Reflection on Abortion & Euthanasia, Take 1: Where I delude myself that I'll hide too much process
Channel: Ari R pronouns she or they
Date: 21/06/2021

So the earliest draft of the script for this series of videos was ~2500 words, and I stopped the first take 36 seconds in because I read "I demonstrate myself," repeating "demonstrate" from "demonstrate the dangers" instead of "I consider myself," which is what the beginning of the next sentence said. 


The first attempt to revise down resulted in a ~2700 word draft, so I decided to talk through the draft on video for myself as part of my revision process, posting that process work to YouTube to avoid the kind of process masking that makes making shiny things seem either too simple or impossible. Here's the first video.I've stopped submitting work to the transcription gig work/scam company whose work assignments I attempted for a while to reframe as paid physical therapy (see the description in a previous video) because the return on investment was far too low:  the files were mostly content I did NOT want to be typing and they use a per-audio-hour pay structure instead of a per-real-time-hour pay structure, so all the empty hours in their system waiting for work result in use of my resources but not development of my skills or funding to cover the resources used. I AM a person who processes sensory input slowly and who has poorer-than-average fine motor control, so practicing transcription does result in physical and cognitive benefit for me, but I am NOT a detail-oriented person, so that work is slow and counter-productive for me unless it's (a) content I really enjoy or (b) for a clear social justice purpose when I know who the speakers are and who the recorder is. No more anonymous transcription for me. Makes me feel dirty. Ugh.



Now that my computer feels more like a useful, meaningful device for accomplishing work instead of a slave-driving machine I sometimes repurpose to decompress through a game or two, I am trying to share publicly again.



Setting up for Take 4 as I publish Take 1, so the playlist will fill out eventually. Depending on which parts of my script or commentary I feel like I should have revised after Take 3, I may or may not publish all 10 parts. When I added all of the videos to a VLC playlist, the playlist duration was over an hour and forty minutes for what should be - at a slowish talking pace - a twenty-two minute script. It's not an extra hour and ten minutes of brilliant commentary, reader. It's rambling frustration because I could euthanize my dog but not my self. I've been alive 30 years longer than the first time I tried and failed to kill myself. I would have been grateful to a supportive healthcare system 30 years ago for equitable, quality care for me and the people around me. But the more inequity in the system I see, the less I want to be a member of the species, let alone any organizations. People expect me to be grateful for "every little bit helps" kinds of things. I am not, and I will not be. For myself, I am grateful for adventure, entertainment, and soothing, and for the multiverse, I will be grateful when humanity stops warring on ourselves and our environment. We need more open, effective systems of supporting and loving each other.For that to work, we will need to enact reparations and reshape systems of governance and society to minimize the impact of discrimination (including defunding the police, demilitarizing, and ending the drug wars); legalize, legitimize, and critically, compassionately regulate prostitution and adult entertainment; and legalize, legitimize, and critically, compassionately regulate physician-assisted suicide as part of the reshaping of a healthcare system that also includes EQUITABLE access to QUALITY healthcare. Before we can have equitable access to telehealth, we need equitable access to broadband internet globally. Since I live in a place where I have a right to refuse treatment and have not sought healthcare services for myself since May 2018, NO ONE should be attempting to contact me for health or wellness purposes.