[Meme] Son of Fred
Feb. 2nd, 2004 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lprovenAnother day, another interview; this time, it's ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dougs redux.
He has interviewed me before, 8 months ago.
Now, he asks...
1. I interviewed you previously. At the time you said "Asking him was a considered decision. He did not give me easy, quickly-dismissed questions. I didn’t think he would.". As you re-read those questions and answers, how much has changed in the last seven months? Would you give the same answers again?
2. There's been some talk recently of plans to move away from London. Are there firm plans, is there an earnest effort to seek employment in distant parts? Or is there simply an openness to consider opportunities elsewhere if they happen to arise?
3. Some people are freelancers, some are self-employed, some have short contracts with assorted clients, some people are conventional full-time employees. There are good and sound arguments on each side. Tell us where you find yourself in this matter, and how your position has changed over the past year or so.
4. At the tail-end of October, you had your head shaved. You may have formed (or refined) a view subsequently concerning the assumptions people make about yourself based on your appearance. Could you share your insights?
5. Is there a question that you wish you had been asked that no-one's asked you yet? Tell us what it is -- and then answer it.
1. As I said in Doug's -- Dougs'? :¬) -- own LJ:
Same answers, by and large, yes. I'd be more willing now to talk about sexual fetishes to some degree than I was, with my opaque remark that that was censored; there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then. But that's about all.
2. The plans are not terribly firm -- but simply because I am appalling at planning such things. Confronted with a task such as choosing a University, getting a degree, getting a job, getting a bike licence, buying a bike, buying a house, I invariably simply quail and gibber -- until the moment is upon me and then I just do it.
I firmly intend to do it and am off to Dublin on Thursday for a recce mission -- as well as to have a good time, I hope! But yes. I don't wish to be overly dramatic, but I need some new hopes and aspirations and dreams; all my old ones have turned to dust now. I quote Thomas Dolby's I live in a suitcase:
3. I think of myself as a pure freelancer. I don't normally work on contracts or for anyone; I work for myself, selling my time and nothing else, as a gun for hire. I stumbled into this, really, but I find I really like it, although I sometimes miss the social element of working in a company. The snag is that I can't really do it anywhere else. In theory, the journalism would work from anywhere, but practically, I need a network of computers to test stuff on and benefit hugely from a broadband connection. So when I do go a-roaming, I'll have to go back into wage slavery. The plan is to become a contractor, in which case, I will be working for other people. Although a contractor runs their own company, they are still effectively employed by a company to do a job. I've done it; it was fine, but I lost the freedom I currently enjoy. The snag is that I also have to be my own advertising and marketing man and I really hate that, so I don't really have enough business on at the moment, so I'm currently rather poor... But although I enjoy my liberty and my lifestyle, I'm not hugely proud about it and will give it up if that seems expedient.
4. Head shaving. It was odd; it was both much more of a change than I expected and much less. It hasn't massively changed how people view me, as far as I can tell, although people do treat a skinhead with a certain wariness. That's a passing phase, though. At first, I didn't recognise myself. I had lots of phantom habits I no longer needed. I'd pull on or off clothes over my head, then try to neaten my hair or pull out my ponytail. I'd go to push it back, straighten the ponytail, reach to tie it up in the morning, and there was nothing there. This was like an amputation or something. There's lots more, but this consistently threw me.
On the other hand, I acquired new ones: stroking my head, feeling the short hair as it grew. It's now long enough that I gel it -- asflickgc puts it, with peculiar emphasis, "you have product in your hair!" (Eerily foretelling today's Megatokyo.) This means I can't stroke it any more and it keeps catching me out. As Frodo said, "it's all sticky".
