[AE.Mailbag] A Friday Reader Mailbag Situation Inauguration
Welcome to the inaugural installment of the Erin Endeavor Friday Reader Mailbag Situation!
I'm going to be honest, I'm not sure off the top of my head if this is the first time I've successfully done this or not, but I'm calling it the inaugural one because whether I did it before or not, I definitely did not have the wherewithal to follow through and keep it going.
The basic idea here is that I'm going to use Fridays to open the lines of communication a bit and turn the floor over to readers who have emailed responses to recent newsletters, sometimes individually and sometimes in the aggregate.
I can also use this as a weekly opportunity to check in a bit and talk about what's going on with me, without devoting a whole newsletter to it.
By far and away, most of the recent responses have been about my ADHD journey and my willingness to talk about it. I don't think I have ever in my life received so many emails from readers on a single topic, and the response was not just overwhelmingly positive, it was entirely positive.
That was a huge relief to the part of me that was worried that I was being too open or talking about it too much, and I hope that by sharing this, anyone else who is worried about the response they might get if they seek treatment may take heart as well.
Incidentally, I learned today that October is ADHD Awareness Month, a fact of which I was not aware. It certainly adds another positive note to the whole thing for me.
On a different topic and in the realm of a more specific reader response, I received a reply to my newsletter about Netflix and the power of comedy from Kiya Nicoll, who wrote, in response to my description of humor allowing bigotry to fly under the radar:
I have been saying something like this for years in the phrase “Humor is guerilla thought”, though that was mostly in response to the justice-oriented humor of Terry Pratchett. Works the same way, though; if it gets a laugh it’s in there and short-circuiting the evaluation process…
This put me in mind of a quote by the late Sir Terry Pratchett that is always worth remembering, and certainly applicable here:
Satire is meant to ridicule power. If you are laughing at people who are hurting, it's not satire, it's bullying.
I guess I'll leave that as my epigraph for the week. I hope everybody has as pleasant, restful, and/or productive weekend as they want or need to have.