GISHWHES was amazing, as usual, though even this morning I was reminded that I am kind of glad that this was the last big thing. I need these to be smaller more frequent events. That's what I am hoping for anyway.
In other and more current news, Hurricane Harvey (which downgraded and dissipated and disappeared, leaving flooding and off-shot tornadoes in its wake) struck the Gulf Coast region of Texas this week and I was reminded of 2011. Pretty strongly.
While I have lots of sympathy for those who lacked the means to evacuate and will be giving a fair sum of my Patreon money for the month to whatever charity in the affected areas I can find that accepts Paypal, I find my emotions turning in a less altruistic perspective.
In March of 2011, a friend from high school was taking a vacation with his then-boyfriend now-husband to Las Vegas. When news of the shit going down in the country where I'd been residing for several years at that point came to light and made international headlines, I do not know how he felt or what he did. All I do know is that he never contacted me. Not that weekend. Not the week after. At no point did he even give my potential destruction at the hands of something unfathomable more attention than a like on a facebook post. Literally. That is all he did. No comment. No message.
People I hadn't seen in over a decade were finding me on facebook and messaging me to see if I was okay. My mom's boyfriend sent me almost harassing emails, encouraging my communication with her as if I were some wayward teen and not a grown ass woman in an area that just lost all access to electricity and phone lines.
People I hardly knew were coming out of the woodwork to ask if I was okay or say they were happy to hear I hadn't died.
Yet an uncaring jackass with whom I shared my first non-familial home couldn't give me more than a thumbs up. I did hear that at some point he texted a mutual friend for news. Does anyone else get how weird that is as for communication? He did the same thing a few months later when he decided 2 weeks before my wedding that he no longer wanted to play to role of groomsman even though he had agreed to it 6 months previous. Again, he could not bring himself to contact me but instead whined at a mutual friend. Was this for hope of her brokering a better deal? No idea.
I came up with 2 answers for this scenario. Either he cared but was afraid to show me that he cared so he used the intermediary to be able to pretend to be aloof or he never cared in the first place and was using the intermediary to make sure our mutual friends still believed him to be something other than an unfeeling jackass. Option 1 is more likely I believe, even now, but kit doesn't matter. We're grown ass adults. If you need an intermediary to communicate with me, we aren't friends. We may never have been.
Well, the shoe is on the other foot now, Jeffery. Shit's going down in H-town and I've got to say, even now, 6 years after I blocked you from my Facebook and stopped having any kind of contact with you, I give more of a shit about your survival than you may have ever given about mine.
Because I'm fucking writing about it, even though I should really not even care. If anyone who knows him is reading this, know that I still hope he and his people are okay, though I know they all have connections to other folks further north. I do hope they got out okay.
Which is more than they ever said to me.
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Wednesday, August 2, 2017
What I learned This Week
This week has had some ups and downs.
Ups like my slight bout of insomnia the other day combined with some awesome Facebook friends helped get all my mom's cats re-homed in the nick of time. I also reconnected with a bunch of awesome people in the Metroplex while searching for someone who could help with the cats. I may have alienated some people who don't want that level of interaction with me, but that's alright with me overall really.
But the downs, oh man.
Given how things have gone, I am a bit relieved that this year is the last big GISHWHES. I don't think I want to try to make 15 person teams anymore. Every year, every player has a friend or two they'd love to drag along. The problem is I don't know any of these new people. The problem is that a lot of the names on Facebook do not match the names on the GISHWHES site. The problem is I don't know anyone anymore and trying to untangle the mass of named from one site to the other bothers me.
In my attempt to be open and inviting, back when we had space on the team, I offered one of our remaining spaces to a woman I had just met online, named A for this retelling. She seemed really cool-- in her 40s, living in Canada, studying abroad in Japan but moving back to be with her family. She's excited and wants to participate. I give her the sign up info. Spaces get filled. Days pass.
2 hours before the end of registration, she informs me that she cannot participate this year. I spend 20 minutes scrambling to replace her only to find that no one has left the team. There are two people from the province she lives in that I don't know, X and Y. Y was the most recent signup, so I kick Y off the team and get on a friend I begged to join at the last minute.
Registration ends. I think everything is settled. Nothing really is.
A few hours later, one of my friends on the team asks why her friend was kicked off the team. I freak out, race home, email GISHWHES, and it takes us 2 days of email exchanges to boot X instead and get Y back on the list.
And I think it's settled. I breathe a sigh of relief. It isn't.
Days later, I get a message from X, who was actually a genuine member of the team and not A at all, saying that she doesn't get why she isn't on the team anymore.
I think other people are better at accepting failure than I am. That's a skill I need to learn. I suck at it.
So I explain so confused X about the whole A situation. I went nuts trying to replace someone who I had understood to be signed up when in reality apparently she had done nothing of the sort. I spazzed and freaked and alienated even more people searching for help before finding it when in reality, I did not need a damned thing.
