I’m taking a break from this blog for the summer. (Summer includes September, for me.) Talk to you on October 15, 2023!
Thoughts
Three quick tips for better writing
1. Cut unnecessary words.
Print out your draft and go over it with a pencil. For each word, ask “Can I remove this without losing my intended meaning?” Cross out as many as possible.
My higher powers
Al-Anon and other twelve-step programs seem to require faith in “God.”
For example, step three is:
“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
Since God doesn’t exist, how can anyone take a twelve-step program seriously?
Here’s my solution.
I use “God” as shorthand for higher powers, plural. This lets me embrace the program without deluding myself.
11 ways God is like an abusive boyfriend
Update—Jan. 28, 2023:
This video says everything I wanted to say and more.
Video: “Worshipping narcissists” by QualiaSoup and TheraminTrees.
/end of update
Here are some beliefs I used to have about God (as a child raised Christian) and my partner (as a woman in an abusive relationship).
1. He sets the terms.
You’re entitled to your opinion. He’s entitled to be the voice of reason and authority.
For example, if he says he loves you, he loves you. That’s what “love” means.
(If you say you love him but you also disobey his express wishes, you don’t really love him.)
Categories are like clouds
Categories are only useful for comparisons.[1]
We can’t evaluate categories by how well they describe their contents, because categories never provide absolutely accurate descriptions of the things they contain. If they did, each thing would be a category of its own.
The glass is already broken
A few months ago I knocked one of my favorite glass teacups off the shelf and broke it. I was having a bad week, and this made it worse.
Then I read this passage by Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist, about his encounter with “a renowned Thai forest master named Ajahn Chah:”
My favorite writing on the internet
Your Life in Weeks by Tim Urban
Wait But Why, May 7, 2014
Thanks to this post, I keep a life calendar in Google Sheets. It’s a satisfying memento mori, and helps me see the shape of my life as a whole.
(This website, reviewmylife, offers a free template, but I haven’t tested it: Weeks of your life calendar – free Excel download.)
The don’t-want list
“Next time you set out to build something, make a list of the things it won’t do before you list all the things it will do.”
—37signals[1]
You could call this a don’t-want list, or an anti-feature list.
A note on The Gift of Fear
In my first post on abuse, I said not to read the domestic violence chapter (chapter ten, “Intimate enemies”) in The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker.[1]
I’ve changed my mind.
I’m a spiritual atheist
Note: This post is a work in progress. I’ll remove this note when it’s done.
Although I’m an atheist, and always will be, I have had a spiritual awakening.