Category Archives: Books

eBay sales: vintage print, honey dipper

craft projects completed: 0

#MilWordy update: 27,248

Sadly, the puppy care and succulent scammers have petered off and now I am vexed by poorly worded ads for watches. I mean, I don’t hate watches, but it seems a shame to go from getting useful snippets of information in my spam to barely intelligible scribbles.

I’ve been reading this book on Radical Kindness. I don’t know that I can recommend it. It’s not terrible, but it’s also not great. Though there’s always something to take from non-fiction books and this is the quote that stood out to me:

“Don’t let your inability to do everything undermine your determination to do something.”
— Cory Booker

Right now, I’ve been struggling to maintain the proper amount of rage and energy to affect change. I’ve been giving widely and hoping that some of those seeds of coin will actually sprout into something which helps other people. It’s just been a year.

I think, honestly, that it’s the year that killed my productivity this weekend. Normally I walk away from a 3-Day weekend with 3/4 of a book. This time, I’ve barely reached 15K on the main book I was working on. That’s not great. On the other hand, I’m feeling much more pressure from #Milwordy to actually write something every day. That means the challenge is working, even if I’m not achieving the numbers I used to achieve when I was young and dreamed of glor… I mean, when I was young and could maintain 10 hours of sustained writing and caffeine ingestion without dying or having my hands and wrists start to ache and burn.

AKA: I’m getting old. It’s not that I’m running out of ideas, it’s that I need to be more selective with where I spend my energy.

I also need to stop eating like a city rat. But that’s a rant for a different day.

Back to the Radical Kindness concept. While I understand the de-escalation techniques and the compassionate viewpoint and the assumption of positive intent portions of the book, I find it a little lacking in the perception that people — women especially — are conditioned and raised to constantly put themselves last. To be kind. To be sweet. To stand back and defuse anger.

To be doormats.

I worry that someone reading this book will stay too long in a toxic relationship and end up taking on “If only I were nicer to my SO, they wouldn’t beat me,” for much longer than they should.

I don’t care that the first chapter of the book basically says that self-kindness is the first step. I have never met an abused individual who didn’t that they were already too indulgent of themselves and think they weren’t giving enough in the relationship.

I guess, in summary, while I appreciate random acts of kindness, and trying to see from other people’s perspectives, and all the touchy-feely stuff I learned in college. I also learned that boundaries are a thing that need to happen. And I think this concept could be acidic and toxic if misapplied. As a therapist, one must give out unconditional positive regard. As an individual, one needs to be able to say “thus far and no further. I don’t owe you my affection and emotional work.”

And this has quickly taken a dive into the edges of heavy topics that I don’t want to handle right now.

Let’s take a left hand turn and talk about writing again:

I think I’ve found Trish’s story in the Promises Universe. She’s a kind, sweet, femme person. And I think she fell into the trap of giving too much of herself or she experienced so little kindness that she had to learn to accept and to give it as she grew up. That’s something at least.