RMiddleton

What is a monthly perspective? ⚬ Looking 2 weeks back & 2 weeks ahead ⚬ Reflecting on the previous 4 weeks & upcoming 4 weeks ⚬ Describing the current calendar month's activities (April) ⚬ Describing the current month's activities, comparing to the previous month & anticipating the upcoming month (3 months of info)

I'm not sure, but here it is anyway.

What's going on this month I launched this, along with a weekly and quarterly update. The purpose is to maintain and strengthen connections as I work to mend social unraveling & as I anticipate physical distance. I've been social distancing since 2020 for sure. I never recovered from Covid (specifically the politicization of public health). Looking forward I anticipate moving away from where I've lived for decades. I know that I can't count on corporations to keep me connected so I'm creating sites that are under my control.

I expect to move by the end of 2025 so I created a new site displaying available paintings at sale prices, Rartsy.com.

I got to spend a day with Bankie, the pictured pup. We took a nice walk on a sunny but cool day & played fetch with his stuffed toys. And of course we cuddled. He's a great cuddler.

On my preferred social media hangout [1] I participate in a discussion group for artists & writers. Some of the questions inspire meaningful reflection and the supportive community uplifts me. Recently they asked for us to offer song lyrics that resonate and that prompted me to recall how I utilize 2 lines pulled from random songs {“Everybody wants the same thing” & “There is no right or wrong”} in developing my humanissome philosophy. See Resonant Song Lyrics for that reflection. To see where I answer these types of questions every day you can check out my public feed at https://mastodon.art/@RMiddleton or you can visit another new URL I've purchased [2] where I embed my Mastodon posts & my live video stream, humanissome.org.

I own 2 URLs for my 2 types of work, visual art & my spiritual journey. Everything I do is interrelated, but it also feels good to have a place for each. Currently they both redirect to pages within the same free site (humanissome.neocities.org). Sometimes I dream of someone else selling my art (since I hate marketing) & in that case they could use the Rartsy.com address while I use the dot-org for my spiritual humanism. I prefer to put content up on free sites anyway, while the domain names serve as shortcut bookmarks to get there.

See here for more about acquiring paintings & other ways to support me.

Thanks for reading. There are multiple ways to follow this monthly update, depending on your delivery preference:

• Visit this URL: https://paper.wf/rmiddleton/
• Request email newsletter: send email to me at big.changes.in2025🥰icloud.com [replace 🥰 emoji with @] & ask for monthly email
• Follow within the fediverse: @[email protected]
• Subscribe to RSS: https://paper.wf/rmiddleton/feed

See you next month! Rob

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[1] I'm an enthusiastic fediverse & Mastodon user. If you happen to prefer BlueSky, you can still follow what I post on Mastodon from within BlueSky. See: https://bsky.app/profile/RMiddleton.mastodon.art.ap.brid.gy

[2] Thanks to a patron's gift 🙏🏼 when I reached out for funding specifically designated for web restructuring.

By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon

I'm not doing well enough to get better

If you're not me I don't expect you to understand. If you don't understand then you might disagree. Not understanding and rejecting often travel together. That's the world as it is now, barreling towards destruction.

My obstacles happen to be {a particular subset that I'm too tired to enumerate again} while others have their own unique struggles. It is well known that not everyone makes it in this world. The message I get, the message I expect that many on a downward trajectory have received, is to try harder with a good attitude in order to improve. But I'm not doing well enough to get better.

I have many ideas of ways that I could be helped, but my ideas are fantasy. I don't think I know anyone in a position to help me. That would be very complicated to explain. Short version: my society isn't doing well enough to get better. The ways that I can imagine that would help me are beyond the capacity of the world that I know. Things like a freely provided healthcare advocate without emotional dependence on their patients. Or, closer to this reality but still out of reach, a friend who enjoys my company even when I'm miserable, willing to help me achieve my goals. People try, they get drained, my sickness spreads. Or people substitute their judgment for mine, as humans like to do, and I must trade my agency for help.

I'm tired. I'm in nonstop pain. I'm not doing well enough to get better.

