I Need SMRT to Start Already

[I’m typing this on my phone so there will be errors]

So the same folks who did Stoic Week have put together are doing a Stoicism Resistance trainingand I need it, like, yesterday.

I’m pretty much stressed out of my mind and it’s making me exhausted all the time. At work the holidays are upon us and as a food service worker that means utter chaos. Then yesterday I was dropped for the entire semester. My Fall 2018 drop down was just GONE. Best excuse for not doing the homework ever, but totally not great for my stress levels, holy shit.

I was going over the email trail and the confirmation email shows that I only requested to withdraw from one class and I was. A week later I’m booted out of the semester completely and my other professor is emailing me asking why I withdrawaled.

I call the school asking what the hell and keep getting a “hmmm that’s weird” and I know! That’s what I said. I get passed around the different departments and finally have to show up in person and take a form to the department chair (who is really nice and I like her a lot) explain what happened, show her the email trail, and basically look pitiful.

So! What is actually stressing me out? I don’t want to look like an idiot. One of the things I was struggling with during Stoic week was identifying what roles I’m participating in. It’s obvious now, I’m a worker and a student. So, as these are my chosen rules I want to obtain “excellence” (which is a poor translation of a Greek word which actually refers to having a good attitude and having practical knowledge about what I want to obtain), but I’ve run into a problem where I’m still haven’t perfected my healthly internal monologue so I’m still clinging to my self image. I don’t want to look bad and I want to appear like I’m not struggling which goes against being Stoic.

To deal with this I might need to branch out and look at Buddhism again. The mysticism of the Buddhist religions was not something I could relate to or believe in, but there are some really good core concepts that might help my anxiety.

The one I’m focused on right now is being “selfless” as in literally without self. There’s a Buddhist teaching where a king is visiting a monk and the monk asks “how did you get here?” and the king replies “I came in a chariot.” “Ah, and what is a chariot? Is it the wheels? The axle? The cushion?” “It is all of those things.” “And if you laid all those parts out on the ground, is it still a chariot?” “It is all those parts arranged in a particular configuration” And the teaching is a metaphor for what is the self. Realizing that helps me to remember that maintaining a self image is a waste of time and as Epictetus points out, not within my power.

Now if I could calm myself the fuck down in a few minutes instead of a few hours we’ll be in great shape. That’s what I’m hoping to get out of the resilience training.

“Emotional Cheating” aka WTF is this Heteronormative Bullshit?

Hi folks! It’s been a while (because I’ve been busy failing derivative calculus, again! and continuing my personal study of philosophy which is going much better than the calculus), but today I’m having a pity party and y’all are invited.

Alrighty, let’s begin with the context. I first heard about “emotional cheating” when it showed up in the last season of BBC’s Sherlock; John Watson is married to Mary, but he meets this pretty chick on the train, they swap numbers and it’s hinted that he shares a budding quasi-romantic relationship with pretty chick through texting. From what I understood the “cheating” part was that he was actively keeping the texting relationship a secret from his wife and that there were hints of romantic overtones to the texts. I was like “okay, cool. Emotional cheating is bad. I got-cha.”

But, no, oh no-no no. That apparently is not what emotional cheating is in RL. According to my coworkers it’s “if you are married and you go to someone other than your spouse for ANY emotional needs [not just romantic ones] first- that is emotional cheating”.

Like, Whut. The. Literal. Fuck. Is. This. CisHeteroNorm. Bull. Shit.

Like, are y’all okay? Every fiber of my being is screaming the Mental Health First Aid steps and I feel like I should be asking all my cis-hetero coworkers if they are having suicidal thoughts BECAUSE:

1. That’s a LOT pressure to put on one person
2. What the fuck do y’all think friends are for? Emotional needs/support are IN the friend job description, and-
3. This is totally ace and aro erasure and I will not stand for it.

So, this very rigid definition of emotion cheating is a modern thing that has no historical precedent (that I could find in a quick Google Scholar with a paywall) before social media was a thing. It also pisses me off because how the hell am I supposed to make friends now??? I thought that my lack of friends was something I did or was some weird aro-quirk thing, but oh, ho, no-no no. Turns out there’s so much wtf.ness going on at my work (and probably other places) that I had no idea was even a thing.

A number of my coworkers are Hispanic (I live in San Antonio, so go figure right?) and very Catholic and one of my coworkers said that’s where the strict rules on marrage comes from but….I don’t think so? I need more data, but I don’t think the Church is completely to blame because my Irish Catholic relatives are crazy for different reasons. I was always super confused because these specific coworkers liked to take a personal interest in my relationship status and I was trying to figure out what the big deal was. Apparently they ascribe to several well-known relationship tenets such as 1) guys and gals can’t be “just friends” and 2) once you’re married you’re spouse is everything and all else are just polite acquaintances.

So, I literally can’t be friends with anybody. I can’t be friends with single people because we’ll all somehow magically start dating (or fucking) because we’re all actually living in a 90s sitcom or something(???) and I can’t be friends with my married coworkers outside of work because their wives will find out and divorce them for “emotionally cheating” on them with an aromantic-asexual. I totally [do not] see the logic. Basically dreams of forming and epic Bromance with my fellow philosophy nerd coworker have crumbled into dust because he literally can’t come to me for anything resembling an emotional connection without checking with the wife first.

I see now why my coworkers put so much emphasis on romantic relationships because at the end of the day, apparently that’s all they’re allowed to have, but the problem with that system is it’s taken away the possible, healthy and fulfilling platonic-relationships I could have had if it wasn’t for this ridiculous societal norm.

So, in light of that I’m going to do what any well-adjusted adult would do in this situation-
I’m going to cuddle my cat and cry about it. *tears*