I'm told I look younger. That's fine. I'm not as bald as I feared I'd be: I'm quite comfortable with my hairline as it now stands revealed. What is odd is how many people consider it to be a huge thing, a major change, something very brave. It's not really - it's just a haircut. T'ain't no thang. I don't miss it. The only vestige is that I have a strange, powerful desire to tell people that I had really long hair until just recently, honest. :¬)
5. A question no-one's asked me? Aieesh! Er, no, not really. As with anyone who is unhealthily obsessed about something, I have an insatiable need to talk about the failure of my relationship and what happened. It's doesn't really help, though, except in the vague way that repeatedly discussing something robs it of its emotional impact, takes away its power. I'm considering writing some kind of summing-up, of my views on poly and things, and putting it up here as a public post, but I'm not sure it'd be helpful. I'm also considering an open letter to Kirsty for when I leave. These things might be cathartic. Something I find it interesting is this: for a while, I considered posting a rant about polyamory, about how I hated it and loathed it and it was all a load of bullshit. But I can't. I don't have it in me. I do actually respect it as a way of life. It's a little like being gay or bi; I have no issue with that at all, although I am aware of and respect the difference, and this occasionally gets me attacked for "prejudice" by people who do not know me and are unused to my degree of forthrightness. (Well, tough tittie.) I am happy with people who express their sexuality as part of their personality; I am sure that I do. But personally, I'm straight; I am not interested in having any kind of homosexual dalliance, not even out of curiosity. You do whatever you like, but don't -- ha ha -- shove it down my throat.
Poly is the same. I am not poly, never will be poly, never want to be poly. It offers nothing I want or need. Yet I have had poly evangelists telling me I'm stupid, blind, ignorant, biased, bigoted; that I am culturally conditioned; that monogamy is unnatural and wrong and all humans are at heart poly and are just trained out of it. That, I believe, is utter drivel and I am heartily sick of it. If poly people want to be with other poly people, that's fine. But poly people with monogamous people is an abomination, an offense; it is cruel and unusual punishment. If someone decides that they are poly, they should keep the hell away from monos forevermore. There might be some rare beings who have no jealousy, no possessiveness, no need for exclusivity, and they might be able to be happily monogamous with a poly partner. I'm not 100% convinced they exist -- I've never met one -- but they might. If so, they are not truly mono; they are non-practising polys themselves.
To a number of my friends who say they are thinking of becoming poly, I say, do not do it blindly. Do lots of reading, lots of research, join some support groups and things and talk to people. Don't place any trust in wretched back-slapping clubs like news:alt.polyamory or![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
polyamory; there is little of value there. It's all smug zealots preaching to the converted. The battle lines of people talking about their relationships breaking down and the searing agony of loss and betrayal and insecurity and anxiety and anger, that's when you find out about it for real.
Poly is currently trendy. Lots of people are dipping toes into the water. BTDT. It's only going to end in pain and misery for most of them.
Personally, for myself, I do not believe at all that the polyamourous "networks of intimacy" and so forth really compare at all to the deep bond between two people who have devoted their lives to one another. I feel that from all that I've seen, poly group relationships are a pale, tragic, rather pathetic shadow of the power and the strength that can come from totally giving yourself to someone. I also believe that people are essentially indivisible: you cannot share yourself with more than one other person. There is only you, one being; you can't give 100% of that to two others, or any other number. You can give it to one and only one. It's not all about love. Love is not enough. The polys may be right with their irritatingly trite little maxims like "love is infinite"; that doesn't signify. It's not just about love. Love is not enough to make a relationship work.
The polys also talk about need and dependancy as an evil thing to be stamped out. That, too, is tragic. It's a normal, necessary, vital part of the pair-bond. Hearing people preach against it makes me think of the amputee-fetishists, who feel wrong until they have a perfectly working limb cut off. To stretch the metaphor, they might talk about the elegance of having only one leg, how your feet never tangle, you never need to match socks and other tiny so-called "benefits", while they resolutely refuse to see that they have actually crippled themselves. Another comparison is the hard-line Deaf in America, who are campaigning for the right to raise their hearing children to speak only sign. They refuse to admit that they are handicapped; they see themselves as free of a distraction and merely forming a different linguistic group. Bully for them; they are wrong, of course, but their minds are their own. However, if their principles lead them to cause their otherwise normal and healthy children to be handicapped by not having speech - and if you don't acquire it in your first couple of years, those brain areas never develop and you become permanently impaired - then that is child abuse and is not to be tolerated on any grounds, no matter what the cause.
Some people are different and are happy that way. Fine. It is a critical error to think that because of this, they must "spread the word" and enlighten the rest of us. We're fine how we are, thanks; we don't need "fixing".
Whew! What a screed!
