📜 So - middle of the night reflection, because I can't seem to post the Patreon piece I need to without saying something deeper here, o CoSo, where the "human" in me is at its safest:

I'm in an odd spot. I'm able to care for many, but I'm in no position to help myself. I'm an immigrant in constant precarity, and also not at all the most vulnerable of immigrants in the world (or of people living in the land of their own birth, for that matter). /x

I grew up atheist, and therefore full of wonder at our indifferent cosmos. No god, no purpose save what we make for ourselves. But we keep making TERRIBLE choices.

And it can be unbearable.

A child often has a better sense of right and wrong at times than we adults, many of whom have crafted lifetimes' worth of elaborate and academic/political vocabularies to justify the unequal and unjust positions into which we were so unthinkingly born. /x

The world we live in is unjust to its core, and it's more deeply wounded than we can hope to amend in our brief lifetimes.

I left my social contract of birth to feel the pulse of different argumentation, when the West seemed so caught up in *such* a reductive cycle of concern. I wanted to learn from something truly different, if I could.

But now, having felt that schism, I feel helpless to do much more with all the ensuing intellectual growth.

And this eats at me... so much, so frequently. /x

Much of what I do is... so frivolous. The sci-fi. The fiction. The media analysis writ large.

While pursuing these creative ends, I have also seen and stood by people in the middle of far more immediate hardships. I have *endured* hardship at the hands of complicated figures - including assault by those who were experiencing war-induced PTSD at the time.

I have... such experiences of real-world deprivation, and violence. And so little that I can do with all that I've lived through. /x

There's a common trope in SFF right now. A rhetoric that many use, of--oh no, this venue is closing! and so few will accept stories from X demographic in the first place!--that completely overlooks how hard it is for *anyone* to make a living on stories in the best of times, & how many other groups tell stories just as challenging.

Every time this emerges, what I see is people fighting over scraps in an economy of artificial scarcity around livelihoods shaped around affluent forms of labour. /x

Meanwhile people are dying of floods and heat stroke.

Meanwhile war and climate change are exacerbating resource wars, environmental refugees, and internal displacement at levels we're nowhere close to ready for. All our escalating nationalisms? Part of the same eco-ethnic pressure-points.

I feel like I need scream at the top of my lungs most days: PAY ATTENTION.

But I'm also nothing, nowhere close to as well platformed as necessary to move the needle even a fraction with all I've learned. /x

It hurts to have this much knowledge, know-how, and experience, and to be able to do so little with it.

My industries are failing.

My industries cannot pay me enough to do anything of note with my body of expertise.

I need... so much courage, and so much *audacity*, to think it worth continuing anyway. To keep trying to share the hard-won fruits of my experience, in the hope that my messy, fraught story might help move others to do what they can in their own corners of this broken world. /x

And that courage and audacity is hard to come by.

Some days I find myself reeling in the faith that others have had in me, when I am *such* a mess, and so flawed.

I want to move the needle.

I want more kindness for us all.

I want all of us to see what we're capable of, especially when we work together to mend the wounds caused by truly just a few out of our many fierce billions of fellow striving kin.

It hurts *so* much every time I encounter what we choose to focus on instead. /x

But in the end, I'm just one very flawed human being whistling in the dark.

Aching over how hard this is.

But also rousing when, on brief wondrous occasions, someone else in the murk finds their own courage long enough to whistle back.

So thank *you* for doing so.

Thank you for keeping this thread alive. 💙

(And good night to all of you. The world is hard enough without us being hard to ourselves in it. May you always have grace for how you've chosen to move through this wretched storm.) /📜