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Being Human With RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria)

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RSD is knows as ‘Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) is associated with ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) and autism. It can be described as a hypersensitivity to real, and or perceived rejection. It’s not officially recognized as an actual mental health disorder in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) but there is an increasing awareness of it. Here is a link to a discussion thread explaining it in more detail (link will open in separate window).

For decades, I used to beat the ever-loving shit out of myself mentally and emotionally because of RSD. Any time I made a mistake, or didn’t fit in perfectly in a social situation, I beat the crap out of myself. I told myself I was the worst person in the world and that I would never learn how to act properly when I needed to. I tried to hold myself to a standard of perfection no human being can ever hope to achieve.

RSD comes from when a neurodivergent person is in a group or social situation and they laugh a little too loud, say something that doesn’t flow with the rest of the conversation, or they don’t do something all that well, and in the process someone in the group either says something negative to them, or gives them a side-eye or eye-roll, or someone tries to make a joke about the neurodivergent person’s verbal or physical goof-up. I didn’t take this well or shrug it off because my neurodivergent brain reacted in a huge storm of shame, guilt, and worst of all, fear that people actually hated me for not being ‘normal’, or just ablet o function in a social setting like everyone else.

What’s really awful about RSD is that for me, it made me beat the living shit out of myself mentally and emotionally any time I flubbed up in some way, even if it was just an honest mistake, or me just showing some enthusiasm, or  saying something that didn’t sound like what everyone else was saying. But what got me to stop hurting myself like this was one thought I had eleven years ago:

Everyone else is just as full of shit as I am, but I’m not a bad person.

For context, this thought came to me after a call-evaluation where I made a mistake during the call but caught myself and gave the correct information. Basically, I took responsibility for a simple mistake and fixed it. Now I wasn’t expecting a huge celebration for it, but I do believe I deserved recognition for catching my mistake and fixing it. Yet my manager at the time of this evaluation didn’t see it that way because the first thing she said to me after the call was over was, “You should have known better.”

Okay, maybe you can see it that way because I was a veteran rep who had been doing this for years and maybe shouldn’t have been going so fast I read the wrong piece of information. But IN EXPLANATION, NOT DEFENSE, information on the screens I was working on back then was not user-friendly or well-organized so mistakes happened much more than they should have. But I didn’t say anything because I’d heard this before when I made honest mistakes during calls. But I will also say this: just saying someone should know better instead of asking them why they made the mistake and maybe trying to make the workflow better would have been more productive. And dear readers, this is why after ten years away from that call-center hell as I like to call it, I still don’t miss it in any way, shape, or form.

Rejecting perfectionism is what really helps me with RSD. This rejection of perfectionism helps me accept that I am different from most people, but that doesn’t make me a bad person. Because to me, neurotypical people don’t have social cues but more like neurotypical people conform to the dominant person in the room and that person sets the tone and pace. To me, neurotypical thinking is very linear and not too complex. To me, a neurodivergent brain is chaos theory at times, but mostly it’s just high-speed processing of lots of information and input, or having a highly-tuned sensitivity to all kinds of things coming in at once: noise, temperature, words, emotions, etc..

Another thing that has helped me with RSD is hearing this: no one thinks about you more than you do yourself. The vast majority of people are not thinking about you at all. The vast majority of people are thinking about what’s in front of them that they have to deal with at this very moment.

And yet another thing that has helped me with RSD is this: if someone has a beef with me, they can put on their big-boy/big-girl pants and come talk to me about it. But I can also respond to that in my own way, such as if they’re trying to force me to be someone I’m not. I don’t need anyone’s good intentions, pearl-clutching, or hand-wringing because if that happens, I’ll just walk away.

Yes, I would love not to be such a fucking klutz. But my days of beating the shit out of myself are over because that accomplishes nothing. But it’s also something that each person has to reach on their own in their own way. So be good to yourself.

Fifty-Two and Fabulous

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Yesterday I began my fifty-second journey around the sun. I spent most of it on the road because I need money and that’s how I earn money right now. My riders were awesome as always and I dealt with the fact that Friday is ‘Drive Like a Real Idiot’ day on the road (because Friday afternoons are when I see the worst driving- it’s like people rip their brains out of their skulls and run over them when they get out of work on Friday).

But I didn’t start out feeling fifty-two and fabulous because when my alarm went off yesterday morning (and this morning, too), I said, “Motherfucker.”, then I got out of bed and did my usual morning routine (get dressed, take Darcy outside, put some treats in Tiger Lily’s bowl, put ice and water in my bottle, then hit the road and charge the car up because two a.m. is when it’s the cheapest for me).

