Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Society

Stick your labels where the sun don’t shine (part three)

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I’m back to talk more about labels. I know they’re needed and useful, but I would prefer to do away with them. Here is the post from yesterday in which I veered hard into talking about horror games for a bit. Why? Why not. Because it was spooky season, and while I enjoy it, I don’t get scared by most pop media.

I have said this many times before, and I don’t quite no why. I want to emphasize that I don’t count jumpscares in that my body jerking involuntarily is not fear; it’s a startle response. Also, it’s the cheapest way to get a ‘scare’, and I don’t approve. Making my body jump is not the same as scaring me; I will die on that hill. I will also add that I don’t recoil; I don’t screech; and I don’t freak out in any way. In fact, sometimes, I don’t even externally jump.

It’s not a flex; I swear. I’m just born different. I always have had weird responses to things (again, probably a neurospicy thing) so I just don’t process things the same way other people do. I used to wonder why, and it wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I realized it was something with my brain. Not that it was broken, but maybe ADHD?

Side note: I’m glad we’re moving away from just citing the stereotypical symptoms that happen to white boys when talking about neurodiversity. I’m bitter that I might have clocked onto it sooner if I had known that the oft recited symptoms weren’t the only ones, by any mean.

I think that’s one of the reasons I’m chary about labels, too. They put you in a box, and they don’t allow for any wiggle room. It’s one of the reasons I want to opt out of all the usual labels. I’ve said this in terms of ‘woman’. It’s like wearing an ill-fitting raincoat when it’s pouring out. Sure, it’ll keep much of the water out, but I’m still going to get wet. And I’m not going to feel good about it, either. I can’t wait to get out of it and dry off.

In other word, it’ll do in a pinch, but I don’t love it.

That’s how I feel about most labels. They’yll do in a pinch, but I don’t love them. Even the ones I choose.

When I was in college, I loved having tests that had essay questions. I can bullshit my way out of anything because I am good with words. It’s a gift, and it’s something I’m grateful for. If it’s a multiple choice quiz, though, I do horribly. Why? Because I overthink it. I can see situations in which each of the answers would be correct. That’s because most multiple choice quizzes/tests are poorly written, but that’s neither here nor there.


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Labels have limited use, part two

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In yesterday’s post, I was listing all the labels I use that are close enough, but not quite. I acknowledge the need for labels, but I don’t like them. Not in the deceptive ‘no labels, but, really, labels, but no, we won’t call them labels’ way of certain billionaires in this country.

I pretty much listed all the labels that I have used reluctantly. I’m scanning to think if there are others. I will say that I call myself fat without reservation. I am not chubby, zaftig, plump, or fluffy. I am fat, and I have no issues with that. I don’t see it as a bad thing, and I have worked hard to reclaim it. I now see it as neutral, and it amuses me when people rush to assure me that I’m not fat. Yes, I am, and I am not upset about it.

I understand the need for labels, but I think that we have to remember that they are not still shots of a person. They are living, breathing things, and they can change over time. I think that’s another way people can get tripped up–in thinking that identity is static. Or that if one aspect of a person’s identity changes, the prior ones are null and void.

Now, of course, there are times when this is true. Or rather, when a person’s change in identity is permanent and complete. Like me and Christianity. Once I realized what a fraud it was (at least the version I was indoctrinated with), I wanted nothing more to do with it. I have not changed my mind at all about that, and I highly doubt I ever will.

When it comes to my gender identity, though, it’s squishier. I have always known that I’m not very womanly. Many of the things I prefer to do are coded male, as is the way I dress. However, my hair is down to my mid-thighs, and I would grow it longer if I could. I have huge boobs, and I definitely read as female. My voice, on the other hand, is masculine. Deep as fuck, and I constantly get called ‘sir’ on the phone.

In college, I used to cut my hair every four months or so. I would just go to my hair dresser and tell her to do whatever she wanted. She never steered me wrong, and she gave me some great haircuts. One time, I went for a super-short cut (think Rachel Maddow) and wore a long black trenchcoat when I walked around the campus. I got mistaken for a guy from the back, which never bothered me.


