AliceFraser
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Birthday Weekend and Tea With Alice Salon 46
🕑 Added 2022-01-10 05:53:04 +0000 UTCIt was my birthday on Friday, and also the last weekend of my twin brother being in town with his family, so it’s been a very lovely, mildly chaotic couple of days. I’m definitely just a woman now, if you know what I mean? I’m not a young woman, I’m not an old woman. Just some lady doing stuff.
I feel pretty good about it, actually. As I’ve said before, I’m not afraid of ageing, I have cheekbones and a personality, I’ll be fine.
It’s hard to let go of the idea that youth is an impressive quality to be doing anything with - but it’s related in my head to the kinds of people who are always somehow doing things and being congratulated on getting them done, “despite the circumstances”. I think, without being tooooo judgmental, that “the circumstances” can become a crutch. This is tricky turf to negotiate, because of course sometimes the deck is stacked against you. There are plenty of people who have genuinely got “circumstances”. I’m not talking about people in systems of oppression or miasmas of depression. Of course it is important to make allowances for people in hardship. That’s a humane thing to do - it helps others, and it helps us cultivate our own compassion and all that good stuff.
The point I’m making is about people who are addicted to “circumstances” because they fear that in the absence of the allowances people make; in the absence of how extraordinary it is that they’ve got anything at all done in the midst of “circumstances” they might discover that their work is mediocre.
Not that someone’s life isn’t hard, but maybe sometimes there are people who let things stay hard, or let things be harder than they need to be, in order to continue to do well “despite the circumstances”. Does that make sense?
Anyway, I’m not entirely sure that it’s the same thing, but in my head the two things are linked, and the point is that AS not a young woman, my achievements aren’t being judged as indicative of some future potential. The work I do just has to stand on its own merits. There’s something nice about that.
All that said, I just had a BABY! CUT me some SLACK! 🤓
Tea With Alice Salon 46
Salon this week is at 8pm 11 Jan East Coast US time:
Jan 11, 2022 08:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Or your local time equivalent. Stick it in your diary. I’ll send through the link and password closer to the time for the relevant levels.
As always, salon things:
- normal zoom etiquette applies. Have headphones / be on mute so we don’t get heckled by a dog or our own just-past-selves in eternal echo, etc.
- if you’re shy / would rather be sitting quietly in the back row, have your camera off. I won’t call on you.
- Any topics you want to open up, let me know in the comments here or via DM, or of course you can bring them up during the salon or drop them in the chat.
- Tea is compulsory, but we have a very broad definition of what tea is, that includes many things ‘normal’ people would call “not tea”, “absolutely nothing like tea”, “a sandwich” and “are you just pretending to drink from an invisible cup?”
Xx
A
Comments
Happy Birthday! This is a thread that I have been struggling with for a while now: People who lean into their issues, rather than deal with them. It's a like some kind of security blanket that lets them off taking responsibility for not doing as well as they could. In its worst instances, it is using the power of weakness to manipulate others to helping out or abrogating personal responsibility. And the problem with the continued rise in mental health issues (or is it just a surfacing of the same issues that have been there all along? ) is that encouraging people to talk about it can backfire: Someone I know has got into friendship troubles because she never stops talking about her mental health. This has caused some of her friends to lean away. One could argue that they are not the kind of friends she needs, but in a new environment like school, or new job, she will end up friendless unless she tempers that "poor me" outpouring, at least until she has made some good friends with whom she *can* share such thoughts . Was it on one of your Tea podcasts that someone said something about by the time one is mid-30s you should be taking responsibility for your own mental health & rehabilitation, and so it's no longer OK to claim mental health issues as an excuse for poor behaviour or performance. (NB: I'm not a completely heartless ass - I've had my share of "issues" and Life Circumstances that have knocked me back. But there's always been a voice inside that's said "it will get better - keep putting one foot in front of the other". Maybe it's the Fight, Flight or Freeze instincts coming out in different people. I'm clearly a fighter who soldiers on anyway. Someone close to me either runs away (Flight) or simply stops making choices or doing anything (Freeze) as her way of coping with Life's slings and arrows, and I find it intensely frustrating that she doesn't manage her condition, but lets Life happen to her, and so has no resposibility. but cannot see that doing that *is* a choice, however passive.
Tim Parsons
Happy birthday for Friday 🙂
Ian Stark
I hope you had a great birthday! I think you're correct about age and getting older. It's what you make it! Bob Marley sang "every man feels his burden is the heaviest" and I believe it's generally true. Possibly the only thing as sad as feeling sorry for oneself is jealousy. Enjoy the new year! Yippee
