#creative urges

Mark T Vanover- Graphic impulses: drawing, sexuality and science in Germany 1870 to 1933

I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole of Leftist YouTube.  It’s got some really good, creative, stuff going on -- certainly more creative and varied and thoughtful than the Right (Seriously, did Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson decide to share a single voice between them? It’s so-o creepy).

But, as with Leftist spaces in 3-D space, it’s almost empty of Disabled voices, and a lot of the rhetoric is horribly ableist: abortion rights activists who frame disabled children as nothing but burdens to their parents and society, anti-war activists and their hostility toward soldiers -- including those who return home with serious cognitive and physical disabilities, and seemingly everybody $#i++ing on the elderly -- lumping them all in with Conservative Voters[TM].... Not to mention the whole Plastic Straw and pre-peeled Oranges discourse from the Environmentalists.

And as for Disabled YouTube (quite a few of whom I subscribe to, and they’re very good)... Most of those are still on the “Explaining our Lives To the Able People” track -- stuff YouTube’s algorithm is likely to sort into “lifestyle” bin. If politics shows up its likely, to be an aside.

So as a Disabled Leftie (even my body leans heavily toward the left), I see a place where I have something valuable to add...

And here comes the “But”...

I haven’t made a video in five years.  I gave up on it because I couldn’t seem to keep headphones or a mic. without utterly destroying them several times in a year (I tend to drop things, and when they’re on the floor, there’s a good chance I’ll run over them in my motorized wheelchair, in an attempt to pick them up again).

And YouTube has changed in the years since I was putting stuff up.  I’d opt out of monetization (Because getting paid for anything can put my SSDI on shaky ground), and I don’t want advertisements on my videos (I’m afraid that if they get recognized as being about disability, they’d attract advertisers for supposed cures or medical treatments, and that could be triggering or manipulative, especially if someone is newly disabled, and/or newly diagnosed).

And the app I used to create my videos -- Windows Movie Maker (Yeah, I was low-tech) -- has been discontinued. So on top of buying a new microphone and headset, I’d have to buy a new video editing program.  I can’t just do this casually, first, and see how it feels -- I’d have to make Decisions and a Commitment. And that’s causing Anxiety.

But #2:

My Mother always told me:

Do What You See Needs to Be Done.

And I see something that needs to be done, which I’ve outlined above. And there’s also the Jewish philosophy of Tikkun Olam. 

So.

It's a rainy, blissful, lazy day and all I want to do is bake.

But ingredients are expensive especially because I wanna bake them from scratch.

My mom would be all for me baking but she'd just get a box of cake mix and a some pre-made frosting.