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The core of my identity is “fuck it! That’s close enough”

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Let’s talk gender identity. This is something I’ve thought a lot about in the last five years or so. I’ve never felt a burning need to identify with ‘woman’; it was just the easiest way to define myself. It’s the gender/sex I was born into, and it was…fine. At least, if I did not look too closely at it. Once I gave it more than two minutes of thought, though, it all fell apart.

I’m going to be completely frank here. When I think of gender as it relates to myself, I come up empty. I have heard/read people who identify deeply with their gender and how important it is to them. I can accept that it’s a vital core of their identity; I just wish others could accept that about me as well. Meaning, my lack of attachment to my birth gender. And I wish that it weren’t so threatening.

But that’s me in general. I think a lot about many issues. I go deep, research, get obsess, and then I throw up my hands and go, “Fuck! That’s close enough, I guess” because nothing fits exactly.

Let me quickly run down the list.

1. Bisexual. I tried on pansexual and omnisexual (hey, this was thirty years ago), but I did not like either of those. Honestly, my favorite is queer, but people invariably think gay (both gays and straights) when they hear queer. Nowadays, I use bi out of habit, and I think of it is ‘people like me and people not like me’ when it comes to gender, but it’s very much an “eh, it’ll do” label rather than one I embrace or one that fits.

2. Areligious. I used agnostic for awhile. I never liked atheist because that’s way too arrogant and confident for me. I did feel like there is something out there, but my medical crisis showed me that ultimately, it doesn’t matter what it is. My mother and I used to argue about free will versus predeterminism all the time, and I could never wrap my brain around the concept that an all-knowing god allowed us free will. I mean, if He (in her religion, it’s a He) knows what I’m going to do before I do it, then it’s not free will, is it?

I had a friend who was Jewish. She wrote an article about how she believed god was all-loving, but not all-knowing. It was a fascinating article, and while I couldn’t quite accept that, either, it made much more sense than my mother’s version of god.

At some point, I realized that I was tired. And I just did not care if there was a god or not because that god had no affect on my life. If pressed, I would say that I believed there was something that was bigger than all of us, but it’s not something that directs the day-to-day goings on so I just let it be.

I used ‘apathetic’ for some time to describe my religious belief before stumbling on areligious. Once I read up on the latter, I knew that was for me. I just don’t care about religion (for me), and that’s that.


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November is novels all the way down (part seven)

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In the last post, I wrote about diversity and how it’s not a dirty word. I also wrote about how it’s a part of me and not an affectation. I will say that it’s deliberate in that I choose to make the majority of my characters minorities. So, yes, in that case I’m doing it on purpose. I am not doing it at anyone in particular, but if I upset certain people in the meantime, well, that will please me greatly.

Some people are worth pissing off is what I’m saying. Yes, we need to be civil in general to work as a society, but when people break that social contract by being bigoted assholes, I am no longer beholden by that social contractor to those people.

There are going to be three main characters, and nary a cishetwhiteman among them. I will admit it amuses me to see how far I can go without having one as a main character. I have three or four other characters in mind (not fleshed out yet), and none of them are CHWM, either (figure it out).

I have a snapy beginning to my novel. The first few pages have been written–in my mind. This is how I write, by the way. I write in my brain before I write for real. That’s my way of planning/scheduling/outlining. I do a big brain dump as I’m musing things over in my mind. Then, I write in my mind for a few weeks. Then, I start the actual writing, and it’s like a brain dump agai, but in a more orderly fashion.

Before my medical crisis, my writing regime was pretty uniform. I wrote 2,000 words a day like clockwork in the fashion I outlined above. I edited as I wrote, though I tried not to do that. I rarely had a writer’s block, and I could finish a novel in a few months.

When I used to do NaNoWriMo, I had no problem meeting the word count. Why did I start doing it? Just to get back in the habit of writing again. I set my own goal of 2,000 words a day, and I was able to do that with ease. One year, I did 5,000 words a day–that was exponentially more difficult. In the later years of doing it, I started breaking the rules. I edited a novel one year. I wrote a novel and the the beginning of a sequel another year. I started on a day other than the first of November in yet another year. Before November, I mean.


