batshit insane theories and find out the unreliable source that the ignorant ones are taking as fact. Just dismissing them only increases their hysteria. When face to face with the truly insane, I know from experience that the last thing you want to do is burst their bubble. You ask questions without judgement, try to look for whatever trauma in their lives made them vulnerable to the imaginative logic of that lie.

Division, segregation, that is the opposite of progress. We need to stop sorting privilege, stop drawing lines and stop insisting on labels. We shouldn’t entertain dividing this country. We should be challenging each other to tolerate and understand our differences and never entertain making things easier for bigots. This isn’t the time to be forming opinions and questions prior to research. Stop treating social media like Google (or for you paranoid nut jobs, DuckDuckGo, with its absolute shit sorting system). Use it to poll for educated answers and survey opinion, not confirm a bias.

Yes, as a liberal, I do celebrate progress, to a point. It’s not an extreme. Positive progress is very slow and met with a lot of stubborn opposition. As an atheist, it’s always especially exhausting how extremist conservatism wants to build laws, seemingly on behalf of their god. Not only am I quite aware that the Christian god touts free will, it’s also technically blasphemy to enact ‘God’s will’ through the laws of men. We are meant to bear the consequences of our own sins upon Judgement Day, according to the Bible. Subjective ‘sins’ like abortion and homosexuality (and I cringe to even entertain those are sins at all) are not detrimental to human society, which is why it makes no sense to punish for them like society does for actual human harm like rape, robbery and murder. However, religious perceptions (superstitions) overriding science is an attempt to undermine and subjugate, a move done more out of fear and hate than reason.

I’d love to discuss my passionate studies in theology that led to atheism sometime, but not now. That’s a VERY long conversation.

Which is why it’s so confusing that extreme conservatism has been pumping out the ‘fuck your feelings’ rhetoric. Authoritarianism, religion, almost every area they stand for are almost entirely built on how they feel about things, not the logic of progress, science or fact. 

I also think it’s irresponsible if I didn’t mention that I do have religious and conservative friends. I’ll tell you now that this is because there is wisdom buried in religious stories and meaningful progress is not something to be rushed. It’s responsible to admit that I don’t always agree with liberals when they spew extremist ideals either. However, I’m also aware that I do lean more left on economic issues, slightly right on social issues (only because I think a great deal of the shit people are suddenly forcing others to talk about is kind of none of anyone’s damn business).

Obviously, I jump around a lot but it’s difficult to talk about one without inevitably pulling a string from another. If I were a professional blogger, I’m sure I’d poke and prod and edit and organize, but that’s more work than a personal blog needs. I’d consider that more the responsibility of an influencer.

You got the gist. I hope. At this point, we just have to accept that we’re not responsible for how people twist our intent. I’m happy to elaborate for someone genuinely interested rather than condescending.

Stay out of the crazy rabbit holes, folks. Used to be a fun concept for the curious, the adventurous Alices of the world, but too often, it’s become tainted by the rambling of conspiracy theories and damaging biases. The concept of the Mad Hatter is superseded by the terror of the Jabberwocky. Rather than sticking solely to the classics, I’ve always been in favor of writing for the present and future. It’s never a good time to say it’s all been done and we have all we need so let’s quit. There are better things ahead.

Spreading Oneself Too Thin

One thing I’ve always contemplated was how to regard the opinion that I may be ‘spreading myself too thin’. I have no shortage of admiration for people who are able to laser focus on one thing, but that’s actually a pretty popular opinion and one we should assess more in modern times.

Certainly there is room to admire those with many focuses without being over-critical with the perception that they are taking on ‘too much.’ While I suppose it can be an issue when they never finish anything, but even if people don’t finish *most* of what they start, perhaps we should look at the success of those processes in more ways than making sure everything is done.

Some projects, even when started with the intention to have a finished product, are left undone. I’ve found this can happen when you’re trying something new and possibly very ambitious, something you’ve underestimated the sheer labor of. It’s often assumed that someone just gets ‘bored’ or ‘lazy’ but, quite frankly, that’s a lazy assumption. Every project contains a learning process, whether it is something you’re trying or you’ve done it a hundred times before. Along the way, it’s very possible that the errors are more tedious to fix than simply starting over or we’ve simply gotten what we’ve wanted from it and are otherwise inspired to apply what we’ve learned to a fresher idea. Especially in creative fields, you must marry yourself to an alien concept in most other fields; not every aspect is precious and some must be abandoned to apply your skills and attention more efficiently. But it’s also true that no labor or effort is actually ‘wasted’ and that those discarded materials and unfixable mistakes are an important part of your personal ‘résumé’ too. 

