RMiddleton

Feeling bad writing sometimes helps 9:30ish on election day 2024 it shouldn't be this hard. it's shouldn't be this hard to do good. the easy path is hate. i want to hate my neighbors who vote for a cruel idiot over caring, and trying, and falling short, and caring and trying again.

hate is easier

i cannot hate it may work for florida, it may work for america hate does not work for robbie; robbie cannot base his life around hate. i love myself and loving myself = loving all equally. yes even the cruel bigots. how? i do not know how. i do know that loving all is my lifelong calling, and that it is a difficult journey.

i know that i must take care of me if i am to love anyone. loving me requires caring for me and protecting me and keeping me alive. i may not be able to do that where i am today. or i may be better able to do that with a new plan.

as i say, it's too hard. before the election i decided that if hate wins America — still not confirmed, but come on! why is it even a possibility?! anyway, if hate wins I will make protective moves. I will move positively so that I may love: first me, then all.

what can I do for myself? i am facing an uphill battle on many fronts. it feels like a long shot to survive where i am. my neighbors are against me. (they vote against love ∴ they are against me — i am allowed to be simplistic when i am talking to myself!) my own family is against me; and they have been for decades. i believe in the possibility that there are people in this world who love. i believe that i can spend more time with people who love

love me? yeah maybe!

i do not believe that i have to endure hate because of where i was born. i believe i have a lot to offer this world i believe that i may find places to thrive

center yourself in love, robbie surround yourself with love seek love DO IT Lovingly yours, me/you

I ♥ me/you!

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

i know nothing about art the man says i know nothing about art the American man says i know nothing about art the white American man says i know nothing about art the fiftysomething white American man says i know nothing about art the Republican fiftysomething white American man says i know nothing about art the wealthy Republican fiftysomething white American man says, proudly.

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

Today I streamed: – 40 minutes of silence looking at the horizon – Counting eggs – Making a poached egg – Reading 2 poems (twice) – Tomato taste test – Plant watering – Cleaning an oven

Twitch | YouTube

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

Baby I can't sleep Your phone is silenced so I'm writing here instead of texting If I were home I would get up and do something I am not home I am on a hotel adventure over which I have very little control. Last night I slept in a very comfortable bed. Tonight I have been moved to an uncomfortable arrangement.

I worked on the New Yorker crossword, very nearly done now.

I check on my friends who share location with me. One safely nestled in bed, that's you babe. Two together in Accord, New York. One last seen in the Orlando airport. One may even be out partying at close to 4 am, their time. — Wait that's my time! At 5am are they partying or starting an early day? Regardless they aren't at home.

Back to the crossword.

Finished. A young person looked over my shoulder hours ago when I first picked up the puzzle, was engaged, suggested a few correct answers, asked, “We have to wait until the next issue to get the answers?” Yeah but this is a random acquired issue from over a month ago.

When you finish you know. The answers fit.

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Tomorrow I will attend a wedding of a boy I've known since he was four. I would not say that I've had much influence on him nor that we are close. I learned that he recently told his sister she'll go to hell if she's gay. At his college in the deep south he got into hard core Christianity, so hard that he's rushing into marriage so that he & his fiancée can bone with the lord's blessing. All his family says that's the reason. And yet they encouraged him in his ministry, that's his chosen career. His parents seem to approve of the minister who has guided the young man's development. Such is the bias towards Christianity, their groomers are greeted with presumptive approval. What am I doing here? The mother likes me. I'm sort of part of the family. The kid has known me nearly his whole remembered life. But evidently this man < half my age feels entirely comfortable judging me.

I will be wearing my progress pride pin to the wedding & reception. Wish me luck!

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

Currently I stream on twitch, usually to 0-4 people. When even one person responds to the raw ideas & emotion I share that feels significant. And it happens regularly that a stranger will offer a sincere comment during a live stream.

Streaming to twitch means no extra work storing & editing on my antiquated devices. With just a couple of clicks the archived video stream moves over to YouTube. A similarly small number seem to find my content there as well. And the link is accessible well into the future.

Contrast that to Instagram. I feel I should post there because it's the only remaining site where I can reach people I know. All the formats on Instagram are peculiar to Instagram. (I do not use TikTok or Snapchat or other sites that might share those formats.) I just spent a little time trying to figure out how to creatively share something specific on Instagram:

