Throwback Thursday: Assistant Fantasies of 2020

A post I made then hid a few years ago near the beginning of the pandemic response / pre-vaccines: appropriately revisited today as I currently struggle to prepare and file our late-late 2023 taxes, and feel all-too-near incompetent.

June 17, 2020

I have this fucked up idea in my head that if I were succeeding at life & work, & that was evident to everyone, that I'd never have to feel guilty or try to articulate an explanation for why I can really only interact with people an average of 15 minutes a day (which means ZERO a bunch of days) without my whole being disintegrating into a pile of raveous, barbed MUSH-diarrhea.

Everyone would just be like ... "B’s very successful plate is full, no wonder she has ceased communication & time-spending with everyone except her wife." For an average of 15 minutes a day. Because I would have a personal assistant. The kind who picks out really great gifts, & nobody would think "oh, *B* didn't actually put any effort into that ... it's her poor underappreciated PA doing all of the loving effort". No, they would KNOW my PA couldn't have been so thoughtful on their own & sent just the right thing on time very time, not without me giving them all of the most loving pertinent info, and wads of my very successful cash, and generous wonders to people who didn't even know that I cared or even knew about their stupid fucking birthday.

My social anxiety is such that I really hope more people die of coronavirus AND SOON so I don't have to explain that all of the words in my word basket got dropped & scattered around & I can't put them in & take them out of my mouth in the right order so sorry I can't even *read* your messages because then you'll just be even madder when all I do is hit THUMBS UP & go back into disappear mode.

And since nobody will prescribe me benzos I will just go prescribe myself ice cream & salt & vinegar chips & cured meats & fizzzzzzz & chilibowls & tacos & that over-the-counter lithium that hasn't been properly tested & probably destroys all of the kidneys that eat it.

But I do want an assistant. One whose feelings never get hurt & ALSO prefers the efficiency of no pleases or thank yous, and would never write a passive-aggressive Nanny Diaries Wear Prada book via twitter & would sign that NDA like she really means it, and winkingly dish out gold stars even when I barely deserve them. And respond to texts & messages & VMs on my behalf in such a way that I would never, ever have to decline any invitations myself or wonder how to say the right things. I could just not say anything.

BUT KNOW THIS: you're going to love the extravagant doohickies I have custom-made & sent to you very special delivery with the most elegant hand-tooled keepsake gift boxes. And the next thing you know, in 7 years I emerge on an elevated platform with a protective forcefield of light as a very pink but still bearded more (spiritually & ethically, not raci...omfg) evolved Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh who would never let those e-coli murders get so out of hand. Because if I'm going to feel this drained, I should at least have all the money & spiritual followers of a J(iz)Z Knight.

“It Costs Nothing To Be Kind”

I am so fucking sick of seeing this shit “it costs nothing to be kind.” “It costs nothing to be nice.” “It costs nothing to be a decent human being.”

I wouldn’t trust a dumb fuck with a dollar who says some dumb shit like that. You think being nice is FREE? You think there is an abundance of effortless zero-cost kindness TIME and energy just there for the taking? You wouldn’t know what to do with a calculator and you have no idea how to add and subtract debts. Do not give this person a line of personal credit because they’ll be overlimit in no time. DUMB AS FUCK.

You know the worst thing about these stupid dumb shit sayings making it sound like kindness is effortless and done without any kind of costly energetic expenditure? IT FUCKING DIMINISHES THE GIFTS OF PEOPLE WHO *ARE* KIND. IT MAKES IT SOUND LIKE ANYBODY COULD DO THE KINDNESSES OTHER PEOPLE HAVE DONE WHEN THEY ABSOLUTELY COULD *NOT*.

Most recently seen on a post about the recently departed and absolutely mythological Kris Kristofferson when he stood up for Sinead O’connor: “The time Kris Kristofferson consoled Sinead O'Connor after she was booed mercilessly for telling the truth on SNL in 1992. It costs nothing to be a decent human being. “

LMAO YOU DUMB SHIT MOTHERFUCKER(s).

This ranks right up there with “you got this!” in my book of barfworthy WRONG-ASS inspo bullshit sayings.

Stop devaluing acts of kindness.

Stop making the love and hard-won decision-making-abilities of people in extraordinary and challenging circumstances with extremely checkered and difficult pasts and brain wiring sound easy, because they rarely are or we’d live in a much kinder world.

Love and kindness AREN’T actually free. They are quite often costly, effortful, time-sucking, and/or noteworthy for their exceptionality.

If we had all this sweetness in overstock, your counterproductive inspo posts featuring acts of kindness  (while simultaneously diminishing their worth) wouldn't be so valuable (and people wouldn't be running around STAGING the shit, as social media influencers all-too-often do). It is only because genuine kindness and being nice is the exception and not the rule that it is worth mentioning to your followers.

It's like masking; when folks run around saying "putting on a mass is the least you can do" and "it it's easy", I want to SCREAM because it is NOT easy, and it is NOT the least one can do. It is actually quite difficult, to the point of being a handicap, to many many many of us, or at least takes some practice and adaptation to get to the point where it feels easIER. My point is that you are not going to encourage somebody to do something that is actually a challenge or hard or time-consuming or unpleasant or costly or does not come naturally or that they have a resistance to, for whatever reason, BY SAYING IT IS EASY &/OR COSTS NOTHING. When those of us who are neurodivergent, for example, ABSOLUTELY KNOW THIS IS NOT TRUE AND YOU HAVE JUST UNDERMINED YOURSELF COMPLETELY AND DEMONSTRATED YOU ARE STUPID AND/OR NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

Seriously. I am ALL FOR KINDNESS (and very pro-masking, too), but you're dead fucking wrong about either of them being free and easy. It makes people feel badly, angry, AND/or DISEMPOWERED, INCAPABLE AND INCOMPETENT when you say stupid-ass shit like this.

If you think that the reason people are not kinder is because they can't afford another debit appearing in their checking account, you are being willfully ignorant and insulting.