Lydia Schoch

I’m writing because I just can’t deal with my father anymore. He’s a 65-year-old super right-wing conservative who has basically turned into a total asshole intent on ruining our relationship and our planet with his politics.

This is the beginning of a letter to a columnist named Andrew that I came across today.

My post will make more sense if you read the entire thing, but here is a snippet of Andrew’s response for those of you who don’t like clicking links:

Love your dad because he’s your father, because he made you, because he thinks for himself, and most of all because he is a person. Have the strength to doubt and question what you believe as easily as you’re so quick to doubt his beliefs.

Here’s the thing: I don’t think this letter is about politics at all. It’s about belligerence.

Photo by Guyon Morée.

There are some people in this world who are always right. It doesn’t matter if the topic is religion, politics, a recent, controversial news story, or which side of the bread should be buttered.

They’re right. You’re wrong. The world is going to hell in a hand-basket. End of story.

Love isn’t the answer here. Don’t get me wrong – I completely agree with being merciful and kind under difficult circumstances. People who need love and acceptance the most are often the hardest ones to give them to.

There comes a time when you need to set healthy boundaries. The only person any one of us can control is ourselves. Caring about someone is not a synonym for believing that if you do or say the right thing they’ll make better choices.

Even Superman has had to deal with the fact that he can’t save everyone.

I can’t tell the letter writer what to do. It’s something he has to decide on his own based on everything he knows about his father, his family, and what has (and hasn’t) worked in the past. Every situation is unique, and he’ll find no judgement here from me.

But what I would say is this: love isn’t always about fuzzy emotions and bending over backwards. Sometimes it’s about making hard choices. You can love someone from a distance, or with less frequent visits, or with certain restrictions placed on the topics you will and won’t discuss with them.  There’s no reason why the rules can’t change next month or next year when you’re ready to try again.

I believe in having mercy for yourself and for other people. Life isn’t a zero-sum game.

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, short stories, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

The Envelope via iamwidowbabe. What amazed me the most about this link was how easy it was for me to slip into the perspective of this blogger even though I have no experience with this kind of grief.

Why I Don’t Follow You on Twitter via Jessica West. I agree 100%.

Hello, I Am a Bear. If you love Choose Your Own Adventure stories, don’t skip this link.

Your Five a Day Should Include Failure via thathappygal. Wow, this is tough advice to take. I don’t think anyone enjoys failure. It does make me want to take more risks with my writing and life though.

The League of Vile but Witty Literary Reviews. This is one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time.

From Ten Days’ Grace:

Falling pregnant with Lily had been her first infraction against the Spousal Laws. Like homosexuality and abortion, single parenthood had been illegal ever since the National Family Party came to power nearly three decades ago. As soon as the cause of Julia’s sudden nausea was correctly diagnosed, she’d been brought before the Bureau and called to account for the genesis of her not–allowed–to–be–illegitimate offspring.

From The Abortion Ministry of Dr. Willie Parker:

But the reality is women with money will do what they did pre-Roe: Their expensive private doctors will counsel them on exactly the right words to use about mental trauma and suicidal tendencies so that the hospital board will rule the termination of their pregnancy a medical necessity. But the women who come to this clinic are often poor women of color who can’t afford to go outside the state and who can’t afford the expensive consultations on just the right words to say.

I was so mesmerized by The Bear that I read it in one day.

Imagine a five-year-old girl and her (almost) three- year-old brother trying to survive in the wilderness after their parents are killed by a bear in the middle of what should have been a routine camping trip. My family spent a lot of time camping when my siblings were in that age range. All of my memories of those trips are good ones, but I was reminded of how much small children don’t know as I read this book.

Anna, the narrator, had lead a happy, sheltered life. Seeing such a horrific series of events through her eyes softened scenes that would have otherwise been too gory or scary for me, although I do want to warn my readers that some of what she experiences is pretty terrifying.

If you can handle the thought of two young kids being in horrible danger, though, I highly recommend checking this story out. It was excellent!

What have you been reading?

Photo by L. Shyamal. Animal courtesy of Saleem Hameed.

If I were a turtle, this is the face I’d make when there are too many words.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that I don’t like people. I love being social, there just comes a time when I need a break from all of the words tumbling around me. Sometimes there are a lot of them!

Silence is refreshing. Some conversations need a lot of it afterwards so I can have a chance to absorb everything that was said.

Did you know that punctuation marks used to be used sporadically (or not at all in with certain writing styles and cultures), and that many early forms of writing never put spaces between words?

thatwouldbelikewritingthiswayallofthetime

My brain hurts just thinking about it.

Earlier this month I got little twitchy because I wasn’t getting enough time alone. I think I’ve come up with a good solution for it, but as I was brainstorming ideas I stumbled over these facts. (Never try to figure me out based on what I’ve googled recently. It’s an eclectic jumble of stuff I need to know for my short stories, bizarre questions that pop into my mind, and random words I’m not sure how to spell. Only about 10% of it actually reflects my real mental state. Haha!)

I used to imagine words tumbling out of the sky when I’d had enough of them. Now I think I’ll be picturing them crowding closer and closer together until I can’t where one ends and the next one begins.