Of course, birthdays get me in a reflective mood so here are some reflections on what I’d like for this fifty-second trip around the sun for me:

First, get into shape. Right now, I feel like a gelatinous blob and no, I’m doing this to win a spread in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. I just don’t want to feel like a blob of skin and bones. So I’m going to invest in a couple of hand weights and do a few exercises for a few minutes a day to get started.

Two, eat better. I keep a weird schedule so it is a bit difficult to eat in a way that’s ‘normal’. Also, because of my lovely neurodivergent brain, my hunger signals and metabolism are fucked up (yes, that’s a lovely side effect of a neurodivergent brain). Add in wonky female hormones and it’s like a roller coaster sometimes in that sometimes I don’t feel hungry at all until I ask myself when was the last time I ate something, or I feel like eating everything that is not nailed down. But my goal with this is just to get more protein, fruits and vegetables, and complex carbs into me on a daily basis. I don’t drink soda or consume a lot of sweets (been trying to snack healthier with crackers or Cheerios in the car) so I just need to add in healthier stuff.

Three, I’ve set a note to myself to do what I call ‘social media’ stuff, meaning I want to be consistent with posting online content. I have a ton of it between this blog, stories, poems, and works-in-progress. So I set an alarm on my phone, which commits me to it along with a sticky note on my laptop. If I set an alarm, then I’ll do shit, which is so ADHD but hey, it works.

Now, this is all well and good but why the discussion here, why should I lay this all out online? It’s for me, first. And it’s because I want to explain why creating routines and plans, and setting alarms is important to do.

Instead of the term CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder), I will call it ‘non-stop bullshit’. There was about a decade or so in my life, my twenties to be more exact, where I felt like I was living through a never-ending stream of constant bullshit. It was like every single day (give or take) was like hitting the ground running and not stopping for ten or twelve hours. It was like people treated every single thing like it was a five-alarm fire or they just felt like they could dictate my time and if I took time to myself they freaked the fuck out and made me feel like shit. This constant stream of never-ending bullshit took its’ toll on me and I responded by either freezing up, or fawning all over people to get them to back the fuck off. Now, years later, there is still a part of my brain that worries I’ll freeze or fawn if someone ever came at me and pulled that kind of shit. I know I won’t because I’ve gotten really good at saying, “Excuse me?” in a very loud and angry voice. I just want the opportunity to follow it up with, “And your fucking point is?”

But I honestly don’t think that’s going to happen. Instead, I want to reach people who feel like they don’t have control over their own minds or their lives. People who feel like they’re going nuts, or are broken. Trust me, anyone who feels like they’re nuts for thinking and feeling all fucked up is not going nuts or broken. You just need some help figuring things out and finding a way to heal, and that’s where I can help you in my colorful, profane, and sarcastic way.

Of course, there are my other goals: publishing my books along with getting my van and hitting the road. I’m working on that now. And if something comes along that throws off my routines or plans, I’m getting back on track. Because if someone thinks getting knocked off the track makes someone a failure, fuck them all to hell (and yes, there are assholes in this world who do feel this way). For neurodivergent people like me, routines and plans are worth making and sticking to, and for getting back on track with.

And this, dear readers, is how I’m going to make being fifty-two fabulous!

Buy the Ticket, Take the Trip, or Just Hit the Road and Don’t Look Back

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Today is Mother’s Day here in the United States and this isn’t just about my mother of course, but about women who put aside things they want to do simply because they don’t want to ‘disappoint’ someone. But women are now saying ‘fuck that shit’ and disappointing people left and right and doing what they want to do, and most of all, they’re walking away and staying away from bad shit, like bad marriages, bad jobs, and people who are just disappointed in them whenever they step out of line.

I’ve been seeing this meme going around saying ‘Buy the Ticket’ and I really like it. It’s saying ‘buy the ticket’ to the concert, the movie, or the trip, or whatever you want to. Now, why does this need to be said? Because too many women, (and guys, if this applies to you keep reading but I’m specifically addressing women here), don’t buy that ticket, or just don’t do something simple because it might ‘disappoint’ someone. And it’s only because it might take a little bit of time away from someone else, and that someone is usually a grown-ass adult who can more than take care of themselves.

