Thoughts swilling around, a miscellany

[kaberett]

• Despite not even a tiny bit being in MCU fandom, I look forward enormously to recessional's Winter Soldier shortfic snippets - they seriously make my day; they feel like a gift every time, as does Mia's art, as I've mentioned, and a whole bunch of things the rest of you do, that just feel like moments of grace. I was feeling slightly wistful about wanting to be able to provide that, those bubbles of joy, and then I realised that probably actually I do - probably some of you do react to my poetry the same way, and that is a wonder in itself.
  
• I had an excellent conversation with @taliskimberley at WorldCon about craft vs inspiration wrt poetry/lyric, and about how the 50-poems-in-a-year project I have going on is about teaching myself to trust craft more.
  
• I was at a poetry event a few months ago, about mental health and poetry, and one of the participants - I think one of the support acts? - made a derogatory comment about "confessional" poetry. It's been getting to me; I'm struggling with the fact that most of my poetry is very short, is intensely personal, and is about experiencing the world as myself in a very direct sense, rather than having... grand sweeping scope? And I'm mostly okay with that, but occasionally I let the thing rattle me (and, surprise, it was a middle-aged white dude being all "pfft who needs confessional poetry anyway it's just DULL"), and I'm trying to work out how to work with that.
  
• On an entirely different topic, while drifting off to sleep the other night I had an obviously brilliant insight about why we're so drawn to narratives where a protagonist has a destiny to fulfill (into every generation, The Boy Who Lived, etc), and then I fell asleep before writing it down, and now I am managing to reconstruct it only piecemeal - something about having purpose, about external executive function, about finding a place in the world, about what it means to turn away from manifest destiny and why we seek it out, and so on. Perhaps I will be able to put it back together at Some Point; perhaps not.
  
• One of my bits of brain-homework that I've been stuck on for a while is "It’s easy to ignore our talents when we measure them with the wrong yardstick. Not everyone is good at public speaking, computer programming, or heli-skiing—and not everyone should be. This diversity of talents is what makes the world so interesting. Ponder: Which of your own natural talents, preferences, and abilities have you been judging by a faulty yardstick?" Now I reckon I'm pretty good at knowing my capabilities and ways I want to improve them in; I don't think are many things I'm actually good at that I'm overlooking/ignoring. So, er, would you all mind saying if you think there's anything that meets this? Because I suspect finding it this difficult is a good reason for me to keep staring at it. *chinhand*

Comments

[liv]

I kind of interpreted the "faulty yardstick" thing differently from some other commenters: it's not so much things you're good at but you underestimate how good you are at them, it's things you're good at but you only notice the domains where you're less successful. My example for you would be something to do with independence and community.

You're a couple of years out of university, there's a kind of expectation that people at your life-stage are going to be very focused on being independent, so you're perhaps measuring yourself by a yardstick of things like paying for your living costs, organizing your time so you can have the lifestyle you want while getting all your necessary tasks done, all the sorts of things that teenagers and maybe young students are just learning how to do for the first time and are supposed to have mastered by now. I'm not saying you're bad at this, but it's maybe not your main strength. Instead what you're good at is creating community, finding ways to rely on other people successfully without being a drain on them, contributing love and beauty and education and making connections between people as well as the more immediately visible practical tasks.

Or, to take a more concrete example: are you "bad at" feeding yourself because you don't always manage to schedule, prepare and eat regular meals? Are you "bad at" cooking cos you tend to improvise and put things together intuitively and your go-to dishes aren't the most obvious ones for the majority culture? I think no, I think a better framing is that you are good at food-related hospitality, inviting people round spontaneously and throwing together something delicious. Making people happy by suddenly appearing with cake. Dealing sensitively with other people's dietary needs. Maybe that's a bad example because you already know that you're exceptionally good at cooking in a somewhat unconventional way, but it's one where I can imagine the faulty yardstick thing applying.

[kaberett]

Huh. This is a very good call: thank you. I will ponder reframings, and expect to bring this up with my counsellor next session (along with everyone else...)

Brief comment because still chewing on this. It's a big thought to take in, and I am grateful.

[azurelunatic]

*draws hearts around this comment*

[kaberett]

*DRAWS HEARTS AROUND ♥YOU♥*