Seasoning

(adapted Linkedin post)

Previously on LinkedIn, I shared about the struggle of promoting my services as a Relationship Artist while re-engaging with corporate lingo: the attempt to make my discourse "accessible to their worldview” was emptying it of its meaning.

A few months later, I have a sense of what went wrong: I had been confusing people's intimate worldviews with their suits'. Art connects with souls, not masks.

I don't know if you've seen the memes going around about “Linkedinese,” but they are a pretty funny illustration of that dichotomy.

The mere intention of posting on there makes my writing feel a little fake; like I am trying to adapt, too much. Playing it too safe.

Is there a way out?

How about this:

Playing it safe destroys families.

Playing it safe means not speaking up about workplace harassment.

Playing it safe means not confronting wilful incompetence.

Playing it safe is f.cked up.

And I don't mean individually.

A memory: five or six year old me proclaiming to my mother, from the bathtub: “I'll never work in an office like Dad!” She’d just answered a question of mine by: “you see, at work, when the boss points at something yellow and says it's red, your dad says it's yellow, and that gets him in trouble.” My dad never played it safe. Call it what you will, his brain isn't designed that way. A strength when supported by others; turns you to prey when they don't.

I am not interested in facilitating conflict resolution conversations in contexts that lack radical intentions of support. It feels like prey seasoning.

I am interested in being there for people in the process of breaking conditioning: conditioning from monster systems that have long outlived their original creators, calling humans “resources,” and burning them out one by one.

I'm not an expert in anything, ultimately.

But I am really good at listening, and at getting people to actually listen to themselves.