My Skillset: What FuzzyBear1982 Brings to the Table

In spite of my trauma, helping others where I can has always been something that comes natural to me. I just needed to heal from my trauma first before making the necessary shift in focus from bitter nihilism to dogged solidarity before I could be more emotionally available for others.

What I quickly learned on this journey is that all of the skills that would allow us to live more sustainable lives have been effectively legislated away. Why? So that we continue to rely on corporations to provide our basic needs to us…at a price.

Housing? Privatized by landlords and corporations.

Groceries? Privatized by a handful of national grocers who keep: merging, shutting down stores in Black and brown neighborhoods, locking up product, multiple attempts at ramming through inhumane practices such as surge pricing.

Public Transportation? Largely non-existent in the USA, where owning a personal vehicle becomes mandatory in order to work.

Medical Care? Exorbitant costs inflated thousands of times over in most cases, universal healthcare is continually punted/rebuked/tossed aside every other election cycle with overwhelming bipartisan support to that end.

Those who have attempted to throw off the yoke of corporate dependence have always been met with a violent, oversized reaction on behalf of the state. Community gardens planted in public parks bulldozed by police, ever-increasing rent prices even in the aftermath of disaster, making it illegal to exist in public without a home, shutting down free breakfast programs for students, et al.

No one is homeless on purpose, capitalism requires homeless people in order to scare others into compliance, and we all have more in common with our homeless fellow humans than we ever will with any billionaire oligarch figurehead/troll.

All of that said, I feel that our future battle involves two steps: 1) learning to view others with empathy rather than as suspect and/or enemies, 2) sharing our skills with others in order to rebuild community without corporate intervention.

View Everyone with Empathy?

Yes, even those who have done horrible things. While this should not be taken to mean being their best friend, but rather removing the emotion behind our perception of them, which will allow us to objectively perceive them.

Being empathetic doesn’t have to mean giving every abusive person access to our emotional selves, but rather recognizing that the traumatized person we are engaging with is simply incapable of meeting us where we are at and then choosing not to further enmesh with them. We do them no favors when we try to meet the insatiable forces that drive their behavior, and it only drains us faster the more energy we attempt to expend into these types of dynamics.

In short, it is more empathetic to not enmesh with a narcissistic person on any level, as they occupy wholly different planes of reality from us. When we choose to walk away from these people, we also choose not to harbor resentment; this not only makes forgiving them easier, but also encourages us to stay resolute in our boundaries/limits/needs within all of our dynamics.

Exercising our boundaries (i.e. what is within our control and/or does not impose restrictions on others’ freedom of movement) is not abuse, and we only enrich and empower ourselves further whenever we love ourselves enough to enforce them. Over time, it also opens us up to not only others who would receive and love our authentic selves, but also to strangers that we previously did not have energy for at all, and this is how a community builds organically.

FuzzyBear1982’s Skillset and Qualifications

While I am middling at electronics repair as a hobbyist, I absolutely suck at understanding CAD and blueprints. In a previous life, I was also a hobbyist homebrewer who grew an appreciation for the chemical process of beer/alcohol making. While I no longer brew nor drink alcohol, the process itself stuck with me along with any other applications where it would be useful.

That said, I would like to offer my services to/for anyone else who is interested in building a community outside of dependence on corporations.

This is what I’m good at:

1. Intermediate electronics repair (soldering, rewiring, light modding, etc.)
2. Beer making
3. Computer repair
4. Auto repair/restoration (body fill, oil change, fluid check, part replacement)
5. HTML/CSS/SEO/Writing
6. Website building/optimization
7. Voice acting
8. News/information vetting
9. Sustainable, off-grid living

I’m sure there’s more and I may add them as I think of them, but these are the primary skills I am most known for over the last ~20 years. I could see myself making really good buddies with those who excel in the following fields:

1. Farming, gardening, animal protein harvesters.
2. Builders with resources and/or an interest in durable sustainable living solutions.
3. Like-minded online social disruptors.
4. Video game developers (as a consultant and/or a contributor.)
5. Historians, preservationists, and archivists.
6. Right-to-repair innovators.

Creating Emotional Distance Where Necessary is Healthy

As I now have the self-love and tools necessary to monitor my emotions in real-time, I no longer fear strangers but rather meet people wherever they are currently at regardless of their circumstances. Should their energy not match mine and/or we reach an impasse, I will create the emotional distance necessary in order to address the situation as objectively (and empathetically) as possible without the overt emotions that can unfortunately come with AuDHD and PTSD.

Failing to create this distance deprives others of my authentic self whenever I inevitably explode, regardless however they treat me. I never felt good about myself afterwards whenever I let my emotions get the better of me, and I am so glad that I strove to gain more control of myself in this area.

Respect is Not the Default, But it is Mine

Being kind to strangers has always been my default, but these days, I actually see them. I believe that they can feel this too, as some would unfortunately dump their trauma on me back before I loved myself. These days, I keep a healthy distance while also being true to my authentic self, which means I freely offer the above-stated skills to those interested in building a community where being our authentic selves is celebrated.

I would like to work together, and believe it to be possible in spite of the odds. Every resistance begins with a single brick, and I am now open to building such a community with other brickholders who are tired of feeling like helpless unhappy shit all the time.

It doesn’t have to be this way, and I would like to do my part to build a new equitable community by offering these skills to those interested in the same.