Those hundreds of hours of ‘mistakes’ and things left unfinished are the evidence of your efficiency. There’s a reason why professional artists aren’t cheap. We’ve literally taken a task that would take the average of persons hundreds of hours to do and get it done, with no lack of quality, in a matter of hours or days. Or more accurately, we’re able to get it done (and well) in exponentially quicker times. Creatives have also spent hundreds of unpaid hours earning the right to charge for that kind of delivery. While it’s easy to blow off the things that apps and filters can do for your images, it’s still incomparable to the quality done by a graphic artist. Anyone can write a book, but who actually has the patience to format, edit or market? 

Which brings me back to the point of whether we are actually spreading ourselves too thin... or if we’re simply exceeding people’s expectations for what one person can actually do. More often than not, I think people are critical about spreading focus because they themselves actually don’t succeed doing so. So in the midst of many months where you don’t seem productive, it becomes a shocking blow when you finally show the fruits of those ‘unfocused’ efforts.

It’s mostly a positive response that I get over time. People who take the time to get to know me see an ambitious and full body of work. I think it’s easier for people who don’t know how I operate to chalk those times when I’m not sharing anything as a lack or work or success, rather than a skillful process.

Indeed, modern people are more than a little spoiled when it comes to instant gratification. This can make it more difficult for artists because, while our neighbors can’t see our progress (like when we’re building a deck on the house), we’re enduring a period of vulnerability of ideas and a challenge to the great focus that project needs and we can’t reassure others or even ourselves of what progress is actually made. Even in this state of vulnerability, sometimes we have to expend energy defending ourselves against many kinds of negative criticism about our contribution and dedication. Which is also why even extroverted artists tend to shit themselves in a working solitude, to eliminate the distraction and focus their limited energy on a project.

I would never actually defend laziness either, but often it’s a false perception directed at creatives. Of course, it is ultimately destructive if they never produce finished work or never share progress at all, but that’s actually extremely rare. There is always something to admire about the discipline required, but a discipline without application or production ultimately does become a waste.

Sometimes I beat myself up about that too. For a little over a year, I kind of just... halted creativity, or more accurately, large projects. A dear friend of mine likes to remind me that I just spent three years of my life, doing nothing but living to write, edit, format, design and publish eleven hefty fantasy novels. My social life was almost nonexistent, my focus was razor sharp, my ambitious was undistracted. Now ideally, a bit of ‘burn out’ would occur AFTER I finished my second series finished (that I’ve published two out of four projected novels), but that’s just not the way a personal dream actually travels, and also why my friends often have to remind me I’ve ‘earned’ a bit of burn out.

Of course, it does make the professional in me wonder if this also makes potential clients think that this is somehow a lack of ethics I’ll sprinkle into work I do for them. The definitive answer is absolutely not. I do not tell people I will take on a job and never do it. In fact, my actual track record shows that I not only quickly tackle projects for others quickly, but they’re also often surprised that I deliver my work quickly and done well. 

In truth, sometimes my own ideas need to simmer or don’t quite challenge me enough, but I am quite easily charmed to the challenge others present me. I am not a client that will get frustrated and walk away. My ideas will always exist as long as I do. Yet there is a different pressure to perform when I’m dealing with the patience and criticism of a client. They can lose interest or patience in the stalling of my ideas in a way that my personal projects will not.

Side note: this is why I flirted with getting an agent or traditional publisher. The challenge of those eyes on my work was an appealing challenge, but ultimately I decided I simply wanted the experience of creative control. Very few aspects of commercial creativity actually give you the freedom of control and that was far more tempting than literary clout.

So... going back to ‘spreading yourself thin’... is that a concept to be admired or criticized harshly? Really, let’s stop with lazy thinking and start applying a more critical eye on generalized statements or perceptions like these. Ask questions about what they consider their failures and successes, get to know the body of work behind these multi-focused individuals, consider the vast amount of time, effort and struggle was involved to make their work look so effortless.

Perhaps remember that we don’t have to admire single-focused mastery less to show more admiration for the polymaths out there. While high IQs are sometimes squandered through lack of application, this is the exception, not the rule. It doesn’t take a great deal of time and effort to talk to someone and understand how hard they actually work.

Honestly, I kind of pity the ones that don’t bother to ask and try to hurt me with harsh assumptions. There’s a thread of jealousy in people that dismiss someone who is doing something they didn’t think possible that is truly pitiable. It’s also not worth my time or theirs to beg them to acknowledge my accomplishments. Sometimes, people are in a painful personal place where trying to hurt someone is the only way they know how to deal with what they’re going through. And I’m human too. I don’t always have the mental fortitude or patience to reach out to people in pain, so the best thing I can do is simply shrug and walk away sometimes. They’re not always in a position to accept help or advice or have their minds changed.

But that’s also a little superpower of mine. I do tend to sense strong positive and negative vibes that help me decide the risk of pressing an issue with someone. I’m all too happy to help others but I know all too well that even my own good intentions often just stir the pot.

Okay, I’m tired so it’s time to set this mess free into the blogosphere...