In the summer of 2024, a lot of young people from the United States flew to Europe to see concerts by big artists and also go to the music festivals. Why? Because the dollar was kicking the euro’s ass so travel was really affordable and also, concert tickets aren’t scalped in Europe. I was all for that and I actually had a few passengers in the car that summer tell me that’s what they were doing when I took them to the airport. I strongly encouraged them to keep doing this whenever they got the opportunity.

For me, I only bought the ticket once, and it was for a concert in Austin, Texas in August 2001. It was for Russell Crowe’s band at a concert at an outdoor venue there. My original plan was to take my mother with me but not long after I bought the tickets, her cancer came back in another part of her body. So she started another round of radiation and chemotherapy and couldn’t go with me. Looking back, I wished she’d said no to the treatment and instead focused on building up as much strength to handle a night outside in the middle of August (which can be pretty brutally hot even after dark in Texas).

In fact, I’m going to come right out and say this right here and now: I’d wished she’d stopped treatment after about the second or third recurrence. I wish she’d stopped treatment and just said to hell with it, sold everything and hit the road. Because she always wanted to travel and loved seeing new places and had plans about doing that before the cancer. But my father being a raging insecure jack-ass pressured her pretty damn hard to keep the treatments going because he thought they’d work. To me, if the first or second round doesn’t put someone into remission for more than a year, I’d say call it quits and just live in the time you have. Because he and I along with my mother knew damn good and well she wasn’t going to die cancer-free. But I also think the three of us were not quite afraid, but just didn’t want to deal with other people who didn’t understand this kind of decision. Because they sure as hell freaked the fuck out whenever we talked about how we were going to deal with the end and all that.

So in turn, I’m not giving up on my dream of hitting the road and making it as a writer. Yes, I’m doing it on a shoestring and a prayer, and scrimping and saving whenever I can. But I know I can do it if I don’t give up. And lucky for me, I don’t have a husband or anyone in my life I’m responsible for, and most of all, if someone decided they wanted to tell me how ‘disappointed’ they were in me for wanting this and pursuing it… well, ‘fuck off’ is a complete sentence.

Years ago, I read this statement: “People can handle being disappointed.” – Dr. Nicole LePera. And that statement changed me for the better because although it’s taken a long time to truly sink in, it has. Because as I wrote at the beginning of this year, I’ve made my peace with being alone in life. But here’s the really big thing: no one knows the future, or what the next day will bring, or what’s just around the corner. And you won’t find that out until you get off your ass and go find out. I tried staying in one place and making what I thought would be an ‘acceptable’ life and instead, I broke down and in turn, my life imploded altogether. Yes, I survived it and came out the other side with an emotional clarity no one touch, but the scars will always be there.

I’ve also said before that I’m still having a conversation with my mother through time and space. There are times when I’m on the road when I feel like she’s riding beside me and I feel her with me. I’ve gotten to work through the emotional recovery that she didn’t get so now I’m working on taking the trip and hitting the road like she didn’t get to. I don’t want to be a woman who stayed put simply because she felt like she couldn’t disappoint people, or was afraid to deal with their bullshit. I’m not afraid anymore and besides, most of these disappointed people eventually move on and leave you behind. So leave them behind once and for all, and travel with the people you want to, even if they’re with you only in spirit.

Uber Tales, How Far I’ve Come From the Front Seat, Edition

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First, if you read this and feel compelled to come at me in a hand-wringing, over-protective way, save it. I am a cranky middle-aged woman who can more than handle herself and any idiot who decides to be ignorant, stupid, or just an asshole.

In nine years on the road, I have been asked if I’ve ever wanted to toss someone out of my car. Just one time which led to an informal ban on passengers in my front passenger seat (unless they’re part of a group).

The one time I actually threatened to toss a passenger out happened before COVID hit in 2020. I went a bar to do a pickup around midnight and the guy I was picking up was drunk off his ass. I should have canceled the ride but I was still a bit of a goody-two shoes back then. So I let him sit in the front seat thinking if he puked he’d just do it on the single floorboard and not make that much of a mess. Well, he didn’t puke. Instead, he put his hands on my right arm and right thigh. I told him to take his hands off me as I was driving down a highway where I needed to concentrate and not put up with this drunk handsy shit.

