Birds of a Feather

Various updates.

An Up?: As expected in my last long, emotional post on Taylor Swift Album Release Day, my long-time friend reached out as predicted. It has gone better than a part of me thought it would. The contact has remained a bit consistent, even if sometimes she does not get back to me the same day. Sometimes, I still feel like that she decides "tl;dr" about a lot of the things I send her, but I also think it might just be a difference in communication styles.

She gave me a health update and explained that she actually is taking actions to correct a rather severe nutrient deficiency and is feeling better.

I'm really relieved to hear that there might be a reason for her and, subsequently, our connection to get better. I feel like an asshole for being frustrated that she was kind of not available for a year and a half, with rare and variable exceptions, because I know she's had a hard time physically and emotionally, too.

As expressed in a replies to my previous post, there was a period of time back in 2016 when this friend really hurt me in a way that I think was something she kind of "had" to do in order to hit a rock bottom place from which she got into therapy. However, shortly after she got into therapy, I felt like that her conditions for being in relationship with anyone basically meant that she wanted groupies rather than friends. Others needed to support her in her mental health journey, but she had no emotional bandwidth or patience for anyone else's needs.

In the years since, we've talked about how people who are in a bad place who start therapy often kind of take a therapist's guidance and hear what they want to hear. Their first efforts to make adjustments can sound like "actually therapy makes you a terrible person???" but the therapist can then hear from the client and be like, "Ma'am that is not what I said. It's what you interpreted from what I said with a very broad brush."

Anyway, I am hopeful for the friendship, but I just have this broader frustration with the fact that I feel like even in my very close relationships -- close friends, family, etc. -- that I actually put my money and support where my mouth is. I try to genuinely help people instead of just giving them thoughts and prayers. However, it feels like the vast majority of people really do not offer actionable support even when you're supposedly close. People aren't willing to sacrifice anything for each other. And that ends up making me feel like an overdrawn bank account, sometimes, though I don't feel like the answer is to become exclusively self-serving?

Anyway...

A Down: I kind of think the new Taylor Swift album sucks. I've thought about expressing my feelings about it through some kind of open letter to her she'll never read, but I also feel like a better use of my time would be to invest my time into listening to music that I actually like for a while and giving Taylor Swift a time to simmer and see if she can ever learn to onboard valid criticism ever again in her entire life.

It's tricky, because there have been times when she was criticized for simply being a famous white woman, for simply daring to date around and try to fin "the one" even if it's messy, or whatever. However, I think that she has over-inoculated herself against criticism to the point that she hears all criticism as unfair and not understanding of her very unique situation.

Plus, no one can become and remain a billionaire without some damage to their hearts if not their brains.

Her last album, TTPD, contained a lot bitterness including some of it directed at her fanbase. I think she really blames a lot of them for the failure of her relationship with Matty Healy, and I don't think she's forgiven them despite being oh-so-happy with her new man.

There's something so petty and meangirl about this new album, in most places, that it feels like something she should have done in her 20s and not her mid-30s if at all.

Anyway, I was never a hardcore "swiftie" where I was convinced that there was hidden genius and Da Vinci Codes or whatever in every single one of her choices. However, there's a kind of pain associated with finding very clear evidence that a person your age that you ind of viewed as a poetic representation of your generation is being so regressive at this particular moment. But, like I said, billionaires do not have normal functioning human hearts and brains, so there's some hope on my part that she'll be humbled and become someone whose art I like again, but right now there's a sour taste in my mouth.

I don't hate her. I'm just disappointed.

An Up: The other day, a group of people who do global music outreach came to do a three-day workshop with our Year 7 students, and I got to pop in a few times and see performances, including the finale where the workshop cast and then the Year 7s also danced and sang. It reminded me of how powerful live art can be, and I've been filling some of my Taylor-shaped void with revisiting musicals.

I have this tendency to go through months where I only listen to spoken content, so it was nice to have a reminder of how music and dance and things can be like visceral therapy.

A Down: I'm still struggling to find writing consistency and motivation, and it feels like a part of me is missing or atrophied.

A Down: Trying to work stuff out with the OCT and eventual Canadian immigration/work permit options is being a royal pain in the ass. I finally got the fingerprinting company handling my most recent piece of the puzzle to contact me back after emailing them WEEKS ago (they said my email address was generic and sometimes they don't get those? like why provide an email for assistance if you do not notice or answer emails from real-name gmail addresses??? who are you expecting to email you?) and calling two days in a row to leave a message. Initially, they told me they had not received my package at all yet. However...

An Up: The reason they had not received my package at all was because Canada Post went on a strike like two days after the package was mailed from the US. This means it was probably just sitting in the Canada Post's stockpile for days and weeks. However, the guy emailed me back and said they got my package the day after I finally got them to communicate with me.

A Down: I bought a little bookshelf type thing from amazon and thought I could put it together by myself, but I simply do not have the elbow grease to do it manually. I had to order an electric screwdriver, so for now I have pieces of a shelf in a random spot on the floor. One reason it's hard to organize my small space is that I do not have a specific place for everything, so here's hoping I don't get so disgusted that I simply have to pay to have someone cart it away.