Day Six of the Old-Year Kicking Party: Something New Every Day!

[capri0mni]

Day Five: If you could invent a holiday ...?

Day Four: Our Pride and Joys

Day Three: My attempt at Party Games for this medium

Day Two: Snacks and treats

Day One: Favorite Things

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So: Here's a thing to celebrate and talk about today: What is something you learned in 2018?

You don't have to answer these questions, exactly... You can treat them as prompts:

1) What did you learn about yourself (that you are willing to share)?

2) What new thing (to you) did you learn about the world?

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1-a) I continued to connect the dots on my asexual-aromantic orientation, especially after I went into the hospital for bronchitis in August [Aside: fun times /sarcasm], and came into contact with well-meaning strangers (Nurses' assistants, mostly) who would happen to make small talk on the subject of flirty things, and I realized my reaction was a deep, and instantaneous, DO NOT WANT. This could also fit under: "What did you learn about the world?" because it made me realize just how deeply ingrained the assumption of sexual and romantic attraction is, in our culture -- it's not just the cherry on top, but the vanilla ice cream in the sundae -- and I realized just how much my aro/ace orientation puts me at odds with the culture I grew up in.

1-b) Looking back on my life, I realized that although I've never been in romantic or sexual love with anyone, I have fallen in love with several people throughout my life, starting in adolescence: on an empathetic and intellectual level. Why yes, Virginia, it is possible to fall in love and not even know, if you don't have the language to talk about it.

2) This may be extra relevant this year, since Koko the Gorilla died.

But, thanks to an episode of a Nova miniseries on PBS, this spring, I learned that scientists are no longer focused on trying to teach our fellow apes some version of human language (either an adapted sign language, or a human-invented graphic symbol system, Because, after studying them in the wild, human scientists are realizing that chimps and other apes have languages of their own. \o/ Can we party down to that, now! Can I hear a Hallelujah from the choir? Here's the trailer for that episode, on YouTube