Pardon the profanity here but this is the ONLY time I’ve ever cussed out a passenger: I told him if he didn’t keep his fucking hands to himself I was going to pull over at the next exit into a parking lot, toss him out, then call the cops and have him arrested for assault. I then said, “Do you understand me now, motherfucker?” Yes, I actually said ‘motherfucker’ to him in a way that would have made Samuel L Jackson proud. Well, my profanity must have gotten through his alcohol-soaked brain because he kept his hands to himself and didn’t say another word until I got him home, and he bolted out of my car probably hoping I wasn’t going to fuck him up. Then as I was driving away from his house, I saw THREE Bexar County Sheriff’s vehicles parked on his street all blacked-out. I don’t know what they were doing but I didn’t stick around to find out (but looking back on this, at least I would have been able to yell for help if anything had gone down with him). I got on the highway and hit the gas and called it a night. And I let loose a string of profanity for a few minutes and got his shit out of my system and was totally fine by the time I got home.

But after that, I instituted an informal ban on solo passengers riding up front with me. The only exceptions I’ve made since then were for what I decided where legitimate reasons and not one of those passengers put their hands on me. But a few days ago, I decided an argument wasn’t worth it and thought an older woman wouldn’t be trouble. Boy was I wrong.

First, she asks to sit up front and I nod my head ‘no’ but then I relent thinking she’s probably harmless and also because it’s a short trip. She gets in and points to my phone and says she’s going to give me a lecture on how to use my phone to navigate. I go, “Excuse me?” I ask her why she wants to do that and yes, I conveyed how pissed off I was at her total lack of manners. She tries to blow it off as a joke, which I don’t let her slide off with because I tell her that wasn’t funny at all. I then tell her if my GPS is wrong, which it can be sometimes, it’s okay to tell me. So I start driving and she’s still going on about how she didn’t mean to upset me in a way that was whiny and a bit petulant. Finally, at a stop sign I take a deep breath and go, “Let’s start over. Hi, I’m Michele, how are you doing today?”

That got us back on track and as we waited for a train, I told her the story I shared earlier here, and that along with COVID restrictions were why I didn’t allow passengers in the front with me. She seemed genuinely shocked that people could be that awful. I know, the irony in the car was thick with that one. In the end, she asked me if I was going to report her and I said no. She was very apologetic to me once I started our conversation over. Also, I like to think I made her think twice about her shitty manners and also because she didn’t put her hands on me. If she had put her hands on me, all bets would have been off.

The moral of the story here is this: Uber drivers, especially female drivers, have to be on guard for shit like this. Because this bad-mannered woman wasn’t drunk, and the ride was in the afternoon so this kind of stupid shit can happen anytime day or night, drunk or sober, or just fucked up in the head in the case of this crazy bad-mannered lady.

But what I’m really proud of is how I stood up for myself both times. Because I do have a right to stand up to this kind of shit, as does anyone else. Lucky for me, this is so rare that it just makes for a good cautionary tale. And as for Mr. Drunk, well, there were no real reporting tools back then and the ride was paid for by someone else (who tipped me quite well, by the way), as was Bad-Mannered Lady’s. But I like to think a little ass-chewing goes a long way, though I’m sure Mr. Drunk didn’t remember anything I said to him, which is why I wished him a monster hangover in return.

After Bad-Mannered Lady’s ride, my ban on solo passengers is now back in full effect with exceptions ONLY for legitimate reasons of MY CHOICE.

Now, if you do want to come at me and say I’m the bad-mannered one here that I should be the ‘better person’ and just take shit from people, shove that where the sun doesn’t shine. Because if you have ever dealt with the people in a public, or professional space, this is the kind of shit that can happened every so often. It would be like asking a bartender if they’ve ever had to grab the baseball bat they keep behind the bar and threaten someone with it, and I’m sure they would all say ‘Yes’ more than one time. My advice to you is this: be on your best behavior in public and in private, too. There are more than enough shitty people in this world fucking things up so don’t be like them. Keep your hands to yourself, remember your manners, and for the sake of all that’s holy and good in this world, don’t be an asshole drunk or sober.

A Look Back As I Wind Down Another Trip Around the Sun

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Yes, I know it’s been a while since I’ve cranked out a blog entry though I’m grateful it hasn’t made traffic slack off to my website here (thanks to all my visitors and readers, and fuck you to any AI scrapping, too). Between my resurgent perimenopause, spring allergies, wonky weather and all the accompanying joint pain and fatigue, I’ve gone into overload, then shut down, and now I’m back yet again.

It’s also one week to the beginning of my fifty-second trip around the sun. And yes, around this time in my life, I tend to look back and look forward. And that’s because two birthdays really stand out in my mind simply because of what I told myself back then, and the decision I made around the time of another one.

