The only reason I can use twitter is because I have an iron-clad policy of not arguing. I am not capable of arguing in 140 characters and knowing that about myself saves me a lot of blood pressure spikes.

Someone told me they “take issue” with the word “allow” with regards to people being sex workers. (Specifically I said: #FeministSolidarity means allowing women to choose any kind of work that is appropriate for them–including sex work.)

I mean, by allow, that there should be no laws obstructing people. Someone says I should have said “support” so that I don’t sound “paternalistic”. But uhm, I don’t “support” people going into the medical field or into computer programming so why in the hell should sex workers be special?

I think it should be a legal career. Just like all others. But no I’m not going to support people in it any more than I support my local plumber (uhm, other than when I hire him/her of course). If I feel like hiring a sex worker for uhh services then OF COURSE I should help support that person by paying the appropriate fees. Otherwise, nope I’m not supporting them.

But I will stay the fuck out of their way and give them a big thumbs up.

And that is the end of my argument and I’m not linking this random person to my blog because that sounds like an unending rain of shit.

I feel fairly weird about the fact that 2014 is starting off very well for me (because I’m not doing much or going many places–I sit at home and read) but many of my friends are having spectacularly bad starts to the year. So far I’ve finished twelve new books and I’m in progress on two more. I’m really enjoying reading lately. I feel like this is the most ready frenzy-ish I’ve been since before graduate school. I’m so glad that graduate school did not kill my love of reading forever.

I’m doing the stretches the doctor recommended. Not sure I’ve seen that much progress yet. I am glad the radiating burning pain in my neck disappeared when he dug into my skull with his hands.

As soon as my contract is up I’m going to give up data on my phone and try to get a non-smart phone that is hopefully harder to smash to pieces than my current Android. I wish I could go back to the clamshell I had when I first got a mobile phone. I bought a paper day planner and I think I may be mostly done with giving my information to Google. I’m not very happy that they are following Facebook into giving peoples information up more and more. I don’t want everything I do on the internet made public to anyone who wants to look whether I like it or not. I may need to pursue other email options.

Not that I think I will ever have real privacy on the net. I’m not stupid. But I’m angry at companies who want to sell me without my consent. I like to be asked before such activities occur.

I think I am going to cut back my internet usage dramatically. I’m not in a period where I am accessing research journals. I’m spending too much time reading shit I don’t care about because I am killing time. I should do that with books. My kids don’t understand the purpose of computers. If I’m on a screen they want a screen and for them that means watching a few select shows over and over or playing games. I don’t object to them doing some show rewatching (Yay West Wing!) or playing some games but they should not have screens on for many hours every day. There is no good reason to do so and some reason to think it isn’t good for you. So I have to model.

Plus what I’ve seen for research says that the more screen time you have the harder it is to control your behavior. It’s probably best for me to limit that.

I have used the computer a lot for years as how I connect with people. I discovered computers in high school for AOL chat rooms. Then I went to IRC. Then I went to G-Blog. Then I went to Livejournal. Then I went to Mothering. Then I went to Facebook. Now I’m kind of in limbo hell. I’m not hanging out with my friends online. I’m … I don’t know voyeuristically noticing the lives of people I don’t know and will never know? Time to do something else.

Time to try and have relationships with people in real life. Right now that means my kids. Maybe some day I will stop alienating other people and figure that out.

I feel scared that the next 15 years of my life will involve a lot of me “hanging out with people” I can’t talk to about anything I really think about because most of the home schoolers are not people I will talk to about personal or real things. I have to Be Nice so my kids can have friends.

The trouble is that I’m not very nice.

I suppose I had better learn how to fake it better.