Personal

I’ve been invisible for most of my life. When I say invisible, I don’t necessarily mean…well, I’m not sure what I mean, if not this: People bump into me.

In the store, I’ve gotten stepped on, pushed aside. I mean, physically, literally, like people don’t perceive me for some reason. And then that also goes to other areas of life.

I’ve done well, despite my challenges being perceived. I’ve gotten promotions because I’m a diligent hard worker. Generally I was the most responsible one in the room when I was younger, a little rule-follower, so that helped. My neurodiversity was not identified when I was a kid, so I grew up struggling quietly, always the shy one. I was the one who was afraid to talk to strangers. I was told I was being ridiculous, that no one was going to bite me. If you sense a little bitterness in my tone, you are not wrong, though no one was diagnosing girls with any flavor of neurodiversity back then.

Most of the time, I don’t mind the invisibility. I’m happy to play by myself in the corner, you know? A nod now and then is nice, and I’ve seen the payoff when I put a little extra effort in to be noisy and draw attention. But now I’m sitting here, middle aged and seeing the rest of my generation is feeling a bit invisible as well. We’re Gen-X, the smallest generation out there. And we’re older and crankier now. So yes, our reputation precedes us and we would prefer to just be left alone. But that also means we are being left alone and that doesn’t always feel so great.

At this age, especially as a woman, people kind of don’t give a shit about what we’re about. Unfortunately, this is going directly against the grain of what I’m trying to do with my life and my career. I will tell you that I do not feel my age in the least and, for whatever strange quirk of genetics, I don’t look it either. Not that I look 20. But I definitely don’t look my 50 years. I regularly still pass for my late 30s.

What am I trying to do with my life right now?For one thing, I’ve launched a career coaching business. Which means making connections and getting clients. In order to have that happen, I have to make myself visible but after a lifetime of invisibility I have no idea how. Remember, I mentioned I’m Gen-X, right? So the slick Instagram reels…that’s not me. The well polished turd of a LinkedIn post…nope, that’s not me either. Some would call my approach grounded. Others would call it forthright. I don’t have a ring light. Let’s put it that way. And I have no plans on getting one.

So I don’t know how I’m supposed to get attention unless I present some sort of inauthentic-for-me bullshit. When I look around for ideas and advice, what I see kind of starts blending together into background noise. Just one big monolith of slick Canva-generated images. No real knock against Canva. It’s a great tool and I use it often, but not in the way it’s meant to be used, I think.

I have another outlet that I’m trying to get off the ground: my writing. Look, I’m not looking to be famous. I’m perfectly happy working a full-time job and fitting the writing in on the side. It keeps the pressure of surviving off the things I love doing. But like most authors, I would like my work to be read. I’d particularly love my fiction to be read. I’d love to connect with people who enjoy the kind of writing that I do. And if it means I have some pocket money to buy a fancy tea or a CD for myself, that’d be great. But I don’t know how to sell that either.

In trying to figure this out, I’m reading Austin Kleon’s “Show Your Work” right now. And what he’s got to say makes sense. The core of it is to literally show your work. Talk about it. Share snippets, but not too much. Problem is, that sounds exhausting. And even something like, oh, that pipe dream where I hire a personal assistant…I still have to tell them what to do, right? What I want done. How to support me best. Yeah, that’s pretty exhausting, too.

So the way I see it, I have a couple options. One is I say fuck it. I’m just gonna work a full-time job and hope that the tech industry survives and I find my way through until we find an equilibrium. This is not my favorite option and it also doesn’t feel very wise right now.

Another option is going over to the dark side and sending some polished turds out into the world, play the game and try to become a pseudo-influencer type. If you’ve gotten this far you know about how much energy and enthusiasm I have for this approach.

And there’s a third option where I somehow find a way to make myself visible and share my work and sell some books and stories and coaching services. And I find a way to do that all without compromising who I am and how I do things.

So great, option 3 sounds the best for me. It looks like dropping a newsletter like this when it’s written and not giving any fucks about whether it’s timed to capitalize on your attention. It means having a random thought about leadership and posting it, even if it’s before anyone else in my audience is awake yet and 2 people see it.

With that settled, I’m left with just one more question: does anybody fucking care?

I don’t know. I like to think I’ve got something to say and something to give. But that’s not my call. It’s up to everyone else, to all of you, to decide if what I do has value beyond my own life. I like to think it does.

Thank you for reading. I’d love to know if you’re having some of these challenges to and what you’re doing to tackle them.