First up, turning forty, which was twelve years ago this year. At that time, I hadn’t learned how to hate what would be my last call-center job (if I remember correctly, I had a really good manager to work for so that always made jobs more than bearable), and I had this cozy little existence I’d cultivated for myself. Cute apartment, cute little hobbies, cute pets (still have one of those cute pets even though she’s a senior dog now) despite the fact that I’m a fat blob that is anything but cute. But that cute little existence had calmed my brain down enough to where I said something that started a change inside me. And it was simply this:

“You’re not doing so bad.”

Yep, I was just being good to myself. But twelve years ago, there wasn’t a real big conversation going on about being good to yourself like this so me telling myself I wasn’t doing so bad in life was a big deal, though it would be years before I realized how much of a game-changer this was for me. At the time, I just felt proud of myself for being a self-sufficient, responsible adult. I wasn’t doing anything other than working, piddling around my apartment, and piddling around with my writing. But at least I didn’t have any responsibilities other than taking care of myself and my pets, and I was good at that. I didn’t have anyone in my life making me feel like shit and making me feel like I wasn’t good enough no matter how hard I tried to be. Basically, I felt like it was the end of my shit-show twenties and thirties, and my forties seemed to be starting off on a good note.

Almost a year later, in April 2015, after a shitty call-quality session with my manager, a thought came to me which changed me and my life forever:

Everyone else is just as full of shit as I am, but I’m a good person.

What that means is that no one is perfect, even if they claim to be, and that I am not a bad person for being imperfect. Before that day, if I had gotten nit-picked on something, I would have beat the ever-loving shit out of myself. But on that day, I didn’t. Instead, I called out the bullshit in my mind and changed myself for the better. Because perfectionism is complete and total fucking bullshit, and letting it go will heal you in so many ways. Yes, it will piss a few people off but like I’ve said before, if you piss someone off for doing the right thing, in this case believing in yourself even though you’re not perfect, you’re pissing off some fucking asshole for all the right reasons.

Then ten years ago this very month, I made a decision that would change my life forever when I made the decision to leave my last call-center job. At the time, I didn’t tell anyone I was doing this because I didn’t want anyone to try and bullshit me out of it. I didn’t have anything lined up but I needed to heal up physically from all the pain in my body before I could figure out what to do next. Also, I had to heal up from all the physical pain I was in, pain that I now realize was me trying to hold the walls of silence in my mind as they were breaking down.

So a little over a decade later, I can say I like myself. I know I’m flawed, fucked up, imperfect, and still ugly as shit physically (please don’t come at me with any body positivity shit because that’s a conversation for another time). But what I really like is my tolerance for stupidity, bullshit, and petty-ass fucking cruelty is gone. Some days I’ll let little bitty shit slide, but the big shit… no. No appeasement, no silence in the face of stupidity or flat-out fucking cruelty. I might put the brakes on hard, and make someone hit their proverbial head on a proverbial dashboard, but I’m not backing down. Yes, I’m running a solo gig but that’s alright because I made peace with that at the beginning of this year and that peace is holding quite strongly.

I’m two years into my fifth decade on this Earth and like the start of the previous decade, I’m not doing too bad. I’m not cultivating a cute little existence in the hope of keeping people off my ass. Instead, I’m just figuring out how to crawl out of a hole in a world that gives new meaning to the term ‘fucked up’ in so many ways. But one thing about racking up the years is that you learn that life keeps going on no matter what, and no matter how much shit happens.

Road Signs

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This morning I asked myself, “Why do I have to feel like shit about myself?”

Answer: I don’t.

So why did that question come to my mind in the first place?

Because yesterday I asked myself another question, and that response turned into the latest attempt at an introduction to my book ‘Uber Tales: Stories and Thoughts From the Road’. The question I asked was, “How do I put nine years on the road into a book?” In this new introduction, I said I’ve been trying to write this book for a few years now and with one thing or another coming up, I haven’t gotten around to it. But this morning as my mind drifted in the darkness, I realized I hadn’t gone anywhere near this book for one stupid-simple reason: I was afraid of what someone mouth off at me and that I’d shrink and fold instead of shrugging it off with maybe a pithy, even nasty comment in reply.

Now after all this time and all the work I’ve done on myself, why would I still feel fear at the extremely-faint possibility of someone coming at me and putting me down? It’s not really fear that I feel per se, but more like dreading the thought of having to deal with shit like that. In reality, I know I don’t need to shrink myself or silence myself in order not to have to deal with this kind of stupid, mean-girl type bullshit. And yes, it’s been a really long time since I’ve had someone make a stupid, insensitive, condescending comment to me about my life or what I’m doing or anything like that. But for more years than I care to admit, I just sat and took that kind of shit and dear readers, that’s a scar that never fully heals.

