Brief update on the layout

 I deleted "Dear Introvert" from the slim blogroll here, for two reasons, both related to its content.

First, "introverts" aren't the same as "highly sensitive people."

Second, "introvert" has one meaning in everyday social psychology and another entirely in Jungianism. The site, as I noticed by its most recent posts, is HEAVY into MMPI 16-type personality, which of course is a repackaged and updated Jungianism. I couldn't in good conscience keep it here.

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That said, looking at some specific posts on Marc Lewis' recovery blog, I can say: Take a look at it! I'm doing so as I write.

Glad to be single and childless

Should I live to be 80, I might be regretting the childless part then. We'll see.

I'll probably never regret the the single part, other than my hormones for a number of years, if no friends with benefits situations cross the stage of life for me.

But that's it.

I have no desire to be partnered with anyone who might invade my space and want to change me. And, yes, I'll be accused of either sexual or gender stereotypes, but I do think that, among heterosexual relationships, the woman often wants to change the man, and the man often wants the woman not to change. Call it a generalization, not a stereotype. How this plays out in gay and lesbian relationships, I have no idea. But, to build on stereotypes like "butch" and "femme," something similar probably exists there.

Triggering this?

The ad salesperson at my paper. Cute. Boinkable to be blunt.

But, man, there's no way I'd want to actually be with her. I suspect control tendencies run high, and I know that perfectionism does.

Childless?

After seeing ongoing intereactions between my three sibs that have kids, and at least some of their kids, and knowing that, per a secular interpretation of Judaism's first of its ten divarim, this is something that has passed down three or four generations? I'm glad that I'm not involved with passing things down another generation.

Fuck you, Homefries

 This is in part taken from a "journaling letter" to him and in part the background to it.

Homefries, No. 3 of my three older brothers, and No. 2 of my abusing brothers, sent a group text a month ago to me, my sister, the other brothers, and other family and friends. He's been furloughed from his oil and gas industry outdoor sales job for a couple of months now. (I was going to post his actual first name, but eventually decided not to.)

Saying he didn't want to be a "goldbrick" or similar, and talking about all the "other people" he thought were, with expanded unemployment bennies and such, he said he was thinking about taking a courier type driving job, even if at near minimum wage and having to Obamacare on health. (He's still getting bennies, plus unemployment-furlough pay.)

Homefries is the most Trump Train of my three brothers, and the closest to a full-on racist, having called Obama a "blackie" when talking to me, and presumably worse elsewhere.

Well, right after this text, visiting the dentist for the first time in many years, I found out I needed the stump of one tooth pulled, likely another, then a root canal and other things. For a variety of reasons, I don't have dental insurance and haven't. 

I refused to text Homefries back at the time because I didn't even want to cosign his Trump Train virtue signaling bullshit. But, my new medical status led me to the "journaling letter," which is now excerpted.

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Dear Homefries:

Just fuck you. 

Years and years ago I accepted your non-pology for the abuse, indeed, what was even a non-admission of your sexual abusing me, when you said you regretted not protecting sis and I from Billy Bob (the oldest brother) as an actual covert admission.

No more.

The virtue signaling crossed a line.

First, given your "Blackie" and many other things, I have little doubt who you thing these "other people" are. That's not just because of your words, but because the oilfield industry tilts heavily toward racist white people in its employ.

Second, as far as goldbricking, start iwth Trump and his his family.

So, again, shut the fuck up.

Third, you work in an industry that sucks heavily off the federal and state teats.

Fourth, it's also heavily exploitative of our land and planet, even if you're a climate change denialist.

That leads to the intellectual and personal side.

First, you work for an industry very exploitative of its employees.

Second, you're 61.

It's not easy finding better jobs without a college background.

Related? You've got a bad back already from a driving-heavy job background. And, you want to continue that for less money?

Back to the moral side. 

As I set here staring a boatload of dental work in the face, your virtue signaling also has a degree of personal offensiveness.

I'm still not replying to you, still not co-signing your bullshit.

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Update, Nov. 4: Turns out Homefries took the job. I don't know for sure if it has O-care or "bennies." I briefly acknowledged his text saying he'd taken it. Didn't realize it, but he is only using his late wife's phone now, so he had to go to "his" phone to get it.

