Category Archives: Essays

This is a very boring name for me writing about the stuff that’s on my mind. I strive to make the essays more interesting than the word “essays” and this description.

The Anxious, Exhausted, Exasperated Imposter

Yesterday afternoon and evening I had some issues.

Each week it falls to me to do the write-up of the Writing Excuses episode that will be airing Sunday night or Monday morning. Usually it falls to me to do this on Sunday, which is not my favorite day for getting work done. It’s also not an activity I love, because listening to myself talk while not being able to correct the stuff I get wrong (now that I’ve had more time to think about it) is painful.

This Sunday I got an email from Producer Jordo explaining that this latest episode (9.52: From the Page to the Stage) had serious source audio problems which took a long time to clean up.  Also, he said that he’d had to pull the episode from our queue for Season 10 because even after our big episode scheduling thread, we’d screwed up, and needed to post 54 episodes during 2014, leaving Season 10’s first quarter two episodes shy of where we thought it was.

Worse still, this particular episode is one in which Brandon was unavailable, so it fell to me to drive the discussion. It’s not a thing I struggle with, but those are still big shoes to fill.

Add to that the fact that I’d had horrible insomnia the night before, and I was having some mental-health moments (my inner spectator is pretty good at telling me when the depression or anxiety is unfounded)  and perhaps you can understand the perfect storm I was caught in.

I was, no lie, AFRAID to listen to episode 9.52 so that I could write a single paragraph, add some categories and tags, and post it. I was tired, anxious, frustrated, and suffering from imposter syndrome thanks to a mixture of external stimuli and bad brain chemistry.

I finally forced myself to do my job, and I could tell that the episode was pretty good. Maybe even great. Jordo’s cleanup on the audio was awesome, and the discussion flowed really well. But in spite of what I could clearly hear as a solid installment in the Writing Excuses franchise, I was still anxious and miserable. I was hanging out as much as possible with my inner spectator, but it’s easier to watch misery than to be it, but only barely.

Bad brain chemistry. Lying in bed an hour or so later I told Sandra that what I really wanted was to be happy so I could get out of the bleachers and ride the happy part instead of hiding up there while misery dominated the playing field. Only when I said it I think I rambled more.

This morning I feel fine. Sleep helps, as does a fresh dose of medication, a good breakfast, and a couple hundred milligrams of caffeine (it should be filed under “medication,” but it’s mixed with the 24 ounces of water I get at breakfast so it’s in its own category.) I look back at last night and am amazed at how poorly I was coping. Why was that so difficult? Was it really that bad?

Answer: Yes. Yes it was. And that’s why I write about these things. I need to remember that the bad brain chemistry days are real things, and while it’s possible that I’ll stop having them altogether, I’m not helping anybody if, while I’m happy, I decide that I don’t actually have a problem.

(Note: Further insight into my mental health can be found in the creative non-fiction piece “No. I’m Fine.” which you can read and share at no charge.)

The Price of Mental Health

20141208_140004The soda and the 30-day prescription in the top shelf of the cart cost almost exactly as much as everything else in the cart put together.

This is a nice illustration of the price of mental health.

I’m fortunate. I only see these numbers at the end of the year when I hit the cap on my insurance. Also, I can afford to spend as much on one bottle of pills for one person as I spend on an entire month’s worth of food for one person (not to mention the fact that I can afford to buy luxury items like bulk frozen pizzas and fancy cheese.)

Also, next year there won’t be a cap. The prescription will cost about as much as that box of five dozen eggs.

(Note: The complete contents of the cart, top and bottom, set me back $306. Also note: That particular bottle of pills is only one of the three monthly prescriptions I must fill. It just happens to be the one that put me over the cap.)

Law Enforcement, Violence, and Racial Bias

Police kill more young, black males, per capita than any other demographic, and when they do, they are very unlikely to be indicted, let alone convicted. National news has covered this extensively. Locally, here in Utah we’ve learned that police officers kill more people than gang violence or drug crimes do.

There are those who will dispute these facts, citing holes in the data due to the large number of police departments that don’t provide information. Personally, I suspect that if all police departments provided data on Officer Involved Shootings we’d be collectively appalled and ashamed of ourselves. Assuming we’re not already, what with so many police forces not telling us what’s going on.

The law says that police officers have the right and responsibility to use force, up to and including lethal force, in the discharge of their duties. I agree with the law, but I also believe that it takes an enormous amount of training and skill to operate justly, ethically, and morally under that law.

I am afraid that our police officers are currently embedded in a culture where a number of factors, including racism, increase the likelihood that they will use lethal force against unarmed black males. Training and skill notwithstanding, bad things are happening.

I said “factors.” Racism is the big one, but the word “racism” is a heavily overburdened term. It has baggage. When I use it, I’m not suggesting that cops are consciously racist*. I’m saying that there is an unconscious bias in place, and it centers upon skin color. I’ve found racism and other biases in my own work, and they’re hard to root out. So when I say “racism” it’s not an accusation. It’s a diagnosis. (*Note: See “UPDATE” at the end of this post.)

Another factor in play is a bias commonly found among social workers and customer support representatives as well as police officers. Its sufferers tend to suspect the worst in people. It’s like confirmation bias with a dash of PTSD thrown in. In the case of police officers, it increases the likelihood of violent confrontation across the board.

Unfortunately, the mechanisms we have in place to counter this, to discipline officers for excessive violence are too closely tied, organizationally and personally, to the officers subject to discipline. District attorneys and chiefs of police work together closely. In their day-to-day operation, police departments and prosecuting attorneys benefit from departmental and personal cooperation. It’s how they get their jobs done. But this effectiveness has a price: it prevents departments from fully disciplining officers who abuse the powers granted them under the law.