I spent so many years as a people-pleaser, and I failed miserably at it. I failed at it because people-pleasing itself is an exercise in futility with guaranteed failure. Because if you’re trying to please people, in reality, you’re really trying to appease them. You’re trying to keep them from being mean and cruel to you, from getting in your shit and fucking things up for you, and you’re trying to keep them from hurting other people. People who are emotionally-immature, brain-dead idiots will never be satisfied with anything, and in turn, they will move on from you. But you’ll be left standing all alone in the wreckage of your life.

In the last ten years, I’ve been picking up the pieces of my mind, my heart, and my soul and putting them back together in a way that has led to a lot of healing. And here’s the thing: my book ‘Uber Tales’ will show that because my personal journey is as much a part of my life on the road as an Uber driver as is the anecdotes and observations from the road itself. And I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell this story as I’m still living it. So now I realize this is my story to tell, and that it won’t be anything but boring, or so I hope. 😊

I will say there is an element of ‘this or that’ in my life that I’m still learning how to manage. Last week, I had my period after a two-month hiatus and it kicked my ass. So my hormones have decided to come back to life with a vengeance and fuck things up for me but hopefully this will be a last gasp or next-to-last gasp of that shit. Also, it rained like hell here in San Antonio earlier this week and I wasn’t going to risk driving around in flood waters. But the temperature is going up, and eventually the clouds will burn off and look out! Most of all, I am learning that hormonal shifts really fuck up my ADHD tendencies but that I do recover faster from those fuck-ups, too.

So what’s a lonely writer supposed to do here? Keep on rolling, and keep writing. I can see what gets viewed on my website and on social media and the numbers are pretty consistent with tiny amounts of growth. So I know there is a lot of potential for me to develop that into something that hopefully generate revenue. Because making money, or wanting to make money off my writing and social media engagement is something I will NOT apologize for nor will I take shit for it, either. Not that anyone has come at me like that but just a word of warning for anyone who wants to mouth off like to me. Because in this fucked-up world we all live in, you do what you can to eke out a living.

And for the last nine years, I’ve managed to scratch out a living, or at least survive without ending up under a bridge by being on the road. Yes, I feel like I’ve burned some bridges here and there, and as to how much of that part of the story I will tell remains to be seen. But I’ve made it this far, and I’ll make it all the way. Because there is an old van waiting for me to kit it out and the road calls to me.

The signs are there, on and off the road. And if there is one thing I’ve learned in my almost fifty-two years on this planet, it’s to look at those signs and see where they’ll take me.

I Don’t Need to Compete With AI (artificial intelligence)

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AI is doing this

AI is taking over that

AI is going to wipe us all out

It seems all you hear about AI is that AI is taking over, has taken over, and there is nothing us dumb-ass humans can do about it. Well, us dumb-ass humans invented this technology so it’s sloppy and imperfect and sooner or later, bound to fuck things up like it already has, and just like us real flesh-and-blood humans still do on a regular basis. So what’s a poor flesh-and-blood human slob to do?

My response is this: I don’t need to compete with AI.

Why?

Because I’m already being used to train it, and AI is only as smart as the material it scrapes up from the internet. But here’s the thing: AI doesn’t discern whether material is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or ‘quality’ material. It doesn’t seem to know how to fact-check something from multiple sources. It just spits out what it thinks users want to hear.

Case in point: the first sentence of the above paragraph was tagged by the spelling/grammar check in the Microsoft Word program I use to write. It tagged ‘being used’ and ‘train’ and asked me if I was using the correct verb tense. Yes, I am because I wanted to say that AI is actively using me to train itself on but since I’m writing in the first-person here, it doesn’t seem to understand singular present-tense verbiage here. This is why I will look at what the spelling/grammar check is highlighting and sometimes I will correct it but that’s my choice, not the program’s.

If anyone accuses me of using AI to write or edit, I’m going to laugh in their faces then tell them to fuck off straight to Hell. I don’t just write in a colorful funky way to piss off or throw off AI, but because I choose to write and talk this way. I choose to use sentence structure that may not be ‘perfect’ but I can proofread quite well on my own. And yes, I will claim an attitude here because I was writing and proofreading long before I started using word processing software. And I don’t trust software completely as I know it’s as flawed as I can be, and that technology is only as good as the people who create it, program it, and use it.

