Resolving

Next year I plan to be more productive and not just play computer games, read, and knit. I'm going to blog about playing computer games, reading, and knitting, as well as doing them. I might also talk* about various political things and discrimination issues as the mood takes me.

I will try to post at least once a week, about anything on the above list or something else entirely. I'll also try to link to sources and things like that.

Why now? I could have done this at any point over the past two years, why am I doing it now?

For a start, I'm chronically depressed and have CFS, and that really impacts on my ability to motivate myself (never my strongest feature) and to care about things enough to keep them going. But this isn't going away, and I have to learn how to work through it. So hopefully having a reason to keep going will help. Also, I like writing and being opinionated** so this should be pretty easy to do. I have a bunch of other things I'm planning on doing this year too. Starting slowly and in reasonable chunks, like a sensible person who doesn't want to set herself up to fail.

The other reason why is more complicated. I've wanted to add my voice to the growing number of people who are complaining about representation in the things they love for a while now. But I'm mentally ill. I don't deal well with criticism and personal attacks. Doing this is a huge risk. This is why I'm making sure there is a historical record of me not only saying this but stating my reasons so clearly: if I do end up being routinely harassed, I want a clear record in case I ever have to go to the police.

The fact that I feel afraid enough of the responses I might get to feel the need to state that makes me very angry. As it should make everyone angry. 

I hereby promise to delete comments which are personal attacks and to try to make this as safe a place as I can for myself and for anyone else who comments on it. I will not, however, arbitrarily delete comments which I disagree with. If you, imaginary potential commenter, want to have a reasonable discussion then I will do my best to enable it. Ad hominem attacks are not reasonable. There is a big difference between saying "be fuckng polite" and saying "be fucking polite you cuntbag", and the former is fine, but the latter is not.

I hope I manage to do all of this, but I'm not going to beat myself up too much if I don't (those courses last year on condition management were good for something). If this starts becoming a terrible chore and makes me unhappy, it's not doing its job, and I'll stop it again for a while. Hopefully not though.

* rant

** ranting