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Noveling all November long (part six)

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I’m back to write about writing one more time. In the last post, I veered into ranting about the state of the world right now and how anti-inclusive it currently is (especially in America). I have been fighting this fight for thirty goddamn years, and I’m so tired. I did not realize that electing a black man would create a backlash this severe, but here we are.

I haven’t felt this hopeless in years. Politically, I mean. I don’t know if we as a country can recover from the shit that is happening right now. More to the point,  I don’t know if we should. We are not really a country–we are a conglomeration of fifty small nations. A resentful conglomeration.

There is no compromise, by the way. You’re either for inclusivity or you’re not. If you’re the latter, then you’re part of the problem. If you can’t even tolerate people who are different than you, then we have no ground that is common.

Back in the day, many minorities didn’t ilke the word tolerate. They wanted to be accepted as they were. Which, yes, ideally, that would happen. You can’t legislate that, though. You can’t mandate how people feel (though, lord knows,the curret admiistration is trying to do so), but you can dictate how they act. I don’t care if people accept me or not, but goddamn it, they can at least be civil–even if it’s just by a thread.

I include all this in my writing because it’s a part of me. It’s the fabric of my life, and it’s not an affectation. This is what the alt-right doesn’t get–we are not being who we are to spite them: that’s just an added benefit! I’m not agender, queer, and Asian AT them–it’s just who I am. My life experience, and, indeed, my very being, include all those aspects of myself.

The fact that I died (twice!) and came back to life (twice!) has deeply affected me as well. I learned things from that experience that I could not have learned any other way. Unfortunately, it’s not something I can share with many people because it’s so out there. I want to include it in my novel, though, beacuse it’s just that unusual. Will people believe me? Probably not, but that bothers me not.

In my first few attempts at a novel after my medical crisis, I really tried to set it in the hospital. It was such a wild experience; I still haven’t completely digested it yet. At some point, I realized that everything I thought happened while I was in the hospital didn’t. Well, to be more precise, most of what I thought happened did not.

I was as high as a motherfucking kite, and I was delusional/hallucinating the whole time. Some of the things that I thought happened did actually happen, but not in the way I thought. For example, I was so impressed that there were so many people of color on my team. I live in Minnesota, which means the vast majority of people are white. My experience in the hospital was that everyone but a few people were non-white–specifically, they were Asian.


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November can still be novel-writing month

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For quite some time, Novemember has been novel-writing month for me. I have done NaNoWriMo for over a decade, and in the latter years of doing it, I became a NaNoRebel instead because I was bored with the original premise (writing 50,000 words in the month). I’ll be honest–I can easily write 50,000 words in a month. I used to write two-thousand words a night every night, which took me roughly three hours or less.

Two years ago (I think it was), NaNoWriMo was accused of not doing enough when a moderator was purportedly grooming children in the teen forums and luring them to fetish websites. NaNoWriMo organizers/leaders did not react well at all, and they dragged their feet on doing anything concrete about it.

Last year, they made some very ill-formed remarks in support of AI for disabled writers/writers with disabilities (they were widely condemned by said community), and they were called out for their ableism. They shut down the last day of March this year (2025).

I felt no remorse to see them go. In addition to their reacting badly in these two major situations, I had just outgrown them. I did not see any reason to not start a novel before the first of November or not to edit or to count my words. I am grateful that they got me in a groove back when I was doubting my ability as a writer, but I did not need them by the time they shut down.

I will say that I’ve had a big writer’s block since I had my medical crisis. I have tried to write since then, but it’s been a struggle. Not these posts, but writing, ah, let’s just call it fiction for now. It’s not strictly fiction, but that’s close enough.

The problem isn’t that I don’t have an idea–I have one. It’s changed  and shifted in the four years since my medical crisis, but the core is still there. The problem is that I write about thirty thousand words (or more), and they just lie flat on the page. They don’t dance and glimmer as they should; they just stubbornly sit there.

I have said many times that I consider myself the conduit for the characters I create. I’m not writing their dialogue and actions–they are. I have had characters simply refuse to do what I want them to do if it’s not what they want to do.

With my current project (well, current as in the one I want to work on, but I have not touched it since last November), I have been calling it ‘everything and the kitchen sink’ in my head. Why? Because I want it to be part memoir, part murder mystery, part romance, part comedy, part noir spoof, and part homage to Bloodborne. Oh, and all cohesive. Or not. I want it to work, but it doesn’t have to be cohesive, exactly.