Update, Dec. 3: Also, as far as people "not wanting to work," should I, in a dying industry, ever get downsized or whatever again, and because of age and dying industry, have extra trouble finding work? If I'm eligible for the federal 99-week extended unemployment, and it still exists, I'll take it.

22 years, and I forgot that, too

Just as I forgot that dad would have been 90 this year (although I did not forget mom's 90th a year ago), I forgot my sobriety anniversary for a week or so since it passed.

I don't think there's any big deal to it (although others might think otherwise), but forget I did.

Rather, as I type, I see three other angles.

One is that coronavirus-related additional busyness at work has just burdened my mind in general.

Maybe because it's not a "milestone" anniversary like my 20th, is another reason.

The third is that I'm not the same person I was years ago. I define myself less in terms of being a "sobrietist," per the term many in Lifering use (and also less in terms of being an abuse survivor) and more in terms of someone who, being past a certain age, and counting the clock just from the start of adulthood, is officially in middle age, and has the worries of middle age in general, and some additional ones particular to Merika and to my career at this time.

I also have one other issue, or thought, related to that.

I saw in the latest Johnnie Reporter that Bruce Klassen died. Now, if Bruce still had his Winfield weight problems, he wasn't the healthiest of persons by any means. That still doesn't make it nicer.

I hated college, too

Not as much as grade school, junior high or high school, no.

But, in hindsight, I hated St. John's to some degree.

Not just "had regrets" about the college and career path I was "steered into," which I've had ever since I escaped the fowler's snare.

But hated. More than disliked. Hated.

Just popped into my mind June 5, and I decided to do a journaling-type blog post about it over several days.

What prompted this was looking at Marie's friends lists on Facebook, and the number of St. John's girls who I thought were diffident at best, stuck-up at worst. None of them seemed "relatable" to me because ... I was a runt who had zero relational skills and a life crushed by sexual abuse by brothers, covert sexual abuse by mom, and a few sexual putdowns by dad, along with one instance of sexual competitiveness and other things.

I wasn't bullied by guys as an albino wolf. But, no girls "hit on me." None.

Brenda and Debbie did at Gallup. Cathey in her twisted way at Hobbs. And what's her name, in a sick way, the lesbian manhunter in Mineral Wells.

And that's it.

Maybe, without the outwardly expressed anger — and it wouldn't be at those girls, ladies women — that, in addition to the "be married to the church" idea, or maybe even as a subset of that idea, is why seminary was appealing.

That's not to say that my young adult development might not have been worse yet at a state university of 3,000, let alone 10,000.

On the women, maybe, just as boys saw me as the white wolf to be bullied as a kid, girls, then women, saw me as the white wolf to be rejected. Maybe they recognized that I had some subconscious fears, in part because of mom's covert abuse, plus feeling "dirty" otherwise.

Sidebar: Dad would have been 90 on this date. I totally forgot about it until sis mentioned it to me. It's progress that I didn't even remember it. When he died and I cried, I missed what I wish he could have been. I missed still being afraid enough of him to not make that clearer. And I missed "closure," at least to a degree.

But, I also missed that that past couldn't be undone. I still miss that today. And that's all.

Recovery from religious trauma

The Dallas Observer has an in-depth story about Kathryn Keller, a Metroplex counselor who specializes in recovery from religious trauma.

And, yes, it's real, and as the only one of my siblings to move beyond my fundamentalist Lutheran childhood, it's needed.

As with the sexual, emotional and physical abuse of childhood, I don't think I've totally recovered from this one, either.

Keller rightly notes that religious abuse, like other types, occurs on a continuum. And she's active with her church tradition herself, so she's not an atheist trying to tear down faith.

She says that it can, like other forms of abuse in childhood, if ongoing, cause not just PTSD but complex PTSD. Agreed.

And, if you have a parent who is a religious leader, even if the abusiveness isn't that bad, that increases the ongoing factor.

I rejected my childhood beliefs on both intellectual and emotional-psychological grounds. I probably would have done so anyway, even without seeing the hypocrisy firsthand. But, that did add to the issue.

