Entry tags:
Eighth Salon: Quality of Life
Welcome to our eighth salon discussion thread. Wander in, invite a friend to come along, and chat! (Not sure what's going on? Here, have a brief FAQ.) You can find previous ones in my salon tag. Please take a quick look at the reminders at the bottom of this post, too.
Quality of life: what does it mean for you?
I was thinking, walking home from work the other day, that there's a lot of different kinds of things that make up quality of life, the "This is a good day" and "I like how I'm living".
In my current job, I don't make much money (especially given the amount of education required). But I live half a mile from work, in a gorgeous rural New England town where pretty much every view could be on a postcard. (And that's before you get to anything significantly scenic.) There's a downtown grocery store with local produce, and farmer's markets, and all sorts of other things.
I have a job that I mostly leave at work (I mean, I keep thinking about technology and libraries and information pretty much all the time, but that's because I love it, not because I have to bring work home). I have the world's most endearing and adorable cat.
But I also know that these things aren't necessarily what other people would choose (or what I'd choose at other points in my life, or if I lived in a different place, or had more money to play with.)
Things I'm watching: I'm currently rewatching season 3 of Doctor Who (I've been a fan since before I knew you could be: I grew up watching Tom Baker from under a chair in the living room.) Tonight, I'm going to go see the Joss Whedon Much Ado About Nothing for the second time so I can go with a friend (and because, on the whole, I would like to encourage people to do more projects of that kind.) What're you watching? Why is it interesting to or fun for you?
(This means I'll be out from 5ish until 9:30ish tonight. I assume you can all manage in my absence.)
Quick reminders
-![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jjhunter did a great guide to following conversations here on Dreamwidth. Also a roundup of regular Dreamwidth events.
- If you want to post anonymously, please pick a name (any name you like) that we can call you - it makes it more conversational and helps if we have more than one anon post.
- Base rule remains "Leave the conversation better than you found it, or at least not worse". If you're nervous about that, I'd rather you say something and we maybe sort out confusion later than have you not say something. (I've heard from a few people who worry they're going to say something that's going to be taken weirdly. If it helps, I am usually around and if there's a thing you'd like to get out in the conversation, but you're not sure how, feel free to PM or email or IM me, and I'll nudge the conversation that direction.)
- The FAQ still has useful stuff, and I added some thoughts about getting conversations going a few weeks ago.
- Comments tend to trickle in over the course of a day or two, with a few nearly a week later: you might enjoy checking back later if you're not tracking the conversation.
Quality of life: what does it mean for you?
I was thinking, walking home from work the other day, that there's a lot of different kinds of things that make up quality of life, the "This is a good day" and "I like how I'm living".
In my current job, I don't make much money (especially given the amount of education required). But I live half a mile from work, in a gorgeous rural New England town where pretty much every view could be on a postcard. (And that's before you get to anything significantly scenic.) There's a downtown grocery store with local produce, and farmer's markets, and all sorts of other things.
I have a job that I mostly leave at work (I mean, I keep thinking about technology and libraries and information pretty much all the time, but that's because I love it, not because I have to bring work home). I have the world's most endearing and adorable cat.
But I also know that these things aren't necessarily what other people would choose (or what I'd choose at other points in my life, or if I lived in a different place, or had more money to play with.)
Things I'm watching: I'm currently rewatching season 3 of Doctor Who (I've been a fan since before I knew you could be: I grew up watching Tom Baker from under a chair in the living room.) Tonight, I'm going to go see the Joss Whedon Much Ado About Nothing for the second time so I can go with a friend (and because, on the whole, I would like to encourage people to do more projects of that kind.) What're you watching? Why is it interesting to or fun for you?
(This means I'll be out from 5ish until 9:30ish tonight. I assume you can all manage in my absence.)
Quick reminders
-
jjhunter did a great guide to following conversations here on Dreamwidth. Also a roundup of regular Dreamwidth events. - If you want to post anonymously, please pick a name (any name you like) that we can call you - it makes it more conversational and helps if we have more than one anon post.
