Uffda Darling Ones,

How are your hearts holding up? Are your feet warm at least?

Things ain’t so good here. The US Government continues to occupy Minnesota, killing people and kidnapping anyone who is not white. Not good at all.

I only know this because I keep peeking at the screens that keep me connected to the world. It’s not helping and only makes me angrier.

There’s so much anger inside of me it keeps my feet warm. And when then anger starts to feel a little boring I switch to annoyance and utter uselessness. I tend to cycle through these three on an hourly basis.

Anger at the continued ICE occupation of my beloved state and city. On Instagram someone shared a screenshot of a Threads post where ICE were patting themselves on the back for helping someone in Shakopee, MN jump their car on a cold day. It makes my stomach hurt. The picture they posted was on Marschall & 4th, a few miles from Supergenius HQ, and about a block away from one of the Mexican grocery stores. Incidentally, I worked at that store in the 90s when it was a Tom Thumb.

Annoyance at smug city dwellers who like to lecture “white suburbanites” about how they should help by eating at immigrant-owned restaurants in Minneapolis (rather than the ones our own cities, I guess) or helpfully point out the nearest tourist trap from the last execution. These liberal, tolerant assholes believe the suburbs have not changed from the white-washed places portrayed in John Hughes movies. I thought city-dwellers were supposed to be smarter, more worldly, more open than us automaton, cookie-cutter suburbanites. I also have lots of annoyance for grifting influencers and shitty media.

Utter uselessness is directed at myself. I’m homebound until I get a new wheelchair. I haven’t left HQ since January 9th and probably won’t get a chance until March or Ruby Vroom arrives. The walker + my bad balance + ice & snow = a broken hip waiting to happen. Plus, my mom fell and broke her shoulder which means she can’t chauffeur me a round. And because I have $0.00 I can’t throw money at the problem like I did during the uprising after the murder of George Floyd. This all feels like meager excuses for sitting on my biscuit never having to risk it. Maybe they are. Maybe it’s okay to be quiet and afraid and try not to add anymore burden on anyone else.

I don’t know anymore.

Useless & helpless,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

Carnations always make me think of that scene in “Sex in the City” when Berger breaks up with Carrie on a post-it note.

This is kind of a shame, because I really love carnations. They’re not my first (lilies), second (peonies), or third (daisies) favorite flower, but I still love them. They’re criminally underrated. The first flowers I ever got were carnations leftover from a Mother’s Day brunch promotion at Country Kitchen where my mom worked when I was a kid.

I have a tiny cup of carnations on the windowsill. They’re all that remain from some flowers BFK got me after that terrible, no good, very bad week.

Because my brain is a dick, instead of relishing in the childhood joy of carnations, it is fixating on romantic relationships, breaks up specifically. It might not totally be my brain’s fault. I’ve been pondering romantic relationships quite a bit recently.

I can’t seem to decide if I want a romantic relationship or if I just want to get laid on the regular.

My last relationship was stupid and messy. Part of the problem was being involved with a narcissistic liar and part of the problem was me thinking, ala Rob Gordon in High Fidelity, “my guts have shit for brains.” So when I got involved I decided I was going to do the exact opposite of all the things I usually do in relationships. I was gonna be bold about what I was looking for. I was going to be honest and ask for what I needed. And, here’s the part that was dumb, I wasn’t gonna run when I got tiniest urge to run.

After all, my guts had shit for brains. Darling Ones, I should have run. Instead, I put up with oceans of lies and mountains of bullshit because I decided that I was going to love unconditionally. I gave up so much of myself doing emotional work and support for someone who did not return the favor. I did this for someone who could not be roused to ask me how my day was or what I was reading or what I was thinking.

I live for people asking me what I’m reading or what I’m thinking or what I’m listening to. I told them that repeatedly and still I got nothing.

Like the prophet Jack White has said before, “You don’t know what love is, you just do what your told.”

