Pea Arts About

Given the machinations of social media, the ways many of us attribute value have become contingent on how many likes, shares, comments and plays a piece of content gets. My outputs attract relatively few of these. While I appreciate those few engagements immensely and am humbled that anyone is watching/reading/listening at all, I often have to catch myself on when I get annoyed that my hard work isn't reaching more. That's when I have to question my motivations for making work and putting it out there at all. What it ultimately comes down to is a feeling that my chance to deliver top-class arts & humanities education and research was taken away from me, and - realistically - I was in a toxic profession (academia) that is unrecognizable from external perceptions of it anyway. The ideal so many of us had going in and were rarely, if ever, corrected about, simply doesn't exist. And I didn't want all those years of graft, training and knowledge to go to waste. I was jus

As I grapple with an inner tug-of-war about reasonable reactions to things, I have come to appreciate depictions of rage more and more, particularly when it comes to the deep wounds of trauma. Many of us who remain scarred by the harm incurred from the actions of others have to make tremendous, often invisible, efforts to mask anger so often triggered by any number of inconsiderate, rude, obnoxious, mean, nasty or thoughtless actions. It is all the worse when the behaviour comes from someone oblivious to their own effect on the people or environment around them. Then there's the self-doubt that you're being too sensitive or unreasonable. Minefield. One of the things I have apprecated from my late-in-life Trekdom (it was bound to come up again - we're on season 4 of Star Trek: Voyager now) is the unapologetic grumpiness and anger from loner characters including the marginalized Klingons Worf (Michael Dorn; raised by humans and traumatized by the tragedies wrought by his own