What are my choices? A video? Can I keep it less than 90 seconds? That's the only way it might reach an audience. No I don't think I can keep it to 90 seconds; it would take a lot of unnecessary work & the point might be unclear. Ok you can make a longer video or a multi panel post. Very few people will see it, but it does remain on your profile with a link that can be shared (until they later wipe it from the servers while letting you think it's still there). Yeah I know. The sliding panels, the minuscule captions, again it's busy work with very little reward. I created the term micro-failures last week in part inspired by what it feels like to be creating on Insta! The easiest is for you to share it as a story. You get less than one minute or you can make a series of less than one minute stories or a slideshow of panels. With your current rate of engagement up to 30 of your 1269 followers might see it. It will disappear in 24 hours. Uh huh. I'm not crazy. This platform's design leads to endless micro-failures that cause burnout. Hey now! There are MANY successful Instagram accounts with enormous followings. You must tailor your content to what works best in the Instagram formats (until they suddenly change & you must relearn how to fit in). Yeah but I don't work for Instagram & that sounds miserable to me. Mostly I want a place to share the art I make elsewhere with my friends who follow me. That's not what this place is anymore. I know, I'm talking to myself. Listen you ingrate, Instagram is offering you the opportunity to reach its enormous user base & if you don't have the drive to make your content in the style that succeeds here, you get what's coming to you. The problem is you, lazy bones. Out of touch old man with your slow talking nonsense! Be gone! Juicing short attention spans is all there is. I do feel that's all there is on Instagram yes. That's why I like streaming. Instagram has live streaming! Yes I have tried it. An Insta live stream experience is someone joins, says nothing, and quickly leaves. Or someone joins, says one thing and then quickly leaves. There are obviously great people on Insta but every live video is awkward as hell.

Ok ok. Did that get too intense? I think I can still post to Insta while keeping sane & not burning out but it sure af isn't easy. Many ideas I have that I want to share with the people I know on Insta... a lot of times I need to remind myself it's not worth the effort to fit an idea into Instagram's formats.

To my friends on Insta: As I say repeatedly I sure wish y'all would leave. I assume you must like the addicting, fast & short content that I don't watch. I think it's bad for human concentration, but that's your business. And seriously THANK YOU if you ever take the time to look at the messy, unappealing stuff I share. I'm not leaving bc this place is my only connection to people I know online (bc y'all won't come to where I am — but I repeat myself). But if you do ever find your way to the stuff I share anywhere else SUPER DUPER THANKS!

And it's not just me, there's a whole internet full of cool & interesting stuff being shared beyond the confines of the no-attention-span format.

Peace, Love, & Internet

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

What if when I posted financial support links a dozen new patrons gave small recurring donations

What if my mother was open to emotional growth

What if my gay godfather, the only adult I felt kinship with, had not died of AIDS before I was out

What if the country I live in was committed to improving the lives of all people

What if I had free healthcare

What if I sold paintings at the last major show I put on

What if a friend or family member broke the facade to have a quiet, caring conversation

What if I knew one stable, serious, caring person in a position to help who wanted to help

What if meaningful jobs were plentiful instead of the exploitative jobs I had

What if I were part of a caring community

To my friends and family: I don't know if you don't get me, or if you're scared, or you just don't get me. Maybe I offend you, or you think I'm dangerous, or you don't get me. I'm sure the truth is that you probably don't think about me very much at all. You have your own considerations. Or maybe you did reach out to me and I didn't acknowledge it. If that happened I can say that I may not have seen it. I block out a lot of incoming communication because spam and corporate dehumanization and deception actually hurts me emotionally. Maybe you're the same way and that's why you don't see me. Or maybe you're barely getting by. Maybe I annoy you. I annoy me. But as I say I figure that you have enough to keep you occupied. Why would anyone take on a problem? I wonder sometimes, do you wonder too, how people end up on the streets? Or fully dissociated? Ever since my 20s I've had recurring periods when I felt disconnected from others to the point that I imagined myself on the streets.

One mystery I contemplate is that it may be possible that others feel close to me and I don't feel close to them. Then again I'm not sure that's possible because I'm the one saying that I'm alone. So if you did think we were close here I am saying that we're not. I think it must be a matter of perspective. In an old song Howard Jones asks: What is love? And does anybody love anybody anyway? That level of questioning resonates with me, and maybe it doesn't resonate with others. I've often felt a conflict between loyalty to ideas & loyalty to people. Maybe others don't feel this conflict. Maybe they do, but few speak of it. Maybe it seems futile to ask so many questions that deconstruct societal bonds.

I watched a recent retrospective on the tv show My So Called Life, a program that might have done me some good if it had come out a decade earlier. The two bits that stuck out to me were the attitudes of the mother of the main character. For one she wanted to know “what type of family” her child's friends came from. My mom spoke like that all the time. And when her child says that she could be the one in the desperate situation that her friend is, the mother responds with angry denial, “that could never happen to you!” There is a strong belief in special status among “my people” (those I come from but feel no connection with). Bad things happen to other people. And maybe those people deserve it! This delusional thinking prevents empathy and it also causes self harm. We all will die. It might not be elegant. We all will need help. A disaster can take everything away from us in an instant. Belief in class privilege prevents planning. We all do better when we all do better. There is no one among us better than any other.