I’ve always been weird. It’s only been relatively recently that I’ve figured out (with the help of a friend) some big reasons why. It’s not because my brain is broken, which is what I’ve thought for decades. Well, the mainstream and normies would probably consider it broken, but it’s that I’m neuroatypical.


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My actual goals for my re-birthday, part four

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In yesterday’s post, I mostly focused on martial arts. I want to set that aside for this post and contradict what I had said in yesterday’s post about not having any more goals for this upcoming year. This is going to be family-focused, and it probably isn’t going to be pretty. Because family isn’t pretty. At least not mine, especially not now.

My father has dementia, and it’s getting worse. He’s almost eighty-six years old, and his decline in the last six months has been rapid and alarming. I talk to him maybe once every other week or so, and we Zoom (with my mother) once in a long while. We did that a few days ago, and my father was clearly not having a good day. Usually, he can hold it together enough to talk to me–and he almost always remembers who I am–but this time, it was clear that his mind was wandering.

Dementia is a cruel and ugly disease. It strips the person of everything–especially if the person is…look. My father was self-centered and self-absorbed before he got dementia. It’s only gotten worse because that’s what dementia does to you. It makes you a toddler who can only think of themselves, and it seems to be worse in my father because of his proclivities prior to getting it.

In addition, it emphasizes the dysfunction that already exists in my family. My mother has devoted her life to my father, and now, she has a valid reason for doing it. But she also resents it at the same time, and she has some pretty rigid ideas as to what he should and shouldn’t be doing.

The problem is that she’s hoping against hope that he’ll return to ‘normal’, and she cannot accept that dementia only goes one way. She told me about a promising new medical study for early-onset dementia, and I could hear it in her vocie. She knew that my father was beyond that, and yet.

I don’t blame her for hoping, honestly. Most people hope for miracles when something really bad happens. It’s the fact that she pushes my father to do things because she wants him to get better, and the things she pushes him to do border on cruel. Like when we were talking on Zoom, he suddenly decided he had enough. He abruptly stood up and started to leave. My mother protested and tried to stop him from leaving. He was pretty insistent on going, and she was equally insistent on him staying.

I broke in and told her to let him go because it was distressing to watch. And, there was no need for him to stay if he didn’t want to. That’s my mother, though. Once she gets an idea in her head, nothing is stopping her from executing it.


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My actual goals for my re-birthday, part three

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I’m still thinking about the goals for this year. In yesterday’s post, I talked a lot about Taiji and Bagua and the weapons I want to learn/how hard it is to find a Double Sword Form. I did add one more actual goal, and I’ll add a few more in today’s post (probably).

I’m still dealing with the lingering aftermath of getting double-vaxxed and my bloodwork done on the same day. That second shingles shot was no joke. Even though I knew that going in, I was not ready for how much it was going to lay me out. K and I were talking about it, and she said she had never felt as shitty as she did with her first shingles shot. My first one was pretty bad as well (I always react badly to shotslvaxxes), but nothing like the sceond one. My right arm (pneumonia shot) is fine. My left arm (shingles shot. I got the bloodwork done in the back of my hand.

Side note: Whoever invented the butterfly needle is a genius. Seriously. Changed my life)

is still slightly puffy and sore. The real issue is that I’m still exhausted, like I had the flu. I was doing the Swimming Dragon Form today, and by the end, I was fatigued–and sweating. My teacher has always said that if you start sweating lightly, you’re fine. If you start sweating profusely, you should immediately stop.

No, wait. It was when I was doing the Double Fan Form that I started sweating and felt really fatigued. Fortunately, I was able to retain all the movements with minimal problem, but by the end, I just wanted a nap. I had hoped I’d be able to do a full routine by now, but that isn’t the case.

It’s been almost two full weeks since I got the shots (will be two full weeks in eight hours), and I’m really glad I work from home. I can’t imagine dragging my body anywhere feeling like this.

Back to my weapons.

