Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: rabbit hole

Rabbit holes, obsessions, and when to leave them

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Before I get into the topic of this post, I’m riding the blue wave that is happening across the country tonight. It’s the midterms, and Dems are flipping seats left and right. The (Republican) governor of Texas conceded to his Democratic opponent–who is a Latina. Gina Hinojosa. Greg Abbott had been governor since 2015–and it’s quite the shock that a Democrat won. Same in Georgia, except the winner was a black woman. Keisha Lance Bottoms. And, closer to home, Peggy Flanagon is the first Native American woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate, and I’m proud that I got to vote for her. I have more mixed emotions about our new governor, Amy Klobuchar, but it’s exciting to me that four out my five representatives (governor, US senator, US representative, MN rep, and MN Senator) wil be women. It also tickles me that Amy Klobuchar might be able to directly appoint her replacement once she becomes governor (she’s a US senator, currently).

As I read all the results about an hour ago, i let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. There had been rumblings that we would have a blue wave, but I didn’t dare to hope. Things were so bleak and terrible, I half-believed that tthere would be shenangians and the Republicans would steal everything.

Instead, the Dems have taken back the House and the Senate. Several key seats have flipped. As I noted above, the South has risen, and it’s become blue! Or at least purple with blue happening in key positions.

Now, on the one hand, this isn’t unusual when the current administration is doing a shitty job or the economy is tanking (or there’s a pandemic) for the opposing party to win key seats. However, what is unusual is who won these seats. There are a lot of ‘first ever’, and they are mostly women of color.

This reminds me of when the entire Saint Paul Congress-elect in 2024 were women. They still are. Six out of the seven are women of color, and they are all under forty. Now, the St. Paul mayor is a Hmong woman, KeohlyHer (started this year), and she’s the first female and the first Asian American mayor of Saint Paul. They all worked hard to do this, and it was historic.

I have hope for the first time in a long time. Normally, I would steel my heart against it, but I’m just riding it out this time. We fucking deserve it after the hellscape of the last two years, and I’m savoring every  minute. If it causes the orange-haired blowhard to have a meltdown, even better. I mean, he has one on the daily, anyway, so might as well get something out of it.

I am so pleased with the results for tonight. Of course I voted. It’s the least I can do. MN has one of the highest voter turnouts in the country (ranked first three times in the last decade, and usually in the top five), which makes me proud. My guess is that it’s in part because you can sign up to vote on election day at your polling station as long as you’re able to confirm your local address. It can be as easy as having a local registered voter confirming your address. Or a bill with your local address. Or a photo ID like a MN license. It’s so easy, and we want people to vote. Ahem.


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Following the breadcrumbs down the rabbit hole

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I’m tired. That’s not what this post is about, but it’s very true. I got a decent amount of sleep last night, and I’m feeling better than I have in the past few days. Sleep really does make a difference–who knew? (Once again, everyfuckingbody!) I have never felt better in my life than the few months after my medical crisis because of the eight hours ofsleep I got a night for months after. It was terrific, I’ll be honest. Yes, my body was beat up and broken from what it went through, but my god. Going to bed at ten p.m. and getting up at six a.m. for several months was glorious.

Ahem.

Back to the point of my post. I want to talk about how easy it is to go down a rabbit hole when it comes to surfing the net. Let’s take YouTube. The way the home page is laid out, there are dozens of videos visible. And, you can scroll down to infinity if you want. Of course, the algorithms will show you videos based on what you’ve watched, so you can have interesting content for dozens of hours. If you say no to certain videos, you just hone your algorithm to give you more of what you want.

Which is not a bad thing, per se, but it means that for those of us who can get hyperfocused on things, it’s not great. By the way, I just learned that in the aautism/ADHD community, there’s a difference between hyperfixations and special interests. The former are obsessions that last from a few weeks to a month or two. The latter are hobbies that consume you for years. It explained so much for me personally.