One of the current crop of tech-bro billionaire assholes recently said that neurodivergent people will survive the coming of AI. I was like, “Fuck yes!” And you know why? Because neurodivergent people like me don’t think in a straight line, or logically, and we’re not boring. We’re annoying as fuck sometimes, or a lot of the time, and we’re not perfect as our neurodivergent brains can fuck our lives up pretty well. But I think we’re genuine survivors because we see things that boring dumb-ass neurotypical people don’t see, like patterns and other things that are right in front of us but neurotypical people are blind to. It’s why intelligence agencies recruit neurodivergent kids out of high school into intelligence analysis because a good intelligence analyst can see patterns where most people can’t.

But the current crop of tech-bro billionaire assholes don’t like people who see through their bullshit because most of these guys are just hustlers and con-men. Most of them don’t really know the nuts-and-bolts of what they’re peddling and don’t really care because despite all their grandiose visionary garbage they spout, they really don’t know how things work. And most of all, I really think they hate the neurodivergent half of the human population because they know they’re going to need us neurodivergent weirdos to solve their fucking problems.

In the end, I don’t see myself competing with AI at all. As a writer this is something I see a lot of discussion about how to write when you’re competing with AI slop. Humans are not ‘competing’ with AI slop because AI slop is being generated by lazy con-artist scamming humans. And I don’t compete with criminals and jack-asses. So I’m just going to keep on writing in my own way, fucking clauses and phrases up not just to throw the AI into a steaming tizzy, but because I like to write this way. I like to be unique, colorful, and I have made peace with the fact that I’m an imperfect slob with a propensity for profanity.

So if AI wants to scrape what I’m doing here, have at it. But talking like this takes practice, and an attitude of ‘I truly don’t give a shit’. Because when a woman of my age says she doesn’t care, like I do, she means it. I don’t fucking care that this world is fucked up because there’s not a lot I can do about it other than live my life to the best of my ability, and keep on writing in my own way.

And I’ve seen all the eighties movies were AI takes over and blows everything to Hell and the survivors have to navigate a post-nuclear apocalyptic zombie-filled wasteland, which is why I want to get a van and kit it out to where I can live off the grid if I have to.

New Poem – Women Choose the Bear

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I wrote this poem in response to the devastating report from CNN about a website that has been referred to as a ‘rape academy’. This is a very graphic and deeply disturbing report on a website where men shared videos of women being drugged and raped along with instructions on how to drug a woman and film them. In February of this year, in one month alone, the site had sixty-two million views. Here’s a link but please be warned, this a very difficult story to read.

Almost a year ago, there was a TikTok story where a question was asked: if a woman comes across a man or a bear in the forest, which one would she choose? Women overwhelmingly chose the bear and as I say in my poem here, that’s when the shit hit the fan. And in the year since, things haven’t gotten any better and women are still choosing the bear.

Poem – Women Choose the Bear – pdfDownload

The Universe Has a Sense of Humor (especially when it comes to me)

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I have said for many years the Universe has a sense of humor, especially when it comes to me. Case in point:

Yesterday morning when I woke up at o’dark thirty, I said, “I have a feeling something shitty is going to happen to me today. As long as it’s not to with my car, I’ll be okay.”

Well, the Universe took this as a challenge and after a consult with the Goddess, decided I should start having periods again. Yes, after an almost three-month hiatus I started my period yesterday. And I’m enjoying the lovely shit-show of it with all the lovely cramps, bloating, joint pain, and fatigue I can handle. Oh well, at least I had a pad in my bag when I stopped to use the restroom yesterday morning (and I refilled it as soon as I got home).

But I had a feeling a period might be coming because my ADHD was fucking up big-time and I was having joint pain even though the weather was warm and icky. It seems at the grand old of age of almost fifty-two I’m still not done with the whole perimenopause thing. And yet I still see women online saying no one talks about this shit. Trust me, sister, they do which is why I’m writing about it here. I’m glad my generation is talking about it in the sarcastic and bitchy way we have of dealing with things. And as for the elder millennials coming into this, buck up, bitches because it’s going to be one hell of a bumpy ride.

A lot of people have been saying this past week that the Universe has a sense of humor because conservative idiot-fake ass Christians are saying Donald Trump is possessed by demons and or is the Antichrist himself. I said on a Facebook thread that if Trump is the Antichrist then that’s proof that the Universe has a sense of humor because I always thought the Antichrist was supposed to be a lot slicker, more pathologically evil, and devilishly good looking. Instead, the Universe says I’ll give you a bloated dumb-ass with a rotting brain who isn’t afraid to spout Antichrist shit. But since he’s led so many ‘Christians’ from the truth, I’m going to say the Universe had a really good laugh at this one.