I thought sacrificing yourself and being forgiving about all the things is what unconditional love was about. I also thought if I gave that I would get it in return. That is not true. Not everyone deserves my unconditional love, and unfortunately nobody is required to love me.

I make a lot of jokes about having an ice robot heart, and those are mostly jokes, but I’m not kidding when I say I don’t know how to do romantic love. I don’t know if I’m broken in some fundamental way or what. People keep saying, “you know when you know.” I’m pretty smart and I don’t think I’ve ever known.

Despite being with a lot of men I’ve only ever said “I love you” to one (1) man in a romantic kind of way. I did not mean it. I thought if I said it enough I would feel it, repetition would make it true. It did not, and I’m retroactively angry at myself for saying such a lie out loud with my own mouth. So dumb.

How do most of the people on Earth do this? Did I miss some very fundamental class in high school? WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ME?

I’m not sad or angry about this so much as frustrated and exasperated. I keep thinking about all this and like I said, I’m not even sure I want a romantic relationship at this point. All I want is a man who will occasionally debate pop culture with me and then want to have sex after. I know this is asking a lot, because I’m really fucking smart and men get intimidated by smart women who are also very tall.

Auuugghh. Emotions and desires. The dumbest. Figuring out what you want. The dumbest of the dumbest.

Frustratedly yours,
Jodi

P.S. I stole the headline from the song “Good Arms vs Bad Arms” by Frightened Rabbit, because I am armed to the teeth and heavy-set. Much like the song I’m armed with the past, the will, and a brick (and by brick I mean my big mouth, it’s the same thing).

P.P.S.
My love of flowers is one of my more embarrassing predilections. It feels kinda cliche and out of character for me. Flowers are so fragile, feminine, and fleeting, which are not words I would ever use in describing anything about me. For years and years and years I would beg everyone I know to get me flowers for my birthday, which is the only gift-giving occasion a single woman has where flowers are appropriate.

This flower-getting campaign worked excellently for many years culminating in getting 30+ bouquets of flowers for my 30th birthday.

Over the years I have backed off. Fresh flowers feel a little frivolous and wasteful. When COVID first hit I pivoted and decided to fall in love with plants, thus the Sadness Garden was born. But I still love flowers and get excited whenever one of my plants produces one.

The post I am Armed to the Teeth & I’m Heavy-Set appeared first on I Will Dare.

Of course I should have probably really learned CSS about 100 years ago, but who has time for that nonsense when the trial and error method has served me so well all these years? And now that I should just calm down and read about how to solve my problem I’m so worked up I can barely see straight.

For someone with severe ADD I have the ability to become obsessively fixated on something when I want/need to. For instance, this new design? I worked on it for about 10 hours on Saturday. Yes, virtually 10 hours straight. I did nothing else but eat and work on the damn new design.

Today, would have been the same way if I didn’t have to meet my friend Melanie for lunch. If it wasn’t for that lunch, I’d probably be in tears by now. I keep telling myself to just accept it the way it is, but my brain is having none of that. NONE OF IT. My brain is all, it’s not perfect how you want it and there for it totally sucks.

ARGH.

And now I’ve wasted the entire day trying to make the text move and have worked myself up into such a frenzy that even a nice walk has not cleansed the frustration from my brain. AND AND the worst part? I totally have to finish a freelancing assignment tonight which is going to be extra-special hard because all i can think about is that stupid line of text that won’t move.

Bah.

The post Damnit appeared first on I Will Dare.

I am pouty and angry and a little bit sad. I’m trying to blame this current emotional state on everything — an e-mail from Vodo about my bad writing habits, loneliness, boredom, fear, writer’s block, rebellion — but what it is, a monthly-induced hormonal imbalance. It sucks, because unlike all the things I want to blame, I cannot do anything about this. It’s hard to rail against biology, which makes it all the more frustrating.

The post Wind out of my sails appeared first on I Will Dare.

so to bed– at least for a little bit and i hope i can haul ass in the morning to finish this up before my 8:30 meeting.

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