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See also: April 11 I can't function

By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon

I talk about humanity, politics, economics, values. I choose to emphasize that I am untrained, undisciplined, an artist centered on feelings. I want to cast my views in the proper perspective. I got this from a book I read (in 24 or 23), Sarah Schulman's Conflict Is Not Abuse. In her introduction, Schulman identifies her exploration as “undisciplined” because she is speaking outside her discipline. Schulman is a professor of creative writing & playwright not a sociologist. I found her admission to be empowering. Perhaps on social media it's a given that folks are opining beyond their expertise, but I get turned off by the certainty of many assertions without evidence. Our feelings are strong and we have our good reasons. We don't speak for others. We don't know “the truth” or “the answer.” And I believe it is a sign of self confidence to be able to say so.

By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon

I definitely do not condone murder & also these are my thoughts as I read about the slain health insurance CEO

The New York Times [1], citing a police [1] source, reported that Thompson had “recently received several threats.” The paper added that executives at “health care companies often receive threats because the nature of their work.”

Gee, I wonder why that would be.

“It appears as though this was a targeted murder,” Mayor Eric Adams [1] said.

How is that guy still mayor?!

In Midtown, meanwhile, Adams insisted that New Yorkers and tourists should continue to go about their day as usual. He said the scheduled lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller [1] Center—mere blocks away—will still go on as planned Wednesday night.

The assailant poses no threat to daily life. [2]

“This is a horrifying and shocking act of violence,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar. [3] “My thoughts are with Brian Thompson’s family and loved ones and all those working at United Healthcare in Minnesota.”

Quotes from The Daily Beast [4], https://www.thedailybeast.com/slain-unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompsons-wife-says-he-had-been-receiving-threats-over-insurance-woes/

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[1] corrupt

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[2] unlike the for-profit healthcare system that does pose a threat to the daily life of millions

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[3] likely corrupt I would vote for Amy Klobuchar if I lived in her state but the fact that the "left" in the US Senate is not fighting every day for free public health care is a tragedy, a tragedy much bigger even than the death of one person. The inability to achieve equity via electoral politics will necessarily lead to some who resort to violence. I hate all violence and I recognize fair democracy as a safeguard against it. We have nothing close to free and fair democracy in the USA.

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[4] likely corrupt For-profit news is a threat to the public good.

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By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon

With all due respect and a sincere apology to the Van Vlecks

Who are the Van Vlecks? I have no idea. Their names sit in many places of honor at the museum that's closest to home. I am aggressively anti-capitalist, a true believer that the love of money is the root of all evil (the love of acquisition for its sake). I despise all manipulative marketing. The charity industrial complex is an impediment to progress. So yeah, those are my beliefs. So yeah, by the time I saw the name Van Vleck on the umpteenth inscribed surface umpteen times each, I began to think: Fuck the Van Vlecks! What would I have to pay for them to engrave that message on a brick?

Thus Fuck the Van Vlecks became an expression I use whenever I think about the astronomical benefit to humanity it would be if we would all STOP FELLATING THE WEALTHY.

By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon

why/how

As part of my mental management in recent years I pay careful attention to what goes in my brain. I do not permit careless blatherers to have access to my brain. This prohibition excludes most news organizations, commercial speech, hype for clicks, pointless arguers, Republicans, etc. Many good folks use social media for emotional venting. I certainly do. I'm rearranging what shows in my feeds so that I get what I want to see. For me, I don't have time to read and learn what improves my soul if I'm breathlessly following every bad thing done by the people I already know are very bad.

By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon

As I see it learned helplessness is a major problem among the not fully terrible people Learned helplessness in response to cognitive dissonance Cognitive dissonance in response to a culture of lies

The abused become perpetrators Without extraordinary effort And to improve is to ostracize oneself

The culture is whiteness The lies are that whiteness exists, that white existence is superior to all other human existence, that America is exceptional (in a good way), that America has ever been more good than bad, that America believes in liberty and justice for all. There are so many lies. The cognitive dissonance is so intense that it causes widespread dysfunction. The cognitive dissonance must either be reckoned with or avoided with great effort. The cognitive dissonance is so strong that avoiding it requires epidemics of drugs, drunkenness, overeating, overspending, waste, violence, sleeplessness, conspiracies and other nonsensical beliefs, and so much more. America is by far the worst nation on a range of issues, and it's much much worse when taking our wealth into account. The current most widespread avoidance technique is never thinking at all. None of these coping strategies result in peace of mind but they do enable the state of cognitive dissonance to continue rather than it being faced and overcome. The cognitive dissonance causes learned helplessness because brains do not work well under the above conditions. Being able to make decisions, knowing what one wants, clear perceptions — all are impaired.

