The subtle art of shutting the fuck up.
I saw a Bluesky post flash by yesterday. John Scalzi writing briefing about not writing, no matter how briefly, about a topic that was causing him anxiety.
Apparently, he actually started a blog post about it over at Whatever, and got a couple of pars in before The Fear took hold, and he deleted it.
He very wisely didn’t say what it was about. I can think of a couple of topics, but only a couple, that might scare him off because they’d scare me off, too. Although that assumes we’re scared by the same things.
He might’ve had deep thinkies about the whole weird Hugo Awards shitshow which is something he would definitely care about and have many opinions on, but which I could not even borrow a fuck to give you about.
Or maybe it was Gaza. That’s a giant mountain of sweating gelignite right there.
Twenty years ago, even ten, I’d have dived into both of them.
These days I just keep my feelpinions to myself about a whole bunch of stuff. Partly it was writing columns for decades that gave me to realise that most online discussion is hot garbage. I certainly shovelled enough of it myself. And what difference did it make to anything?
Nada.
I got paid, which was good, but I surely didn’t help things. So yeah, nowadays, I just like to keep it quiet and civilised. It means less traffic, but I sleep a lot better.
Choose the hill you want to die on .....wisely. . Those hills are dwindling for me more and more all the time . And as you get older you realize a lot of em are made of quicksand or a mirage.
This is a fascinating thought, the conversation shaped around the absence or void of something of known importance.
For myself these days its more to support my own mental health, trying to argue with people who I care about who have hurtful misunderstandings about the world I have to weigh the decision if the impact on my equanimity is worth it for the chance to change their opinion.
HOWEVER If there is someone present who is hurt or endangered by this misunderstanding then fuck my mental health I am going to step in to argue just so they don't feel that the world is full of ass-holes who hate them.