What am I even doing here?

I met up with an old friend recently. Right at the end she asked if I wanted feedback on blog posts I had sent her. I knew roughly what was coming, because I have heard it once or thrice before.

The main problems (before you get to the content) are around even understanding what the content is. Namely there are far too many

• Abbreviations
• Colloquialisms
• Obscure pop references.

It’s a killing list, [to which I would add Digressions.]

It’s also a fair list. In response I have said and did say that these Abbreviations, Colloquialisms, Obscure pop references and Digressions (ACOD) are the ‘reward’ I give myself for even writing in the first place, since none of what I say will get picked up.  

This is

1. Slightly circular/self-fulfilling
2. Enormously self-indulgent

The poor woman was trying to leave and I was still going on about how many times I have had people come and ask me about running meetings differently, only to have suggestions enthusiastically received and then ignored, and how I also tried to lead by example only to see nothing ‘stick’.

All true, and will remain so. But ‘what am I even doing here?’

If I am serious about having my words for the problems social movements face (smugosphere, emotacycle, ego-fodder, potemkinslusivity, stolidarity etc) circulated and used, then I have to communicate more clearly, succinctly and with a minimum of ACOD. 

I will still be ignored, obvs, but at least those choosing to ignore me will have to do it on straightforward grounds of ‘I don’t like this asshole, and I don’t like his so-called ideas’ rather than other reasons.  So, that will be (checks notes)… a win….

How is it to be done?

Well, I can make all sorts of resolutions, commitments. They haven’t worked in the past. 

If you want a different result, you have to do things differently.

It seems to me that I should write my ACOD version and then come back a week later and put up a de-ACODded version which I then make some effort at circulating. If I think it’s important I guess I could ask someone else to de-ACOD it>

I mean, like Robert De Niro says in that scene in Heat –  “That’s the discipline”