I guess the direct answer to your question is, I wish someone had asked me how I feel about polyamory.
dougs redux.He has interviewed me before, 8 months ago.
Now, he asks...
1. I interviewed you previously. At the time you said "Asking him was a considered decision. He did not give me easy, quickly-dismissed questions. I didn’t think he would.". As you re-read those questions and answers, how much has changed in the last seven months? Would you give the same answers again?
2. There's been some talk recently of plans to move away from London. Are there firm plans, is there an earnest effort to seek employment in distant parts? Or is there simply an openness to consider opportunities elsewhere if they happen to arise?
3. Some people are freelancers, some are self-employed, some have short contracts with assorted clients, some people are conventional full-time employees. There are good and sound arguments on each side. Tell us where you find yourself in this matter, and how your position has changed over the past year or so.
4. At the tail-end of October, you had your head shaved. You may have formed (or refined) a view subsequently concerning the assumptions people make about yourself based on your appearance. Could you share your insights?
5. Is there a question that you wish you had been asked that no-one's asked you yet? Tell us what it is -- and then answer it.
1. As I said in Doug's -- Dougs'? :¬) -- own LJ:
Same answers, by and large, yes. I'd be more willing now to talk about sexual fetishes to some degree than I was, with my opaque remark that that was censored; there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then. But that's about all.
2. The plans are not terribly firm -- but simply because I am appalling at planning such things. Confronted with a task such as choosing a University, getting a degree, getting a job, getting a bike licence, buying a bike, buying a house, I invariably simply quail and gibber -- until the moment is upon me and then I just do it.
I firmly intend to do it and am off to Dublin on Thursday for a recce mission -- as well as to have a good time, I hope! But yes. I don't wish to be overly dramatic, but I need some new hopes and aspirations and dreams; all my old ones have turned to dust now. I quote Thomas Dolby's I live in a suitcase:
"They say travel broadens the mind, so I went over the falls in a barrel."
3. I think of myself as a pure freelancer. I don't normally work on contracts or for anyone; I work for myself, selling my time and nothing else, as a gun for hire. I stumbled into this, really, but I find I really like it, although I sometimes miss the social element of working in a company. The snag is that I can't really do it anywhere else. In theory, the journalism would work from anywhere, but practically, I need a network of computers to test stuff on and benefit hugely from a broadband connection. So when I do go a-roaming, I'll have to go back into wage slavery. The plan is to become a contractor, in which case, I will be working for other people. Although a contractor runs their own company, they are still effectively employed by a company to do a job. I've done it; it was fine, but I lost the freedom I currently enjoy. The snag is that I also have to be my own advertising and marketing man and I really hate that, so I don't really have enough business on at the moment, so I'm currently rather poor... But although I enjoy my liberty and my lifestyle, I'm not hugely proud about it and will give it up if that seems expedient.
4. Head shaving. It was odd; it was both much more of a change than I expected and much less. It hasn't massively changed how people view me, as far as I can tell, although people do treat a skinhead with a certain wariness. That's a passing phase, though. At first, I didn't recognise myself. I had lots of phantom habits I no longer needed. I'd pull on or off clothes over my head, then try to neaten my hair or pull out my ponytail. I'd go to push it back, straighten the ponytail, reach to tie it up in the morning, and there was nothing there. This was like an amputation or something. There's lots more, but this consistently threw me.