Summarized and oversimplified for impact: Our culture is driving police officers to shoot unarmed black men, and law enforcement agencies default to protecting those officers from the consequences of their actions.

If I were black, I’d be outraged, and terrified, and I would feel helpless to change the system.

I’m white, and frankly, I’m a lot more afraid of police officers than I used to be. I’m outraged, and terrified, and I feel helpless to change the system.

I’m also grieving. I hurt for those who have lost loved ones. I identify with them. I have a daughter Michael Brown’s age. I have a son Tamir Rice’s age. My kids cosplay like Darrien Hunt did.  I’m a little older than Eric Garner, and like him I have asthma, and children. Some might say that it’s a good thing my family and I are white, but that shouldn’t have to be a good thing, and it hurts to know that some might say that.

I am encouraged, however, by the attention this issue is getting. This no longer feels like a story-of-the-week to me. We’re paying attention now, and that means we can change things.

(Aside: “Now that white people are paying attention, we’ll see some changes.” Yes, it kind of reads like that, and yes, that suggests that our entire society operates within a fog of racial biases. I say “fog” because fog is one of those things you don’t really see until you collide with things that it was hiding.)

I have friends, some of them quite close, who are police officers. I hold them in high regard. They tackle a demanding, dangerous job with an attitude of selflessness that I admire and aspire to. One of those friends once told me that he’d rather take a punch than throw one, and would prefer to take a bullet than take a life. In his work, he daily seeks to defuse situations so that they do not come down to kill-or-be-killed decisions. His approach demands a skill set that looks like a mash-up of dual PhDs in sociology and psychology along with being a champion of speed chess.

If all police officers were like him, we wouldn’t have this problem. Of course, if all people were like him, we wouldn’t need police officers.


 UPDATE: After reading the DOJ report on their investigation of the Ferguson, MO police department, I’m afraid that in their case I gave them too much benefit of the doubt. While bias-based policing is often unconscious, in Ferguson it was conscious, deliberate, and vicious. From the introductory paragraph to the chilling section entitled “Racial Bias”:

Ferguson’s approach to law enforcement both reflects and reinforces racial bias, including stereotyping. The harms of Ferguson’s police and court practices are borne disproportionately by African Americans, and there is evidence that this is due in part to intentional discrimination on the basis of race.

Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, p4 (PDF p.7)

That DOJ report is exactly the kind of information that the American people need to have about those who police us, and it serves as a horrifying example of what happens when police forces become institutionally unaccountable for their behavior.


(NOTE: Comments are off, and will remain so. This is a position piece, not an invitation to have a discussion. I’ve written my thoughts, and if they inspire you to write yours, there are lots of better places for you to do so.)

Muting, And Why I’m a Selfish Twitterer

Twitter has a mute function, and I use it rather indiscriminately. I’m kind of selfish that way. Life is short, and while there are thousands of people willing to listen to me (a happy accident no doubt related to how I earn my keep) I don’t have the time to listen to each and every one of them.

But I have friends whose tweets I want to read, and with whom I want to converse. Publicly, even. I also enjoy interacting with random fans, assuming the interaction is a nice one. I especially enjoy interacting with interesting people, and learning new things.

Unfortunately, Twitter creates the illusion that we are right there in the room while our favorite entertainers banter with one another. The temptation to interject is strong. So we interject. I know, I’ve embarrassed myself doing this exact thing.

In the real world, walking up to a conversation and dropping a one-liner is a bit of a faux pas, and holding up your tablet to show everybody a video, even if it’s related, will get you shouldered out of the circle in short order. (I could tell you a story about that exact thing happening in a bar at Westercon, but then you’d want names, and the location of the body, and I may have already said too much.)

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Twitter works similarly. Conversations are interesting to listen to, but we should take care before jumping into them with our two cents.

Sometimes I’ll invite all kinds of random input by putting a call out to “the Hivemind.” Recently I asked about Android devices, and got lots of good feedback. The only people I muted were the people who replied by telling me I should stick with the iPhone.

And that brings us to my criteria. Here are a few of the things that will likely earn a muting from me:

  • At-messaging me with unsolicited advice, especially medical advice
  • Tweeting unsolicited links at me
  • Tweeting a video link at me without telling me what it is I’d be watching
  • Answering a question by haranguing me about the context
  • Complaining about a joke I told
  • Not getting the joke, and replying with unsolicited medical advice, or a video link, or really anything
  • Complaining to me about something I retweeted
  • Trolling (sometimes this merits blocking)
  • Spamming (this usually merits blocking)
  • Tweeting at me a lot, especially in a short period of time, when we’re not actually having a conversation.

Does this sound selfish? It should, because it is selfish. But I haven’t listed the worst one yet:

  • Telling me a lame joke.

Jokes are everywhere, and while most people can find the easy punchline, it takes a lot of thought to reach beyond the low-hanging fruit and find something genuinely funny. And as I’ve said before, Twitter is the garden of low-hanging fruit.

Sometimes I’ll tell a joke on Twitter, reaching high into the tree for a good punchline, and somebody will reply at me with the low-hanging fruit that I reached past. Tweets like that correlate strongly with feeds full of underdeveloped jokes, and the desire to share them indiscriminately.

Muted. Life’s too short for me to listen to the same joke over and over.

(Note: if I’m ever guilty of these things, and that bugs you, by all means mute me. Or unfollow me. Because life’s short, and frankly, your time is worth as much to you as mine is to me.)