What if we acted according to that truth

What if

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Cross posted from https://dotart.blog/rmiddleton/what-if

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

Why the right wing keeps “winning”

My liberal view is a bias to like those who are different

The world's conservatives are intent on pitting us against each other

When we oppose them we lose; this is their trap.

Yes this is a rephrasing of the “must we be tolerant of intolerance?” debate. And that framing is also a forfeit from the beginning.

In short, the bulk of our communication as liberals MUST BE the promotion of fairness more than the opposition to unfairness.

But good news doesn't make the news and evil never sleeps and we MUST fight them back every day! And all of that is true. And still it is not enough. We absolutely must flood the zone with humanist messages all day every day everywhere.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/11/the-right-wing-story-about-human-nature-is-false

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

mornings are the hardest

Mornings are the hardest because I wake up in pain, sad — and hungry. Then I remember what little food I have. Then I feel sadder.

Today I may be able to receive food at a nearby charity pantry. I thought I would describe what that's like.

First there are my own barriers to getting to the place where I can get help during the two hours that it's open. Sometimes the main obstacle is being free at the right time. The way I'm feeling lately I'm always free, home and in pain. The barrier then becomes being up to seeing human faces asking me questions. I have to go through that just to leave my building and also at the charity pantry.

A line starts to form before the food pantry opens. Waiting alone in a line with strangers, never particularly fun, is potentially less enjoyable when it's a group of the poor and hungry during a public health crisis.

When the window opens, each person waiting is asked demographic questions, that may include first name, number of persons in our household, how many are children, and how many are disabled. That's all that is asked. Yet I feel bad the whole time. I wish the questions asked were: How do you feel today? Do you know about other options for help available to you? Do you need access to medical care? You know, helping questions. Instead the questions are likely useful for the organization's finances, tax breaks or grant seeking. Sigh. Of course that's what matters. Money is the first thing on everyone's mind in capitalism, the cause of hunger.

I'm unsure whether to lie and say that there is more than just me in my household. I desperately need food. When I first went I feared being turned away as an apparently able bodied, middle aged, single, childless, white man who drives a car and has an iphone. (I don't know if you recall the Fox News frenzies over “poor” people who have refrigerators and air conditioning and tv and telephones! To receive aid in the United States one ought to be a walking corpse. This side topic deserves a future follow up on how/why I don't receive help from the State of Florida.) I usually say that there are 2 in my household and 1 is disabled. As I write this it occurs to me this allows for 2 me's! That seems right. There is a me that could work and earn money; and there is a me that cannot.

I think I need to stop. Writing may be making me less likely to get to the food pantry today. I dislike it, but it's a moment of pain for a lot of food. Usually. The supplies are unreliable. I'll take and eat anything but the easiest and best solution would be free money or grocery credit. [Yea I'm aware of “food stamps” (EBT, I think it's called) and that topic belongs in my State of Florida post if I get to that. Short answer: Remember when President Bill Clinton ended “welfare as we know it”? My ultraconservative state doesn't make it easy to receive help.]

I'll finish with links to videos I hope to talk about in the future: Atomic Shrimp, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H4_yAxKaLsA

& Harari discussing the need for organisms to rest, vs. the tireless computers that now guide our lives, https://youtu.be/BLP6K8xm0Kc?si=REVEkWV1cZR6dpCo&t=369

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

I see a post, a place I'd rather be. The money it would take to be there! (& the environmental harm!!)

Same video on open source mirror: https://yewtu.be/qNPbokfyotY

Realizing that I may never enjoy travel again but as a USAmerican I'm closer to that lifestyle than the majority of Earthlings. That's what Americans do not want to give up, I think. Their relative privilege. “If the world is closer to destruction than ever I may as well enjoy it.” Liberals think this! “The world has never been fair and equal, that's not my fault. Why should I suffer for things that aren't my fault?” Not realizing or believing that our privilege also gives us disproportionate power to make the world better. Maybe the Earth is closer to destruction than ever before; it's also closer to universal dignity than it's ever been. I happen to believe that greater fulfilling happiness comes from embracing humanist love for all than from trying to get as much for myself as I can.

Yet who am I to talk of happiness? I'm not so happy. I say it's because I must live amongst dehumanists while trying to be humanist. I hope to find a way to be. If and when I do I'll let you know.

cross-posted from: https://dotart.blog/rmiddleton/i-see-a-post-a-place-id-rather-be

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

I have a problem. I don't want people to do anything. I don't want people to travel. I don't want people to work. I don't want people to get married. I don't want people to expect to see me.

Allow me to close my eyes & breathe. Let me smile & think for a moment of something good: Do no harm.

I will now rephrase the above: I have a problem. I don't want people to do anything unnecessary that harms others. I don't want people to travel without taking precautions against spreading illness. I don't want people to work in jobs that harm themselves, others, and the planet. I don't want people to get married in large gatherings indoors with no health precautions. I don't want people to expect to see me unless they feel the way I do about these things.

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