DoomBloomDialectic [they/them, he/him]

  • 0 Posts
  • 36 Comments
Joined 20 天前
Cake day: 2025年6月11日
  • DoomBloomDialectic [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.nettochapotraphouse@hexbear.net•Patrice Emery Lumumba - Novo General Megathread of the 30th of June and 2nd of July 2025English
    4·
    23 小时前
    small job overshare/vent as a treat

    switching to a field where i am constantly socially available (either to my colleagues (100% of the day) or the general public in addition to my colleagues (~50% of the day)) & there is zero privacy may have not been the move for a neurodivergent introverted sensory-issues-tweaker like me. and the fucked up thing is this is probably like a top two most tolerable job i’ve ever had & i still hate it.

    im burning the fuck out on humanity and working with the general american public is part of what’s got me in a depressive haze and it’s making me a more isolated & less loving person & also i feel like my political organizing life is suffering for it. even just being mildly on the front lines at this job of all the ambient selfishness & entitlement & reaction floating around our class in this country has me in a nihilistic rut.

    idk i am just struggling to find the lovable parts in people alongside the annoying/selfish parts even though i know rationally blah blah blah we’re all results of material conditions, people are reachable/changeable, they aren’t fundamentally bad, i’ve been many many worse versions of myself in the past so i should practice empathy & forgiveness to the greatest extent possible, blah blah blah yes i know and deep down i agree but rn i’m just not in that headspace.

    like even when the public is Fine i feel like i sense a lurking darkness and transactional apathy and i don’t know if this is just me/my insecurities and my temperament being bad for this work, if i’m sensing something real, or a mix of both.

    (my coworkers are a whole nother matter but i’ll leave that aside)

  • DoomBloomDialectic [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.nettochapotraphouse@hexbear.net•June Days Uprising Begins (1848) - Novo General Megathread for the 23th and 25th of June 2025English
    2·
    6 天前

    not out of your ass at all!!

    2: We talk about the mental illnesses of artists in a way we often don’t talk about the mental illness of other famous people. When you have a mentally ill artist, their mental illness often ends up being central to the popular narrative about them in a way that the mental illnesses of a other high achievers typically isn’t. No one is going to tell you Gödels mathematical discoveries were reliant on his severe mental illness, no one is going to pretend we couldn’t have had the theory of gravity without Newton’s bouts of melancholia. Meanwhile assuming Sylvia Plath could only write as she did because of her suicidal depression is the norm.

    this is a point a friend of mine brought up actually when i was talking to them about this subject, i think there’s a lot to it. i guess just in my own personal anecdotal experience though - through my friendships & dating life - even hobbyists are more drawn to these types of outlets as i guess a vehicle for certain inner hurts/mental illnesses, so even outside of (notable/mainstream-ly successful) high achievers it feels like there’s something there. anecdotes be anecdoting though!

  • DoomBloomDialectic [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.nettochapotraphouse@hexbear.net•June Days Uprising Begins (1848) - Novo General Megathread for the 23th and 25th of June 2025English
    5·
    6 天前

    I can tell you my experience! I’m in one of the larger west coast branches so YMMV in a small branch, or in the handful of branches even bigger than ours. I applied online August of last year, then what followed was:

    nuts and bolts of onboarding, kinda long
    • Intro phone call getting to know you a bit - your political journey, interest in the party, etc. Then in my case, I was directed to the easiest way to plug into volunteer opportunities.
    • Was an active volunteer for a few months. This period varies wildly in length depending on a bunch of factors (recruitment needs, other competing priorities, etc). The party does tend to prioritize non-white, non-cis-male-presenting comrades in onboarding to avoid the chauvinistic tendencies of a lot of Western left groups, and to recruit from the segments of the working class with the most revolutionary potential. But the entirety of the applicant is considered, and I know people who volunteered for the better part of a year before joining, and some who were onboarded quite rapidly. Not something to take personally! And also, nothing wrong with staying a volunteer.
    • Two more meetings where you learn about the party’s positions and what’s expected of members, and after the second one you’re a candidate member. Sometimes a meeting or two between these if they have further questions about you (again, not personal, just doing their job vetting). Unless you’re interested in formal leadership, candidacy is much closer to full membership than not (def closer to it than being a volunteer).
    • You take roughly 9-12 months of classes on the party’s organizing strategy & the 101 of socialist history and theory, and then you’re a full member assuming all goes well. This candidacy period is to ensure ideological alignment, to educate comrades who are new to socialism, and to train cadres on how PSL organizes. If you’re already a theory head, a lot will be repeated and maybe even oversimplified info, but there is learning to be had regardless in collective study with comrades across all knowledge and experience levels! (For context, I’m currently still a candidate).

    I followed the Alienated Too Online Communist to Touch Grass pipeline, but a lot of people are recruited through pre-existing organizing and the path might look ever-so-slightly different there (I think they probably skip the phone call screening?) Also in smaller branches/before streamlining some back end stuff, online applications were falling through the cracks a bit more often - if that happens to you, check out your local’s Instagram and hit up an irl volunteer meeting to express interest there!

    As far as workload expectation, while you can’t be an “on-paper” member, there is a lot of flexibility in terms of what regularly showing up looks like for you. They understand that as a working class party, we have busy lives outside organizing just in terms of the daily hustle to survive. As long as you communicate about availability you should be good - I almost didn’t join because I was scared of the commitment level, but A) a few comrades assuring me there’s no quota and that there’s flexibility and B) just realizing I was showing up as regularly as a volunteer as plenty of full members, made me decide membership was right for me (I still have intermittent self doubts though, that is extremely normal!!)

    And as far as social anxiety, that is an incredibly common social hurdle many of us face and a muscle that is built through practice and the collective support of your comrades. Social anxiety and other types of neurodivergence are insanely common in my local, I can’t speak for everyone but I’ve always felt the Party is good at providing the structure and support systems to help build this skillset. And if you were to be around for the long haul, while I believe you’d definitely build a baseline aptitude with this, you may also find a more behind-the-scenes niche that plays to your more organic strengths.

    Hope that was all helpful! Feel free to hmu with any questions and I’ll try to answer to the best of my abilities and social capacity.