[AE.Mailbag, AE.Meta] Plates, Pokemon, Pronouns, Policies
Hello, lovely readers and all the ships at sea! Tonight I'm going to try a new feature here at the Erin Endeavor, the reader mailbag. In lieu of a comment section which can be a moderation nightmare (and isn't currently available on this platform), I will be highlighting and replying to selections from the emails readers send me in response to my newsletters.
If you would specifically like to have your email considered for a future mailbag, please say so at the end and include the third-person personal pronouns you would like me to use (as "she/her" or "they/them", etc.) for this purpose and the name you would like me to refer to, which can be anonymous or pseudonymous. Please don't just say "my name"; even if it's the entire display name on your email account, I would prefer you spell it out explicitly that it's cool for me to use it.
If you want full anonymity, I can simply refer to you as "a reader" and use neutral pronouns, if I can't avoid them entirely. It's fine!
If you don't include this in your reply I may still ask you, but I will not republish or share your email in the newsletter without your explicit permission. I may still refer to the things that you say to me in a general, non-identifying fashion, like-a so:
Several readers were interested in my offer to share some tips for home pest control products and solutions. That's going to take me a bit of doing to dig up the actual product names and relevant links, so that'll be a whole separate newsletter coming your way in the near future.
See? That's a good example of what I mean by referring to a message. If any of those readers would feel uncomfortable having their name attached to a request for a little commercial interjection or wouldn't want to think I've singled them out for having a buggy house... well, no one knows who they are, but the essential information relating to the trend in my inbox has been relayed to you, the readers.
Now, on to an actual email.
Lani wrote, in response to The Mind Is A Pokemon:
I related so much to this - the idea that we can only keep so many plates spinning is one I use often. For me it ends up being "work, self (body), self (mind), social relationships, intimate relationships" -- there is always one plate that's juuuuuuust about to topple, and I feel I spend my time dashing madly from one to the next instead of enjoying the act of performing. I hope your lights routine integrates well into the other changes you've made and they work together in harmony.
I thought this was helpful both because it's another useful metaphor for the basic problem, and a slightly different perspective on what's being balanced. Just another way of looking at things. I also found it personally useful to have someone else say that my rambling metaphor resonated with them, and I thought for anyone else who was vibing along with it, it might be nice to know that you weren't alone.
That's one of the underrated magical things about the internet, in my mind: the possibility to articulate an experience -- a feeling, a thing that happens, a facet of one's existence -- and receive validation from other people who recognize it and go, "Yeah, I know what that's like."
That's it for my first reader mailbag. Yeah, just one email. It's a new feature. I've already received more responses than I can readily reply to, though, and my hope is that we can build up a conversational rapport through this feature, which I'm currently aiming to run on weekends.
As always, thank you for reading!