My new officemate thinks the federal government is using GPS to spy on everybody.

If my tax dollars are being used for this, I'm gonna be pissed.

My new officemate thinks the federal government is using GPS to spy on everybody.

If he moves to a remote, rural location and stays completely off the grid—no computers, vehicles, cell phones, electricity—he might slip through our their net. Sadly, you won't be able to work with him any more, but sacrifices will have to be made.

Congrats Jessica! Now you get to shop on the sparkly pink side of the store also.

I'm not gonna say labor isn't painful, but I feel like the way it's been described in this thread makes it sound like something out of a Saw movie.

Well, in my case, it looked like this also. But that wasn't the part that hurt, just the part that made me feel bad for whoever had to clean the walls.

Congratulations, Jessica!

Happy Birthday, Erin!

Congrats, Jessica!

Happy belated birthday, Erin!

And Yay Baby Girl!

And ~ma to the pain and car and whatnot people.

I wanted to write it all in the morning, but there was a new bed shopping. So now, without further ado, here is What I Think And My Opinion Only FFS Childbirth And Perspectives Manifesto, As Written By A Never-Gave-Birth-25-Woman:

1. I don't really believe there's a clear line between private and public. I'm also not quite sure where the "personal" enters the picture, but I'll stick to what I "legally know", which is private and public. More than that, I think that the definitions of what is private and what is public are changing as times and technology change. If 30 years ago sitting in your room and minding your own business was consider a private thing, is it still private when you've got a webcam and streaming to the rest of the world? Or if you're deceiving others to get their credit card numbers on the internet? Are these actions private or not? Can you "mind your own business" while walking down the street? Is it the essence of the deed or the place where it's taken place at what makes a situation public or private? I don't know. There are some strict legal boundaries WRT to what can you do and what can't you do and what can't be done to you in public spaces and in private spaces. What I do know, is that none of all this makes an experience any less personal or public, or has anything to do with the place or the essence of it.

2. No man (woman) is an island. As a society, we're depended on each other - and as technology controls our lives (1), we're more depended on others. When a woman in labor enters the hospital to give birth, she can't ask everyone in the hospital staff for his/her resume and then decide. She has to trust the hospital's HR, and the OB/GYN she chose before (if she could). It doesn't make her childbirth experience any less personal, no. But do others have a say or a hand in how this experience will conduct? Yes. Is it anything personal for them? Don't know.

3. Value and Personal Value. A lot of people go above and beyond, everyday, to create something of value in this world. I'm in awe of anyone who builds something, creates a thing, writes a book, of gives life. On the whole, it does seem that giving birth is the peak in the creating something new: a life, out of labor. There you create the thing in itself - a life. I'm not asking to take that or disentitle it from anyone. But I'm not asking to make it into something that is not. After catching up on things, yes, Buffistas do tend to describe it more "realistically". It's the world around me, however, which fails at doing so.

4. (More of (1): Outsiders and the Public). It's very hard for me to think of more than a few private deeds which don't hold a public value. Giving birth isn't one of them. Not only that it's an experience of two people which affects more, the baby is giving a name and an SSN, getting shots and a nationality. All of these are public aspects of a personal experience, never mind how it'll be remembered as. That is why the PoV of outsiders is so important sometimes. Not just because they're "experts", but because personal experiences have other sides which aren't considered by insiders. That is something they do in publicity and in myth making: detaching an experience out of the time-space sequence into something else. Mostly, in childbirth, the added value I think of isn't the question of "which color for the blanket?", but "what life can we give this new person?". Sadly, I see this question faded into questions of consumption of experiences, not of life. For life isn't a sequence of experiences that has to be marketed to anyone, no matter how much blood and pain involved in the process.

5. That is why, IMHO, public and private are very fluid things to define. The value of life, however, isn't - and that is why I'm on tiptoes to make sure there won't be any mistakes or confusions about that. When speaking of childbirth as an experience which ditched of all of its other aspects I feel as if this fine line (continued...)

( continues...) is slipping away. And the more we're in touch of more people, there's actually more chance it'll slip away, for everything becomes a "job", a task in a to do list, while we keep searching for this "personal experience" thing for ourselves. And that's why it's important to listen to as much people as possible and check as much angles as possible - because it's your life, not a commercial. The more a personal experience becomes a job and a task to others, the more alienated our society will be.

6. Basically, these are the two sides of the same coin, the public and the private. It's up to anyone to choose where their own personal experience lies. But anyone who'll try to market to me just the personal experience without any other information/aspects is "suspicious" (or intriguing) to me. And that is all.

Shir, I think your perspective is interesting, and obviously has a lot of thought behind it.

I do need to note that "suspicious" and "intriguing" have 2 entirely different meanings, and which word you choose colors how I read what you're saying. (I also VERY much realize that English isn't your first language, and so what I'm about to ask isn't an attack on you, it's just a request for clarification based on your word choice.)

So when you say this:

But anyone who'll try to market to me just the personal experience without any other information/aspects is "suspicious" (or intriguing) to me.

do you mean that you are interested in finding out more ("intriguing"), or you think that person is being dishonest ("suspicious")?

Because those are 2 totally different things. I know that yesterday you used the word "suspicious," and that's what set me off, personally. Because "suspicious" = "dishonest" (or suspected of being dishonest), and so that's how I took your meaning.

If you mean "intriguing," as in "hey, tell me more about your experience," that's very, very different.

I hope that makes sense.

It makes sense, Steph, and it helps me to be clearer.

When someone tells me a personal experience, I can either think it's intriguing or suspicious - but either way, most chances are that I'd like to hear more. This is my bottom line, actually: I'd love to give personal experiences every credit I can, but I need to hear more to get a perspective. Doesn't matter if I'm turned off or on by the story - I want to get the full details. It's not that I think that the other person is necessarily dishonest, or even fascinating - but that it's so hard to be aware to external aspects of a personal experience, that I can't judge solely on that.

I think that a part of me is so persistent about it because I don't do it enough, but I'm very aware of the price (the slipping line of life I wrote about). The price of forgetting it just scares me.

Is it clearer now?