Some hyperfixations I’ve had in the past: black diamond rings (not real diamonds, obviously); jigsaw puzzles; cute boxers; stuffed pigs. The last might have been more of a special interest because it lasted quite some itme, but I wasn’t constantly obsessed with it. It’s just that I was born in the year of the pig, and I felt an affinity to them. I also had a hyperfixation with kids books, mainly ones I read when I was a kid.

On the other hand, my special interests have lasted for years. At least two of them. Those would be video games (mostly FromSoft games and indie games) and Taiji weapons. That’s a subset of my interest in Taiji in general, but I’m all about the weapons. I don’t know if I would lump in my interest in Bagua in with my interest in Taiji, but they are at least adjacent to each other.

I probably would put them together in the category of internal martial arts because they are in the same category. However, they are very different to each other. On the third hard, my interest in the weapons for each is similar. Si  nce I’m done teaching myself the Bagua  Knives Form, I have my eye on a Double-Headed Spear Form (Bagua) to teach to myself next. But not until next year. I’m being very conservative about how often I teach myself new weapon forms because my teacher warned me not to just add them thoughtlessly. Her point was that it was better to learn one slowly and well before moving onto the next than to just learn them as quickly as possible.

I’m weird in that I don’t necessarily bury myself in my obessesions. Meaning, I practice every day, and it was getting to be too much for me (doing four or five weapon forms a day), so I pared it down two or three a day. That’s much more manageable, and it made me fall in love with the weapons again. I also do forty-five minutes of warmups/stretches and solo forms. This means a total of about an hour and fifteen minutes–which is much better.


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Empowered is a four-letter word

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*snap* *snap* *snap*
Where are my likes?

Recently, I went down the Buzzfeed video rabbit hole, and I’ve only recently emerged. First of all, it’s easy to keep on clicking on suggested videos, which is exactly why they do it the way they do it. Let’s face it, they have honed the science of getting people to keep on clicking. I’m not even really interested in the videos, but, hey, I’m here, anyway, so I might as well click. I keep them on as background noise while I’m doing other things, so it’s easy to keep the chatter going. I really think of them as white noise, which is perfect for me.

Now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. The videos are mostly fluff. I’ve seen a dozen videos of people trying different kinds of food, and there’s usually some kind of theme to it like weird foods or spicy foods or Thai foods. They usually show their faces as they react, and the reaction is big and bold. On purpose, I’m sure. It’s not normal for everyone in the room to react so wildly for something that is just a bit weird and not, say, an entire person on fire. It feels as if one of the requirements for working with Buzzfeed is being an out-sized personality–at least if you’re going to be on camera. Let’s face it, though. It wouldn’t be half as interesting if someone took a bite of, say, lutefisk (actual thing that happened) and just shrugged their shoulders. They are masters of selling their product.

Two, they have a wide variety of people who work for Buzzfeed. All races, colors, religions, genders, sexual orientations, but not age. The videos are definitely geared towards hip twenty-somethings–which I am most emphatically not. Not only because I’m not twenty, but I’ve never been and never will be hip. Also, ninety-percent of the people in the videos are good-looking, but we’ll get to that later (if I remember).

Three, the videos that try to be deeper…fail. The ‘girls acting like guys’ and vice-versa–by the way. It’s 2018. WOMEN, not girls. It’s irritating that this is still a thing, especially when it’s used in the same sentence as men. Such as, “The girls and their men.” Ugh. Anyway, I know these videos are trying to highlight stereotypes, but many of the issues they cover are not easy to breakdown in five minutes or less–especially not in video. What usually happens is that they have the women do stereotypical male things, then have a short, pithy statement at the end why the stereotyping is bad.

First of all (on the third point), the stereotypes are all tired. Dudes like to talk about sports. Dudes have trouble committing. Chicks are overly emotional and go to the bathroom in pairs. OK, the second is true, but still. I know they are taking an ironic look at it, but it’s the age old question of whether focusing on the stereotypes so much is beneficial or not. I think it can be if there is enough down to deconstruct said stereotypes, and we’ll get to that in a minute.

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