Apparently, I'm a Victim Now

I was recently called out for advocating a victimhood mentality in my blog, and I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that.

Because sure, if you're a shitty reader and just skim my posts, I can see how you might arrive at that conclusion.

If you don't comprehend the words I use, don't bother reading the entire post, or confuse writing about something that happened to me with surrendering all personal agency because it happened, then yep.

Victimhood.

Case fucking closed.

Except that's not what I'm doing.

The world is made up of forces pushing and pulling in every fucking direction. Some of those forces are other people. Some are physical events. Some are consequences of our own decisions. Some are completely outside our control. And where those forces collide, where something interrupts the expected trajectory of a perfectly ordinary day, that's usually where the story is.

That's the good stuff.

If I ride to work tomorrow morning and nothing happens, then I get to work, sit down, open my email, and start my day, what exactly am I supposed to write about?

"I had emails this morning. That's okay because I get paid to figure out which ones require a response, so I responded to them."

Riveting fucking stuff.

Nobody wants to read that. More importantly, I don't want to write it. That's not the shit lingering in my head late at night or bouncing around in there when I wake up the next morning.

But let's say I ride to work in those perfect early morning temperatures where the air feels fucking amazing, the motorcycle is humming beneath me, and I'm smiling inside my helmet despite understanding that at any moment an insect roughly the size of a Volkswagen could commit suicide against my forehead.

That's already a little more interesting.

Then some moron staring at his phone drifts onto the shoulder while piloting a two-ton missile, kicking rocks and sand into my face, chest, and hands.

Now we have a fucking story.

It's funny in places. It's aggravating. It's something other motorcyclists will immediately understand. And for people who don't ride, it might even be a little edu-fucking-cational. Maybe someone reading it has never considered what happens to a motorcyclist when the car ahead of them wanders onto the shoulder and starts throwing debris backward.

Imagine that.

Writing about that doesn't mean I'm sitting beside the road crying, "I'm a victim of bad drivers! Somebody please save me!"

I take care of my own fucking shit.

I take care of myself and mine.

I'm simply writing about something that happened, what I thought about it, what I did about it, and whatever remained rattling around inside my skull afterward. The fact that someone else did something stupid doesn't magically transform the person writing about it into a helpless participant in her own life.

Sometimes shitty things happen to people.

Sometimes other people actually do shitty things to people.

Acknowledging either of those facts isn't victimhood. It's reality.

Agency is what happens next.

That's an important fucking distinction, and apparently one that needs to be made.

My blog isn't a manifesto. I'm not laying out the definitive Kate Sjostrand Theory of Everything and demanding that the world adopt it. These posts are glimpses into my life. Glimpses into my world. They're how I process the things I'm still thinking about the next morning.

Sometimes that's a motorcycle.

Sometimes it's an asshole driver.

Sometimes it's work.

Sometimes it's freedom.

Sometimes it's something that happened years ago that suddenly crawled out of whatever dark fucking corner of my brain I've been storing it in and demanded attention.

And let's be fucking honest here. Lately, an awful lot of these posts have been about how ridiculously, disgustingly, overwhelmingly in love I am.

So maybe that's the accusation.

Maybe I'm a victim of love.

Are we quoting that old Alabama song now?

"I'm a victim of love in the first degree!"

Okay.

If that's the charge, then yep, I'm fucking guilty.

Happy now, motherfuckers?

Look, this is my blog. I write because writing helps me understand my own life. Sometimes that means writing about beautiful things. Sometimes that means writing about ugly things. Sometimes I discover what I actually think about something halfway through writing the fucking post.

That's kind of the point.

And if you don't like what I write, there's an incredibly sophisticated technological solution available to you.

Stop fucking reading it.

This is America. You have that freedom. And with freedom comes responsibility, so unfortunately you may have to get off your fucking ass and find someone else's blog to read while you're sucking down your morning coffee and trying to convince yourself you're ready for another day.

I believe in you.

Wait.

Holy fucking hell.

Did I just do it again?

Did I write another victimhood piece by writing about somebody accusing me of writing victimhood pieces?

Fuck.

Maybe it's all true.

For those of you unfamiliar with my writing, that last sentence was sarcasm.

For those of you who already knew that, thanks for actually fucking reading.