Some might say, like Depeche Mode did in their song ‘Blasphemous Rumors’ that God has a sick sense of humor. Personally, I don’t believe God has anything to do with things near as much as a lot of idiots on this planet think. My father used to say he couldn’t see God sitting on his ginormous white marble throne hurling shit down at us humans on Earth simply because he could. I mean, if humans were created in God’s image, wouldn’t that mean God is imperfect, too? I’m lucky to live in the twenty-first century here because in the Middle Ages that line would have gotten me burned at the stake. The problem is too many insecure men now would love to bring something like that back.

To me, the Universe is just going along through the great black void of the galaxy, and we’re all hurling through it and trying to hold our shit together while we’re all on this crazy ride. But while we’re doing that, shit breaks, people do stupid shit, people are mean and cruel, and nowhere near enough bullies get knocked on their asses. And middle-aged women like me discover they may have a few eggs left in the old ovaries and because the way the female plumbing system is built, those eggs have to come down the hard way.

I like to say the Universe likes balance- light and dark, good and bad, fucked up and not-so-fucked up. Some days are great, and some aren’t. But the good times don’t last forever, yet neither do the bad times. I think if you try to bend the Universe to serve you like royalty, well, the Universe will show you otherwise. Or as my father used to say, what goes around comes around, and you reap what you sow, and as I like to say, Karma can be a real bitch when she wants to be.

So as my ADHD-addled brain tries to work through sinus headaches and perimenopausal bullshit, the Universe keeps on keeping on. My advice: try to have a sense of humor about things, even if it’s sarcastic as hell sometimes. If people don’t get sarcasm, or don’t like it, that’s on them.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep laughing right back at the Universe here.

Cruel to the Truth

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Yesterday I wrote this stanza in my poem, ‘The Poetic Muse’:

Sometimes she storms into the room

Furious with rage

Raging against something she read online

Heard on the news

Or saw in the world

She paces the room with angry energy

Biting the words out

As I write them down in matching fury

Her rage and mine sync up perfectly

Both of us angry and so frustrated

At what is painfully obvious to us

While so many are oblivious

Or in denial

Or worst of all, cruel to the truth

What do I mean when I say, cruel to the truth?

I mean when people respond to suffering and injustice in front of them with cruelty. I mean when people are cruel to others who have done nothing wrong but be ‘different’ in some way. It’s another way of saying, “The cruelty is the point.”

Why are people so cruel?

Because they have been conditioned to be, because they have chosen to be cruel, and most of all, because they believe everyone else is not deserving of any good in this world if they are different in some way. This world has the resources and the knowledge to alleviate suffering on a global scale, things like poverty, hunger, oppression, disease, and to end wars. So why don’t we do that? Because a small, powerful minority holds most of the resources needed to do alleviate suffering simply because they believe they are the ‘chosen ones’ and the rest of the world suffers if they defy that power.

Right now, the President of the United States is making drastic threats to the people of Iran, threats that are believed to be total destruction of the country’s resources. Our military members are said to be asking what they can do if they are given what would be clearly illegal orders. And the rest of us are asking why isn’t he being stopped in doing this? Why isn’t he being removed from power?

Because conservative politicians and voters benefit from him being in power, financially and in ego. To them, cruelty is justified and it is something they have embraced in their support of him. These are the people who have made so many excuses, who deflect with anger and fury simply because they believe that suffering is justified, and not a product of unjust systems and people who inflict suffering in order to benefit from it. They are people who believe the cruelty is the point, and are not willing to let go of that even if deep inside themselves they know they are wrong.

Cruelty to the truth also means staying silent, or away from the truth altogether. For there is no real neutrality in this world, and there never was because in the worlds of Eli Wiesel, “Neutrality benefits the oppressor.”

So what do the rest of us do? We hold ourselves together with every ounce of strength and courage we can muster up inside ourselves. We are not cruel to the truth in front of us, but honest with ourselves and to the world around us. We do our best to live with kindness, empathy, compassion, and conscience. We stand together in nonviolence to those who say cruelty is the point, who say compassion and empathy are toxic, and are only for a few and not for everyone.

And in the end, if we have to, we crawl out of the ashes holding on to one another. And most of all, we are NEVER cruel to the truth.