On the other hand, I acquired new ones: stroking my head, feeling the short hair as it grew. It's now long enough that I gel it -- as
flickgc puts it, with peculiar emphasis, "you have product in your hair!" (Eerily foretelling today's Megatokyo.) This means I can't stroke it any more and it keeps catching me out. As Frodo said, "it's all sticky".I'm told I look younger. That's fine. I'm not as bald as I feared I'd be: I'm quite comfortable with my hairline as it now stands revealed. What is odd is how many people consider it to be a huge thing, a major change, something very brave. It's not really - it's just a haircut. T'ain't no thang. I don't miss it. The only vestige is that I have a strange, powerful desire to tell people that I had really long hair until just recently, honest. :¬)
5. A question no-one's asked me? Aieesh! Er, no, not really. As with anyone who is unhealthily obsessed about something, I have an insatiable need to talk about the failure of my relationship and what happened. It's doesn't really help, though, except in the vague way that repeatedly discussing something robs it of its emotional impact, takes away its power. I'm considering writing some kind of summing-up, of my views on poly and things, and putting it up here as a public post, but I'm not sure it'd be helpful. I'm also considering an open letter to Kirsty for when I leave. These things might be cathartic. Something I find it interesting is this: for a while, I considered posting a rant about polyamory, about how I hated it and loathed it and it was all a load of bullshit. But I can't. I don't have it in me. I do actually respect it as a way of life. It's a little like being gay or bi; I have no issue with that at all, although I am aware of and respect the difference, and this occasionally gets me attacked for "prejudice" by people who do not know me and are unused to my degree of forthrightness. (Well, tough tittie.) I am happy with people who express their sexuality as part of their personality; I am sure that I do. But personally, I'm straight; I am not interested in having any kind of homosexual dalliance, not even out of curiosity. You do whatever you like, but don't -- ha ha -- shove it down my throat.
Poly is the same. I am not poly, never will be poly, never want to be poly. It offers nothing I want or need. Yet I have had poly evangelists telling me I'm stupid, blind, ignorant, biased, bigoted; that I am culturally conditioned; that monogamy is unnatural and wrong and all humans are at heart poly and are just trained out of it. That, I believe, is utter drivel and I am heartily sick of it. If poly people want to be with other poly people, that's fine. But poly people with monogamous people is an abomination, an offense; it is cruel and unusual punishment. If someone decides that they are poly, they should keep the hell away from monos forevermore. There might be some rare beings who have no jealousy, no possessiveness, no need for exclusivity, and they might be able to be happily monogamous with a poly partner. I'm not 100% convinced they exist -- I've never met one -- but they might. If so, they are not truly mono; they are non-practising polys themselves.
To a number of my friends who say they are thinking of becoming poly, I say, do not do it blindly. Do lots of reading, lots of research, join some support groups and things and talk to people. Don't place any trust in wretched back-slapping clubs like news:alt.polyamory or
polyamory; there is little of value there. It's all smug zealots preaching to the converted. The battle lines of people talking about their relationships breaking down and the searing agony of loss and betrayal and insecurity and anxiety and anger, that's when you find out about it for real.Poly is currently trendy. Lots of people are dipping toes into the water. BTDT. It's only going to end in pain and misery for most of them.
Personally, for myself, I do not believe at all that the polyamourous "networks of intimacy" and so forth really compare at all to the deep bond between two people who have devoted their lives to one another. I feel that from all that I've seen, poly group relationships are a pale, tragic, rather pathetic shadow of the power and the strength that can come from totally giving yourself to someone. I also believe that people are essentially indivisible: you cannot share yourself with more than one other person. There is only you, one being; you can't give 100% of that to two others, or any other number. You can give it to one and only one. It's not all about love. Love is not enough. The polys may be right with their irritatingly trite little maxims like "love is infinite"; that doesn't signify. It's not just about love. Love is not enough to make a relationship work.
The polys also talk about need and dependancy as an evil thing to be stamped out. That, too, is tragic. It's a normal, necessary, vital part of the pair-bond. Hearing people preach against it makes me think of the amputee-fetishists, who feel wrong until they have a perfectly working limb cut off. To stretch the metaphor, they might talk about the elegance of having only one leg, how your feet never tangle, you never need to match socks and other tiny so-called "benefits", while they resolutely refuse to see that they have actually crippled themselves. Another comparison is the hard-line Deaf in America, who are campaigning for the right to raise their hearing children to speak only sign. They refuse to admit that they are handicapped; they see themselves as free of a distraction and merely forming a different linguistic group. Bully for them; they are wrong, of course, but their minds are their own. However, if their principles lead them to cause their otherwise normal and healthy children to be handicapped by not having speech - and if you don't acquire it in your first couple of years, those brain areas never develop and you become permanently impaired - then that is child abuse and is not to be tolerated on any grounds, no matter what the cause.
Some people are different and are happy that way. Fine. It is a critical error to think that because of this, they must "spread the word" and enlighten the rest of us. We're fine how we are, thanks; we don't need "fixing".
Whew! What a screed!
I guess the direct answer to your question is, I wish someone had asked me how I feel about polyamory.