How do you visualize these things?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, short stories, comic strips, games, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Gender Chaos…Sorry, I Am Not a Man via StephNeighbour. This sounds like such a frustrating experience.

Coming Out Simulator 2014. It’s really difficult to describe what it feels like to come out to your parents. Even though I knew my parents weren’t going to react the same way that this guy’s parents did, I was still nervous about how those conversations would go. I’d kept my bisexuality very private up until then, and I honestly didn’t know if they had any idea that I wasn’t straight. This game is a great opportunity for anyone who’s never experienced something like this to get a small taste of what it feels like. I highly recommend it to all of my readers.

Confirmation Bias for Everyone! Ha!

Conversation with a Kitty. If I wasn’t so allergic to them (and wasn’t married or related to people who are also allergic), I’d have a house full of cats. They’re such funny creatures.

Infidelity – The Exception or The Rule? via PatriciaMann11. A fascinating discussion about infidelity, forgiveness, and whether every couple should expect to deal with these issues once they’ve been married a while. I don’t agree at all that cheating is inevitable, but I really enjoyed silently observing what everyone else had to say on this topic.

From The Woman Who Had No Shadow via prnancarrow:

The pastor’s new wife was afraid of having children.

Other women are afraid they won’t have children, but she was afraid of having them. She felt completely alone in this fear – she could share it with no one – and therefore it consumed her.

Grist is one of the best books I’ve read in 2014.

The narrator lives in a time and place where it was extremely difficult for women to live on their own. She had long since resigned herself to eking out a living as a teacher when a man she barely knows proposes to her. This should have been her happily ever after, but instead it was the beginning of decades of emotional abuse.

What surprised me the most, though, was how beautiful this story was. I never would have expected that given the subject matter, but I strongly recommend it to anyone in the mood for something unforgettable.

What have you been reading?

Photo by MShades.

Happy Blogiversary to On the Other Hand! It’s hard to believe I’ve been blogging here since 2010. The years have flown by.

if we all lived in the same city, I’d invite you all over for dessert. I like simple cakes like the one on the left. It’s much better to have a thin layer of frosting and some fruit than to be stuck with too much cloyingly sweet frosting and not enough cake.

My writing is chugging along. I have enough short stories now to compile into a book. I don’t know when they’ll be published, but I’ll keep you all updated. Do you remember that novel, After the Storm, that I posted here in sections last here? I’m rewriting it as well, although it’s taking longer than I thought it would. Sometimes characters listen to you…sometimes they don’t. 😉

My personal top 3 posts from last year are as follows:

Old Is a State of Mind

Is Pastor Bruce Gerencser a Theonomist? 

3 Reasons Why Authors Shouldn’t Hide Their Religious and Political Beliefs

What posts have you loved? What kind of cake do you like? Let me know in the comment section!

Locked up from Gabriel Grapperon on Vimeo.

Is the moral of this short film something like “don’t try too hard”?

I don’t think it is, but the thought did cross my mind while watching it. Ha!

Photo by Srinath66.

This summer is flying by so fast! I can’t believe it’s almost August already.

I haven’t sent out any more snail mail packages since my last update in this series, but I have been messaging and emailing other people more often than I did before beginning this experiment. Store-bought cards feel less personal to me than sending a tailored message to just one or two people. There are many other people who will be receiving that card, but no one else will ever get that specific note again.

Last month I said I was going to start trying to respond to every email within a week of receiving it. I’ll be honest – I completely failed to meet this goal at first. It’s so easy to let an email sit in your inbox for just one more day. Before you know it, it’s been several weeks…or longer.

I am slowly reducing my response time, though, which is good.

Along with writing back to people more quickly, my August goal is to assemble another care package. I sent a small one to my grandparents back in June. The package was filled with various types of candy that is sold in Toronto but not in the U.S.  It’s fascinating to see how people’s tastes in candy vary from one region to the next, and some of the stuff I sent was a big hit. This time I’m picking a different family member, but I’ll share the details of that next month.

In the meantime, how have you been keeping in touch this summer? (Also, what on earth is going on with the winged letter above? I’m so perplexed by it!)

See also:

How Do You Keep In Touch?

Keeping In Touch Update #1

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, short stories, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

My Life in Law (a short story). I love this.

Summer Is For Skinny People via mediocreventure. Do you agree? Disagree? I’ve always been skinny to average sized, so this is a new thought to me.

14 Brilliant Pieces of Literature You Can Read in the Time it Takes to Eat Lunch. Would you believe that I’d only read about a third of these before stumbling across this list? It sure surprised me because I read so voraciously!

Staying Present and Grounded in the Age of Information Overload. Originally I was planning to quote something from this interview to whet my reader’s appetites for more, but the whole thing is incredible.

From I Can’t Even:

The other day, while reading some old horror stories, I realized that we’re sitting on a gold mine of such linguistic gambits. One hundred years ago, an American fiction author embarked on a mission of exploring precisely this aesthetic territory—the collapse of language in the face of an emotionally unhinging reality.

From Papers, Please: Why Human Civilization Makes No Sense via CantrellJason:

Let me see if I’ve got this straight.

If I want to become a part of human society and follow the prescribed path most people follow, first I need to fill out this piece of paper.

My reading list has grown thin this summer. What have you been reading?