Maybe I’m a target
People think I’m an easy target. Easy target for accusations. Easy target for bullshitters. Easy target to see through at a restaurant or otherwise ignore.
It feels super weird when you aren’t actually an easy target. It feels like people are often trying to take advantage of me, and I can read them. Then I have to foil them and sometimes I feel bad about it. Like, I get that you think you’re being sneaky, but you were fairly obvious. We still live in a world where men think that when a woman says something it’s just a suggestion. We still live in a world where non-white cis male people have to prove themselves, insist on attention or annunciate really clear boundaries, some of which feel like common-goddamn-sense.
I do not know you, dude, stop standing so close to me. Why are you telling me about your drama, dude, I met you three minutes ago. No you can’t accuse me of taking a short cut, dude, there is video of me taking the long way around. That’s not what we agreed on, my dude, and you can’t just change the agreement without my consent.
Sometimes I’m more able to deal then other times. I lose sleep over this stuff, I really do.
If you’re often reading FBT, you clearly know this by now. If you have been here the whole time, 10 years I’ve been writing this(!), you probably know more about me then I know about myself. If you’re sending me directly to the trash, but don’t want to unsubscribe because you’re worried about my mental health if you were to unsubscribe, then that is super sweet and I hope someone has given you a cookie recently. That sounded sardonic, but I’m serious – giving someone a cookie is a nice thing to do.
- Building Power and Making Change: Community strategies and tools > https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/community-platform-project/building-power-and-making-change-community-strategies-and-tools
- Core Values for AI Literacy > https://blog.weareopen.coop/core-values-for-ai-literacy-0dfb0ce5145f
- When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field: An Oral History > https://www.quantamagazine.org/when-chatgpt-broke-an-entire-field-an-oral-history-20250430/
Sometimes I am confident with my good-hearted hilarity and sometimes my position in the cosmic gas cloud has spiralled to “WTF am I even doing, maybe I should try a lithium mix* again. Sometimes I feel like I’m winning, but mostly I feel like I’m not playing the same game everyone else seems to be playing. Like, where am I?
*lithium: “Wake up now. Brush teeth now. Take pills now. Get dressed now. Put shoes on now. Say “Hello mother” now. Say “Yes, I slept fine mother” now. Drink coffee now. Put coat on now. Go outside now. Get in car now. Turn car on now. Drive to work now. Stop at light now. Notice blinking sign now. Drive now. Drive now. Park now. Get out of car now. Go in restaurant now. Put apron on now. Clock in now. Check section to serve now. Say “Hi my name is Laura, I’ll be taking care of you today” now. Enter two colas and a basket of fries into computer now. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Say “No, I cannot work on Sunday” now. Make salad now. Deliver salad now. Clean table now. Take off apron now. Clock out now. Drive home now. Say “Yes mom, it was an ok day” now. Say “I love you too” now.” from my first book, How to Wake Up
Maybe I’m disassociating
Bear – By Bordalo II in Turin, Italy
I read once about a facility in somewhere. Columbia, Bolivia, French New Guinea? Somewhere down there in South America are places that exist that I’ve scarely, nay never, been. I’ve been to Peru. And Brazil. Costa Rica. Mexico. That’s not a lot of places in Central and South America. Anyway, I read once about a place where the truly disassociated people go. People with severe multiple personality disorders and the kind of schizophrenia seen in films. This facility studies these poor, unfathomably interesting and possibly very scary brains. I think there’s another wing that studies the more physical medical oddities.
For a moment, I was going to say that I didn’t have a snowballs chance in hell at finding said article for you, but I asked AI, and I still don’t have a snowballs chance in hell. AI told me that I’m probably making it up and then gave me a film synopsis for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which is a film that if you haven’t seen…wait, I’ve already written this entire episode of FBT!
Where were we? Oh, so I’m pretty sure that I didn’t make up this facility, but I’m also not interested enough to go and find it, prove it, etc. Really, I was just wondering – does the collapse of US democracy and funding mean that this facility has been abandoned and there are a bunch of people wandering around South America with little to no medication and all the misfiring neurons?
- Getting Older Isn’t What You Think > https://www.katycowan.co.uk/blog/getting-old
- Which types of people aren’t big fans of “impartial” news? > https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/04/which-types-of-people-arent-big-fans-of-impartial-news-people-who-dont-have-power/
- Complex Systems Frameworks Collection > https://www.sfu.ca/complex-systems-frameworks.html
I need help
Gotta tell you, I haven’t been writing because I’ve been stressed out like disassociating to the extreme 🤘. My mental health has been absolute TRASH and I’ve not been taking care of myself. I’ve been, however, great at repressing it and pretending like I’m not exhausted and stressed from two building projects, work stuff and an utter absence of the time and self-care required for a reflective existence. That last one affects being able to write this newsletter.
So that’s all that. What’s up with you?
“I do it because the cost of not doing it is that I begin to spiral. I get a bit unmoored. I get anxious. It might be more honest to say that I look forward to having written it than writing it. Because this is a thing I can do. This is proof of life. ” Mike Monteiro
(header image from the Rebel Bear)