General Life Updates & Book Club Log #5
In which I do the social really badly again.
I missed book club last month, much to my annoyance, because I had to meet up with my mom. And prior to meeting up with my mom I was angsting about applying for a job at VIZ, which I would have been super qualified for if I could've listed my fan translation work that I've been doing for more than 5 years at this part (but they don't allow anything legally gray so I couldn't), which I'm not even sure they read before just rejecting me. Regardless, being as mentally ill as I am, even trying to apply once seriously to something had me in shambles for weeks, and then my mom came and that sucked for a bunch of different reasons.
So anyway I missed book club even though I really wanted to go because I wanted to bitch about Portrait of a Thief, which has got to be one of the most shoddy fiction books I've had the displeasure of reading in recent years. I wanted to at least complain. I've also been all out of sorts of in terms of priorities lately in general, with giving up on my sleep and reading comics late at night even though I shouldn't. There's just this constant sense of being tired of fighting my anxiety and if everything I've tried and devised was all about pleasing my internal attack dog, then what if I just stopped trying?
So I followed my monkey heart and I spent some weeks making an AMV (technically a Manga Music Video) for a Yuri manga I really liked. And then of course by the time I was 75% done I was dreading finishing it because then I would be confronted with the fact again that the stuff I make isn't actually exciting (or legible) to other people. And lo and behold..... something like 10 views. Yeah. It's gotten to the point where I don't feel any joy from said thing anymore even though it was giving me so much in the early stages. There's something about the posting and imagining of other people's interest and opinions that at some point warps the experience for me, but at the same time keeping something entirely to myself makes me feel like I'm wasting my time without anything to show for it, and that's anxiety-inducing in itself. I'm not really sure what the answer to that is.
In other words, I'm behind on taking notes for my book club books even though I want to. Bleh. Need to get on that. But now I have a bunch of other work for my translation group because our website imploded and I have to try to restore things from backup...and others in the group are really insistent about releasing our most recent patches this weekend. So there's a lot to get in order there and it makes me tired.
So anyway. The book club. What do I say. I made sure to arrive not too early or too late this time and sat in a chair with no one on either side of me, thinking that I should try to talk to someone new. And purposefully avoiding sitting next to Old Man because I didn't want him to talk at me about random political stuff I don't understand buuuut after how things went I kind of wished I had just bit the bullet and sat next to him because then I would've actually gotten to talk about something interesting. Instead, a new person sat next to me, who seemed like a well-spoken college teacher guy.
But the thing is that only 4 people finished this book this month, and 1 of those people was me. And I was not sitting next to any one of the other people who had finished the book. SIGH...
The book: Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler.
We only had 3 weeks to read this one because the bookstore employee wasn't free next week at our usual meetup time. And it being Butler, well... This was their easiest-to-read text to date probably, but I still struggled with some parts of it and most people didn't manage to read much of it at all. At least half of the people didn't read any of it or like 1 chapter, while some of them made it through about half of it (including the new guy sitting next to me).
There were 17 people but we didn't break up into two groups, even though at this point I think we should have. Apparently in last month's they actually had over 20 people and did split up into two groups, which would've been preferable to me at any rate because I tend to just shut down when there are more than 10 people around.
Since so few people read it we only had one little session of talking to the person next to us, but the guy didn't finish reading the book so he was basically asking me about summary and what I thought of specific points about it. Not that he didn't have anything interesting to say or that he was hard to talk to, I just find it less interesting to talk to people who haven't completed the thing in question, because then I feel like you can't really get into details. That and when I have to summarize things for people I feel like I do a pretty poor job! I don't know how to package these things in a way that make them sound appealing.
Anyway, after that it was just a bunch of group talk and I didn't talk at all even though almost everyone else in the circle did once. The new person I talked to last time and shared cats / Storygraph with was there and was wearing cargo pants so I think I'll just call her that because brain bad at making monikers. She had two new people with her this time, who were some flavor of trans or gender-nonconforming and using he/him pronouns. That was all interesting but they were all sitting on the opposite end of me. And well, these new people talked a lot. One of them — who I'll call Not-Sonic because hearing his name made me erroneously think of a Sonic character (even though I literally don't go there) only to realize it was spelled completely different — talked a lot and seemed to have read a lot of different things but for some reason I didn't feel like the stuff he was saying was all that relevant? The other one who I'll call Rainbow-likely-Furry was the only person who talked about his life experience. And he was kind of funny considering that he couldn't think of which of his pronouns to put down on the name tag so he just randomly chose he/him for the day.
Anyway, I feel like I should've sat next to Chill Lady or Old Guy or Bookstore Employee for maximum conversation interest but I made the wrong choice here. I think I need to remember this next time for any overly academic text we read. I guess I should aim to sit next to Old Guy for when we get around to reading Wretched of the Earth by Fanon at some point, though what's probably going to happen is he's going to talk to me about some Spanish or military context I don't even understand. ?? Maybe not, maybe I should try to sit next to lady I don't even have a moniker for. Ponytail lady. I'm so fucking bad at this. Anyway.
Multiple-names guy came late and then had to sit next to me because that was the only other seat open. He did not have time to read the book at all this month. I feel like he probably feels awkward around me because we've had a bit of discussion over Signal but it was extremely stilted and I just don't think we're on the same wave length on thinking about things? And we don't have quite the same interests and I'm even worse at talking than he is (I don't think anyone is worse than me in this respect ngl). He seemed a bit hesitant so I'm just like. lol. sorry dude there's only one seat left.
After the whole long discussion, in which we got to None of the prepared questions, and I just ended up practicing how to draw my own hand on the paper I had, I stood around awkwardly and sort of-but-not-really got included in conversations. I just kind of watched people and observed after doing the only thing I could think about starting conversations for: asking Teacher Lady how last book club went, because she was all nice and was like, oh we missed you last time! ←- weirdly angelic tolerance; and asking Multiple-Names Guy how his board game meetup went. I didn't go because >10AM >I don't like board games, but maybe I'll go next time just to watch people interact. Me being a weird ghost but it still counts as socializing, right? They played Flip 7 and Secret Hitler, the second of which I'm confused about morally because I don't really see the point of encouraging people to larp as Nazis or Fascists even though I know a lot of people on the left like to do this in board games because I guess it's the transgressive element. Like with Cards Against Humanity where the point is just to say offensive shit. I just am always sus about how long you can do something ironically before it becomes Real. But that's probably my hypermorality speaking. Anyway, they all seemed interested in playing it again. So I will perhaps Observe.
Anyway I did real bad at talking to people but it is what it is. I think at this point I have to just embrace being socially awkward and the equivalent of a fence post and it's just literally because I don't know how to talk about things that seem relevant and my social life etc. is not interesting. What am I doing with my summer, you ask. Nerd shit that feels cringe to talk about especially because I kind of hate the animanga industry. Ye must pass my bars three before I give you the whole Precure infodump you never asked for. Like, come on.
I need to write my friend the email about Butler's book to actually get my summary / thoughts out about it. Guess I'll go do that for the next hour.