This is the standard status of a majority of my fellow white Americans, in my opinion. I do not speak to the rest of the population because I am not sufficiently familiar with nonwhiteness. Based on voting alone I'm gonna say that other groups are doing their best and the problem is with my fellow white folk. These feelings that I have as an insider raised in affluent white Christian America are why I have no hope for humanity.

Prove me wrong. Please.

By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon

Good morning loving message random thoughts for today

white goodness is to be in eternal conflict throw it off do good, be good, feel good where does that lead my heart? i know this: I must love what I do not like I must love my existence despite it coming out of what I hate paradox compossibility

paradox is more emphasis on conflict; compossibility = 2 things coexist those 2 things? i love my family of origin / they are bad i thought i was going to write a list but doesn't everything flow from that?

By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon

For a long time I've tried to get by by expecting nothing. I see a flaw in that now. I must expect less than nothing. Ok so I'm recalibrating.

As bleak and alone as I've felt, somewhere deep inside I've believed myself to be a “leading indicator”:

I have insights that others will come to see as true.

Perhaps that's artist talk. I don't want to tally the number of times someone has said something to me about how much more popular my art might be after I'm dead. I think that's idiotic nonsense by the way. If you have said this to anyone ever, stop.

The good news is that I do not now believe that I am a lagging indicator. I do not expect to finally come around and see that conventional opinions are right. No. What I think now is Fuck That! I will embrace myself as a freak outlier and enjoy it. I love my beliefs and outlook on life. How they relate to my society is barely my business. Sadly there is the matter of survival. And as much as I hate admitting it, I don't want to live cut off from all others.

The current challenge for me is to love being completely different from everyone I've ever known and also not in a fight with any of them. I like this challenge!

By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon

My boyfriend tried to call while I was on the beach cutting off my bushy beard. I found a remote spot and took my time using full size scissors. The hairs blew away hoping to become part of a nest some day. When I got back to the car I saw many texts and a missed call from him. He wanted to treat ourselves to a greasy fast food meal. He wanted chick fillet.*

Today of all days I thought. I hesitated. “Uhhh their owners are really awful, really Trumpy.”

“Oh.”

I honestly think he didn't know. He suggested others. I thought as I've thought many times, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. “It's alright, baby. Nearly everything is owned by horrible people. We could drive ourselves crazy thinking about it. I used to. Why should we suffer because they're awful people?” I think straight allies should all have to boycott chick fillet so gays who want it can go.

Now here's where the story gets weird. Before we turn out of the apartment complex I ask which way and he doesn't know. We look on the map and there are two about equidistant. I choose the one that I think is in the less crowded area. As we get closer to the destination we grow confused.

“Oh my god, it's inside a mall!”

So I went in a mall for the first time in years. It was weird. We got our food quickly. I just know the other location would've had a spirally long line of cars. The fries were B- quality.

Now the story gets super cute. Later in the day, after working we went to the pool. As he was drying off my bf had a fun idea that would require us to act fast if we were gonna make it in time. We went back to the food court for churros from a place we saw two stalls down! They were yummy, inexpensive, and we ate them from a crackly paper bag while we walked the mall. True love! Churros aren't sold many places here and had been on his mind for days for some reason. When I saw a whole storefront in the food court dedicated to them I was shocked. I'm pretty sure the place is named Churros World Go. Can this be real life?

In case you're wondering we had classic churros with no dipping sauce needed, not chocolate, not Nutella. This place has an insane number of ways to get churros, as you'd expect from a U.S. chain making churros its thing. Grateful to be dating someone who didn't want a hat on a hat. No sweet sauces needed on our cinnamon sugar churros — despite my Spanish textbook having been named Churros y Chocolate.

*I may give them money but I sure af won't fight my iPhone to misspell their name correctly.

By Rob Middleton who can be reached @[email protected] on Mastodon