The year in review

The first big thing was moving to Muenster, and getting out of Sulphur Springs just before Moser bought the paper there. No idea how much he would have held Marlin over my head, but he would have.

It's not been perfect here. Transitions from an old guard team, and mistakes. Add to that Shannon's anxiety and perfectionism levels, and feeling put too much under a microscope by my one column.

At the same time, I overall like it, and overall have less stress than Sulphur Springs. Plus, I make more money, especially with the gamble of not buying Obamacare. That's even more true after a raise.

Off the job, Gainesville's library does ILLs, which puts it ahead of Sulphur Springs for sure.

And Denton? Learning more and more than for most "ritzy" groceries and more, I don't have to go to Dallas. Has an art museum I've not yet been to, an old courthouse museum (ditto), a pretty funky square area, a great quad at TWU and more. And all almost 10 miles closer to Gainesville than Paris was to Sulphur Springs for Kroger, let alone the Metroplex.

Muenster itself is not bad to nice for a small town its size. But, it's cliquish like Rosebud, and even more inbred than most Protestant small towns its size here in Texas.

On the personal growth side? I decided to try a paid membership in a hookup-type website. Never again. Got my credit card hacked via there, and more than ever, the parent company dumps half a dozen chat sites together. Plus, little local selection, and not even decent nibbles beyond the local. And, 98 percent of "nibbles" are clearly fakes.

That said, overall, I've become a bit more detached from such things. A little more often, I feel a bit less like staring at a screen like that.

On the rest of the personal side, I'm becoming more aware of interpersonal dynamics and others' personalities more quickly than in the past. This last year saw definite growth there.

I still dream about work at times. Weirdly, I dream more about things that need to be done that aren't actually part of what I actually do, than I did in Sulphur Springs. I have no idea why. That wasn't the case in Marlin or Center, as best as I can recall.

And that's where we're at on the new year.

Facebook clean-ups and timeouts

Well, I just whacked about 10 friends from my Facebook friends list. Of those that remain, about one-quarter of the non-St. John's friends have been marked as acquaintances.

I had just returned from my second Facebook timeout. This one was four days; I think the first was five, if not a whole week.

It was enough, and I think good enough, for me to think about doing it one week a month. It would help social media detachment. Now, do I do this one week a month with Twitter? If so, the next step after that is to do it some week with both at the same time.

As for the whole issue about whether online friends are really friends or not, to the same degree as meatspace friends?

Outside of Leo Lincourt, I don't think a single non-Lifering friend would be a meatspace friend. That's not to say that all Lifering friends would be that, either.

Cutting and other stress relief — thoughts from the past

Below is a draft post from 2009 that I didn't realize I had saved as a draft. It was three months after moving to Odessa, Texas, to stay employed as something more than a C-store clerk in the middle of the Great Recession.

Free-flating (sic) anxiety still running in my head.

Did some fairly serious "picking" this afternoon.

(I never did "cutting," but, picking at my fingernails down to the quick, then, picking at the skin until it bleeds, or a hangnail bleeds? Yes.)

That's it.

But, I wanted to think about that more.

The fingernail deep picking I had identified as cutting by that time already. Do I have other such behaviors today, though?

Free-floating anxiety I still have, though less than 10 years ago for sure, and I think less than five years ago. Continuing sober life, continuing acceptance of the dailyness of life and continued aging, to be honest, are probably all factors.

My brother, the Lutheran gun nut

Having just read a pretty good (but not quite great) 2017 biography of Martin Luther, as I was finishing a review of it, I went nosing around for other reviews. I then, eventually landed on another, 1980s, Luther bio that I knew I needed to read.

Among the reviewers was a semi-familiar name. I googled it and "Paul McCain" became more familiar as president of Concordia Publishing House. I then, among links that brought up, eventually saw one for a Facebook group called (no, really) "The Armed Lutheran." Shock me that my oldest, political wingnut, Lutheran pastor primary abuser oldest brother is a member.

But he is.

I don't think Walt's probably bought any guns since what he got out of the division of Dad's property. Rather, this is likely virtue signaling first.

It's a "virtue" I could do without.