And then I had to cancel an online pre-gish get-together, and by cancel I mean just not show up and feel like crap. Just getting my mojo back up after this is going to take more energy and time than I have before GISH starts. It's probably kinda screwed up that I get that much psychic pain from what many around me are calling an honest mistake.
Even X is saying that shit happens and it's okay.
Now do you see why I'm a Hufflepuff? I mean of course I am! When a mistake I make hurts anyone, especially by excluding them unjustly from something I love so much, I fucking ache.
I've gotta figure out how to bandage that shit up and get it healed before Saturday night, when the big event begins.
So what did we learn from this?
1) Do not trust people you just met on the internet.
2) Instead of guessing, ask what email they used to sign up with when people quit your GISHWHES team.
3) Get to know everyone on the team and double check before doing anything rash.
4) Forgive yourself. You are human. Get over it.
5) Watch for PMS. It's out there, waiting to screw with your hormones and make you crazier than normal.
So this week I used the internet for good and screwing things up.
But no one died. I didn't start any revolutions. I'm ready to do something different. Probably.
I don't think it helps that the next 2 days are crammed full of crap that needs to be done, including feeding a cat in Sendai and walking out to a school to change out books.
Somehow, Saturday afternoon, when the work week is done, I need to heal and recharge in like no time. Good luck, future self.
Ups like my slight bout of insomnia the other day combined with some awesome Facebook friends helped get all my mom's cats re-homed in the nick of time. I also reconnected with a bunch of awesome people in the Metroplex while searching for someone who could help with the cats. I may have alienated some people who don't want that level of interaction with me, but that's alright with me overall really.
But the downs, oh man.
Given how things have gone, I am a bit relieved that this year is the last big GISHWHES. I don't think I want to try to make 15 person teams anymore. Every year, every player has a friend or two they'd love to drag along. The problem is I don't know any of these new people. The problem is that a lot of the names on Facebook do not match the names on the GISHWHES site. The problem is I don't know anyone anymore and trying to untangle the mass of named from one site to the other bothers me.
In my attempt to be open and inviting, back when we had space on the team, I offered one of our remaining spaces to a woman I had just met online, named A for this retelling. She seemed really cool-- in her 40s, living in Canada, studying abroad in Japan but moving back to be with her family. She's excited and wants to participate. I give her the sign up info. Spaces get filled. Days pass.
2 hours before the end of registration, she informs me that she cannot participate this year. I spend 20 minutes scrambling to replace her only to find that no one has left the team. There are two people from the province she lives in that I don't know, X and Y. Y was the most recent signup, so I kick Y off the team and get on a friend I begged to join at the last minute.
Registration ends. I think everything is settled. Nothing really is.
A few hours later, one of my friends on the team asks why her friend was kicked off the team. I freak out, race home, email GISHWHES, and it takes us 2 days of email exchanges to boot X instead and get Y back on the list.
And I think it's settled. I breathe a sigh of relief. It isn't.
Days later, I get a message from X, who was actually a genuine member of the team and not A at all, saying that she doesn't get why she isn't on the team anymore.
I think other people are better at accepting failure than I am. That's a skill I need to learn. I suck at it.
So I explain so confused X about the whole A situation. I went nuts trying to replace someone who I had understood to be signed up when in reality apparently she had done nothing of the sort. I spazzed and freaked and alienated even more people searching for help before finding it when in reality, I did not need a damned thing.
And then I had to cancel an online pre-gish get-together, and by cancel I mean just not show up and feel like crap. Just getting my mojo back up after this is going to take more energy and time than I have before GISH starts. It's probably kinda screwed up that I get that much psychic pain from what many around me are calling an honest mistake.
Even X is saying that shit happens and it's okay.
Now do you see why I'm a Hufflepuff? I mean of course I am! When a mistake I make hurts anyone, especially by excluding them unjustly from something I love so much, I fucking ache.
I've gotta figure out how to bandage that shit up and get it healed before Saturday night, when the big event begins.
So what did we learn from this?
1) Do not trust people you just met on the internet.
2) Instead of guessing, ask what email they used to sign up with when people quit your GISHWHES team.
3) Get to know everyone on the team and double check before doing anything rash.
4) Forgive yourself. You are human. Get over it.
5) Watch for PMS. It's out there, waiting to screw with your hormones and make you crazier than normal.
So this week I used the internet for good and screwing things up.
But no one died. I didn't start any revolutions. I'm ready to do something different. Probably.
I don't think it helps that the next 2 days are crammed full of crap that needs to be done, including feeding a cat in Sendai and walking out to a school to change out books.
Somehow, Saturday afternoon, when the work week is done, I need to heal and recharge in like no time. Good luck, future self.
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