Recently, I have been thinking about my place in the world as a transgender, disabled, fat person. Each of these things is true about me all of the time, and yet, at different points I feel each of them more acutely.
I have been thinking a lot about taking a break from the oppressive nature of each of these lived experiences; meeting people from around the world as I tutor English. Doing art as a means of releasing the inner world from itself, Studying as a means of creating valuable knowledge.
And I realized in all of these things, to one degree or another required me to participate and ignore the parts of me that make me me. Tutoring English still holds me to capitalistic expectations of productivity. Art assumes that my external world is less valuable than my internal world – a gnostic myth that divides humanity from itself. Studying which requires me to forcibly focus. Yet each of these things is fun in it’s own way. Each of these things gives me life.
Even with the lack of perfection noted above, each of these things also allows me to have fun – a necessary part of surviving capitalism; Embracing the child like experience of wonder and joy and creativity is a gift only I can give myself, and so I will continue to choose to find fun wherever I can find it.