AI or bust
AI and then bust?
I had a realization recently about a regular feeling I have in the places I most often find myself— that I feel like an outsider. And the fatigue has caught up with me. While the outsider status has its perks, like always spotting the elephant everyone ignores, it can get lonely. Especially when those who felt like comrades show their real stripes. For maybe the first time ever, I considered that maybe it wasn’t me, maybe I’m in the wrong places.
My inner and outer worlds do not align. At home with Deborah Levy, Ruth Whippman, Rebecca Solnit, the women behind Diabolical Lies, any form of media from Tressie McMillan Cottom, even my own work, I’m constantly confronted with new ways to make sense of the world. These brilliant women make new realities feel urgent and sometimes, even possible. And then I step outside, my brain still buzzy from a new idea, and I head to my kid’s school for pick up. My stream of consciousness interrupted by kids and caregivers, ice cream truck chimes, and bus announcements. In so many ways this is normal and I don’t take it for granted. Talkative and tired kids leave school and head to their next appointment. There is almost always a next appointment. It’s either soccer, Russian Math, art workshop, chess club, piano, the kids are rarely idle. This is what I loathe. The curated after school lives of kids who just sat through seven hours of school lessons. And whose parents decided that wasn’t enough. I know kids who are occupied from the 8am school bell to 7pm in the evening. A girl in my daughter’s grade carries tap, jazz, and ballet shoes in her backpack at all times. School pick up conversations are safe and boring. We re-tell stories about the trips we took over the most recent break and we comment on the weather. I notice, occasionally with envy, that other parents seem to be more at ease. And then I note their kids attend the same math class. I don’t judge per say, but I don’t understand. In my older child’s parent set there has been a splintering— parents who are checked out, micromanaging and overachiever parents, alumni parents, and the spattering of parents like me, who thought getting into this school would mean something else entirely. Despite intense emphasis on community and belonging I hardly feel any belonging in this school community in any other way than sharing the same space and time. I used to think this nagging feeling was the nudge I needed to try harder with people. Surely I can find something in common. I’ve chaired committees, volunteered a hundred times, and yet it’s the whole performance that feels so tiring. The performance of parenting by people whose sole existence is getting their kid into an ivy. To do so, means conforming to the institution’s version of reality. Which I believed in, earnestly, all those years ago, back at the beginning.