I think I’ll polish up my Double Saber Form next. It’s gotten a bit sloppy, which makes me sad. I love this form, and I love the double sabers. So, yes, I think that I need a refresher on the form. I’ve done it once, I think, since getting my shots. Hopefully, I will be able to do it all the way through when I’m up to practicing it again.

I am not worried about the Sword Form or the Saber Form because they are the first two weapon forms I learned. Same with the Solo Form–I’m pretty comfartable with that (well, not with the changes my teacher’s teacher has recently made, but I’m getting there).


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My actual goals for my re-birthday, part two

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I’m back with more actual goals. Here is my last post, and, yes, I’m still talking about my re-birthday. Hm. It’s really late (early in the morning), and I am exhausted. I t hink I’ll skip it and come back to it tomorrow.

I’m back. A quick side note (yes, this early): My sleep has been so fucked in the past two weeks. It’s the vaxxes and my bloodwork, and I really should not have done all of them on the same day. Yes, it made sense to do them all at one time just to get them done, but given my outsized reaction to shots, I should have known better.

It’s been a week-and-a-half, and my arms are almost 100% better. I’m still tired, though. Very much so. I was able to do the whole Swimming Dragon Form (hands-only, Bagua) after completely forgetting the beginning of it yesterday. I was also able to do the whole Double Sword Form, though I did have to peek at the videos now and again.

Here is the post from day before yesterday in which I listed four goals for this year. I struggle to make them realistic because I swing from making very small goals that I easily do and goals that are so big, there’s no way I can reach them.

In addition, I don’t know what is realistic, really. Like before my medical crisis, I could confidently say I could write a rough first draft of a novel (100,000 words or more) in a year. hell, I did that during NaNoWriMo several years in a row without breaking a sweat. Now, however, I don’t know if that’s true. I think I can still write 2,000 words a day? But I haven’t been able to do that in ages, either.

I want to set goals that I can conceivably achieve, but I just don’t know what that means any longer. I think it’s better to set ongoing goals when I’m unsure about the results. I think I can say that I will finish teaching myself the Double Fan Form. I have 11 movements left, so I could even possibly get it done by the end of this calendar year.

If that’s the case, then I need to start thinking about what I want to learn next. I do want to teach myself a Double Sword Form at some point, but there are several problems with that. One, there is not an official Double Sword Form–at least not one I could find. My teacher’s teacher hasn’t done one, either. She did ask him about it, and he said that you can do the Sword Form with two swords, doing the guiding hand mmotions with the off hand with a sword in that hand, too.


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My actual goals for my re-birthday

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Ok. No more fucking around. I’m going to lay out my goals for this year. Starting with the more important ones and then meandering down to the ones that are just rattling around in my brain. Here is my post from yesterday, which is vaguely related.

1. Write the first draft of my novel/book. This has been in the forefront of my mind for the last few years. I have tried and tried to write it, but I’ve always stopped short because it just would not gel. Now, I don’t care about how terrible the first draft is as long as it gets written. I’m not sure which of the two ideas I want to focus on or if I can somehow combine the two.

I have been putting it off for a few years because I just can’t get the words to come out right. I don’t know if it’s permanent or temporary–but I fear it’s the former. I still have the ideas in my head, but they aren’t alive as they were before. In the past, they were moving as if in a film. Now, they are static.

I don’t know if it’s because of the medical crisis or not, but I have a hunch it is. I also realized that I had a much harder time visualizing things in my head. Before my medical crisis, if someone said, “Picture an apple in your mind.” I could do that easily, put it on any background, and make it move around. Now, I can still picture it, but it’s very pale and shadowy.

Again, I’m not mad about it because I’m alive. That’s all that really matters. But writing was a big part of my identity, and I’m lost without it. I could easily write 2,000 words a day as I did before my medical crisis–and I have. But it’s shit, and what’s more, I don’t know how to make it not-shit.

On the one hand, there’s no reason not to write the whole novel/memoir/book because why not? I have  all the time in the world, so if it ends up not working, it’s nothing more than a few wasted months. It’s not like I don’t have those, anyway.

My goal is to write a very rough draft, 2,000 words at a time. If that’s too intimidating, I’ll start with a thousand words a day. The goal will be just to write. If even that is too much, then I’ll start with a character study of each main character. I never do that, but it’s a good way just to get me writing.


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