Take heart.

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My latest

General news

• Put Issue 066 of Luna Station Quarterly out earlier this month
• Launched my career coaching business!!!

Recent reads

• I’m in the midst of reading a trilogy: “The Last Binding” by Freya Marske which I describe as Downton Abbey but make it magic and queer.

Recent watches

• Just wrapped up Spider-Noir which was great. The cinematography was so pitch perfect.

A few quotes of interest

“You’re allowed to think about the worst possible scenario, but you gotta go out there and do something about it.” ~ Jalen Brunson

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work. And when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.” ~ Wendell Berry

Just a few links, as a treat

• ‘They’re supposed to be handmade’: zine creators fight to resist AI influence
• Why I Quit Streaming And Got Back Into Cassettes
• ‘Heated Rivalry,’ Queer Joy, and the Door I Refuse to Believe Isn’t Opening (Personal Essay)

I wonder if it will ever stop feeling strange to review resumes for people that have their comp-sci Bachelors and Masters degrees.

As I grow into being a manager, I suspect this is something that will feel even weirder.

I have a high school diploma and a little continuing ed certificate, a few semesters of college (I dropped out twice).

I know it shouldn’t bug me. Formal education just isn’t the right fit for some folks, myself included. Yet, that feeling of being under-qualified rises every time.

This feeling has never really served me (other than maybe pushing me to work harder) and it’s overdue to be let go.

I remember maybe a decade ago there was a big trend toward body mods of folks inserting tech into themselves. I’m guessing this is probably something still going on today.

But as I’m learning guitar I’m paying a lot of attention to the more organic modifications I’m making to myself.

I’m working on my posture. Electric guitars are relatively heavy and I have to watch for back and neck strain, as well as hand strain. So, there are muscles building up there to compensate for this new factor.

But the more extreme thing I’ve noticed is my finger callouses.

If you’ve never played guitar before, you may not know that pressing down metal strings can be a bit painful. At least at first.

It’s not bad, but it’s enough that your body starts to compensate. It says “okay, you keep doing this painful thing over and over, not just once like an accident” so it goes about toughening up that area.

So I’ve now got baby guitar player callouses on my fingers.

The interesting side effect of this is that, while it makes it much easier to play the guitar, it makes every other tactile interaction with the world a more muted experience. I can very clearly tell the difference when I touch something with my right, callous-free fingers vs my left.

I feel a lot more details with my right now. My left hand fingers feel like they have little pads on them. It’s weird and something that are part of a choice I’m making in playing. A small sacrifice to be sure, but a sacrifice nonetheless.

tl;dr bodies are weird and smart.

It’s getting cooler here in the NE finally and that means it’s time to start pulling out the cozy garments! My office is in an enclosed attic that’s still pretty dang drafty. I often use a space heater on the very cold days, but when it’s just a bit chilly I don’t like wasting electricity. So, gloves, hats, and blankets fill the void. I sometimes have trouble keeping my lower back warm and remembered hearing about haramaki. I could buy one, sure, but more fun to scrounge one! I grabbed an extra long, stretchy, wide scarf and wrapped it around my middle and my kidneys are thanking me right now.

I made this scarf a few years ago and felt like it was a failure. I somehow kept adding stitches because the bulky yarn was such a pain to work with, but now I’m thrilled to have it. Eventually, I’ll find a nice sweater pin or something less intrusive than a chopstick to hold it closed.

I have a dear friend who lives “across the pond”. We’ve never met in person (or even virtually) because we met on theforce.net fanfic forums 15 years ago. Back then we were both under the spell of Revenge of the Sith and spinning tales about Obi-Wan and Anakin, while chatting regularly about our lives as we helped each other grow as writers.

We’ve both moved on from that site long ago and we no longer stay in touch with any kind of regularity, but on each of our birthdays we write each other a long email and catch each other up. It’s not even something we decided to do in any official way, which is what makes it even more special.

We ask about each other’s family, we talk about our work and if we’re still writing. It’s always a little mix of happy news and a little about the struggles. As we go into middle age (we’re the same age) the stories change. Her oldest just graduated law school, I finally found a job I love, we’re both feeling our bodies start to ache in new and interesting ways.

It’s one of my favorite things in my life, that we still have this connection, still care about each other. If we met in person, it would be hard to get us to stop talking and sharing. We also expect nothing more of the other and even the birthday emails continue to be an amazing surprise and catch me off guard.

Oh yes, I remember you, you are my dear friend, I can’t wait to hear how you are.