Some of you know this, and some of you don't. But I live in fear of being canceled.

Ultimately, I don't think cancel culture is actually, like, a culture. I do think some folks like to grab their digital pitchforks and join in with the mob on Twitter, though.

(I know I've grabbed a pitchfork or two in my day...)

Please know that when I say "canceled," I mean "confronted." I don't want anyone to confront me.

My fear of being canceled comes from a few things:

1. I have anxiety. Like, a lot. I worry about everything. And this isn't even my most irrational worry. (The most irrational is my fear of demons watching me while I sleep. The least irrational is my fear of getting skin cancer.)
2. I'm extremely online. It's a part of my biz. And I have a digital footprint that's huge and goes back to the late 1990s/early 2000s. Who knows what I said online when I was 17? And can the Xanga.com archives still be accessed?
3. I hate confrontation of any kind. I'm trying to get better about it, but I'm never going to be the sort of person who can stand there, all stoic, in the face of it. Why yes, I'm a Libra and an enneagram 9.
4. I know I can't respond with grace and dignity in the heat of the moment, so I would probably be one of those assholes that doubles down and digs in her heels.

Now, the likelihood of me being canceled is small, but not zero. If you haven't heard about what happened to the writer Isabel Fall when well-meaning folks functionally destroyed her life, well. You should read this.

(I cannot emphasize enough how her life was ruined by good people who just didn't know what they were doing. HOW OFTEN HAVE WE ALL BEEN IN THAT CATEGORY?!)

I bring all this up for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I found myself unfriending and unfollowing someone on several platforms this past week. I probably should've reached out to them and tried to strike up a conversation about why a thing they shared on Facebook, while well-meaning, was actually incredibly racist.

But also, if this person has been alive and online over the past year and can't see why what they posted was a problem, nothing I say can change that.

And while it may seem passive-aggressive to unfollow and unfriend without letting someone know, it's not. I just know this person in the context of the online writing discourse. We are not actual friends.

Also, I don't want anyone to associate me with that bullshit. So, if you're saying racist shit online, then sorry. I will not be following you.

This was the whole reason behind this video I did about "leaving Authortube" last summer.

Secondly, the owner and editor of a site I used to write for called a woman a cunt on Twitter, and doubled down on it.

I'm not defending this.

I do know this person pretty well. I know he is problematic. I also know that he's the first person to give me a writing job, and even with all this, he's still treated me better than a lot of folks in the Oklahoma City writing world have.

And it's worth noting that this man has defended me time and again against some pretty terrible internet commenters. He has actively deleted misogynistic comments on the stuff I've written, and he's also always listened to the opinions and ideas I've shared.

He has since apologized for the tweet, but it still sucks.

I probably should've cut ties with the site long ago. It's not consistent with the writing I do now, and the content isn't anything I share anymore. But I do consider this person a friend. And well, shit. I guess you guys now know I'm a coward and struggle to call out my friends when they're not acting right.

This has all led me to think about who people really are. I don't know where it came from, but there's this idea in my head that you aren't a bad person if you just did a bad thing. We all do bad things on occasion, but doesn't the inherent good of our souls outweigh the bad?

Maybe.

But how many bad things can a person do, be given free passes for them, and then keep doing them over and over before you realize that maybe that person ain't great?

For the record, I often feel like the person who has been given the free passes they don't deserve.

It's kind of odd that this all came up because I've been outlining an essay and slowly writing bits and pieces of it. It's all about the opportunities available to working class writers early in their career, specifically in the 2010s, and what the landscape of that was like.

It's weird shit to parse. It's so recent, but feels so far away.

Mostly it details the choices I made in my writing, and why I published where I did. And it will talk about how the internet was a weird, Buzzfeed listicle-ridden wasteland where you could either be a cool bro-ish girl, or a hashtag girl boss feminist, and there was no room for nuance in any of the discourse or your branding as a writer.

(For the record, I am a feminist. I am not a hashtag girl boss one, though. And there is a non-zero chance that I'm more of a bro than the men in your life, but that's because I live in Oklahoma and like, what else am I going to do besides watch college football, drink cheap American beer, and get excited for a film franchise about fast cars?)

But now, I'm more fired up than ever to write it. Which makes me worried it will come off as a defensive screed about the dangers of publishing online and that all writers should live in shacks like Thoreau and never blog.

Which is not what I want.

I also don't want it to read like I'm trying to cover my ass.

At the end of the day, I've done what I've done with the information I had at the time. It's never been perfect, and even though I've learned so much about what I'm doing and where I'm going, I still feel like I know so little.

I don't know when this essay will be done. Also, I know I'm woefully behind on my Camp NaNoWriMo goal and vlogs. But there's actually a good reason for that.

Chris and I have sold our house, and purchased our forever home.

Now that I've put that in writing, I'm having mild panic attacks about the sale falling through. I've been trying to keep it on the down low as much as possible, but also, I feel like y'all deserve to know what's been going on.

To that end, instead of writing, here's what I've been doing:

• cleaning out the house
• packing everything I'm not using and putting it in storage
• power washing the floor of the garage
• selling furniture and haggling with strangers on Facebook Marketplace (It is a full-time job to get folks who say they want to buy what you have to actually come get it.)
• trying to figure out where I'm going to have my Zoom calls in the 12 days between moving out of our house and moving into the new one
• panicking

So, as you can see, I'm pretty busy. I mean, panicking takes up like 40% of my time under normal circumstances, but it's up to like 57% now.

Anyway, I want to thank all of you for sticking with me as I keep figuring out who I am in the context of the world around me.

Thank you for letting me share ethical issues I run into.

And thank you for calling me out when I need to be called out.

But mostly, thanks for letting me invade your inbox! 

Marisa 

MarisaMohi.com