- Base rule remains "Leave the conversation better than you found it, or at least not worse". If you're nervous about that, I'd rather you say something and we maybe sort out confusion later than have you not say something. (I've heard from a few people who worry they're going to say something that's going to be taken weirdly. If it helps, I am usually around and if there's a thing you'd like to get out in the conversation, but you're not sure how, feel free to PM or email or IM me, and I'll nudge the conversation that direction.)
- The FAQ still has useful stuff, and I added some thoughts about getting conversations going a few weeks ago.
- Comments tend to trickle in over the course of a day or two, with a few nearly a week later: you might enjoy checking back later if you're not tracking the conversation.
no subject
Otherwise, I'm not really watching anything - I'm just incredibly excited about both Elementary s2 and Korra s2, both due to start airing in September, and the Korra trailer that got released last week.
I'm reading (slowly) Derek Walcott's Omeros; and Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Lost Prince, at the repeated urging of
-- quality of life -- having access to sunshine. And to food that I will reliably eat. And to things that are calming, in sensory terms - my heavy blanket. But mostly? Feeling useful. So -- volunteering is something I get a lot out of, but it's best if I get thanked, and in turn this is prompting me to make sure I thank co-volunteers for work they do, because that is how community happens. And it makes me feel better, even when I don't get thanked in turn, because it reminds me that I'm not the only person putting work in, and that other people do appreciate my work even if they don't say it. So there's a thing.
no subject
I have a longer write up in a locked post, but let me do a summary here too!
First, I really liked it! A lot! Which is the other part of why I'm going to go see it again.
Joss Whedon is *excellent* at ensemble cast, and this is such an ensemble cast play. Hero and Claudio have as much personality and agency as you can wrangle out of the text, and I really loved a lot of the staging. (I also really ended up liking the timelessness of the black and white filming: a lot of it read as sort of 50s era, except you have moments of modern technology.)
In describing this to people, I finally ended up with an explanation that works for me, which is that it's got a very Hufflepuff aesthetic to it: it has a lot of food and drink, and a lot of scenes in the kitchen, and a lot of playing on family and loyalty and trust and honest. (Where, in contrast, the Branagh version reads to me as very Ravenclaw: all wit and cutting intelligence.) Whether that comparison makes sense outside my head, I'm not so sure, but there you are.
People keep telling me to watch Elementary, and I've not had enough spare brain to pick it up, but I'm looking forward to it. (Picking up the quality of life bit in a separate comment.)
no subject
I am not so reliant on thanks, I think, as I am on seeing things change.
I am, at the moment, doing vast amounts of data entry for the Alternity wiki, and while I'm sort of "Argh, there is so much data" about it (and I've got at least a hundred hours more work to do, I think), but I really love making progress, and seeing things come together, and seeing it get *used*. I have a much harder time when I'm working on something where that's less obvious. (And then, yeah, thanks help a lot.)
no subject
I think I agree about visible change being its own reward; I guess with thanks I'm probably actually particularly thinking about
no subject
Yeah. Very slow community building is a really odd thing, isn't it? And yet, the small changes add up. (I've been reading some historical Metafilter stuff recently, and the conversations there also had me thinking about it.)
Rambling: Quality of Life, Health, Meaning, Purpose
Okay, so yes, there's the whole hierarchy of needs thing.
I think (?) some people - myself included at one point - might include "good health" among quality of life. Am thinking of a line from Disney's Robin Hood in which Sir Hiss states that, "If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything." Which I now do without. And yeah, it frelling sucks at times. The doctor's appointments, the pain, the paperwork, the pain, the lack of income, the pain, etc. Does that mean I have no quality of life? No.
What takes away quality of life the most, in my opinion (and bear in mind that I am stating this for me not Every-Person-With-Disabilities-Ever) is the attitude that I have no quality of life and that I have nothing to contribute to society because I am unable to do "substantial gainful activity" (legal term).
Typical small talk:
Stranger: So, what do you do?
Me: I have a disability, so I fill my days with crafting and friendship and video games.
*awkward silence*
Anyway, the thing is that I do fill my days with meaning. For me that may be crafting and friendship and video games. For someone else, that might be something completely different. But the trick is to find meaning, something, whether it's collecting pins or eating Wensleydale cheese or saving Gotham. If you have that thing to cling to, even when you have a day when all your other needs are not being met, you can cling to that.
/ramble