Venting vs. Ruminating

I’m trying to decide whether to buy another Lenovo computer, or maybe something else. Maybe a Mac. But probably a Lenovo.

I think I got spoiled for Lenovos at my 4.5-year work-from-home job, which provided me with a Lenovo that endured an incredible amount of abuse, from me.

The one that just died was a refurbished one that I bought about 2-and-a-half years ago, from my old job, for about 235 bucks (according to the receipt I just unearthed), even though it was a $1200 computer when it was brand-new. Which was in 2012.

So, I mean, I guess its time had come.

I am a horrible cheapskate when it comes to making big purchases, and actually, in general. I am a horrible cheapskate in general, and I’m proud of it, so if you try to shame me for it I will talk about you behind your back. I will ruminate on it, if you try to shame me, but I’ll probably never confront you.

I grew up in a culture that discouraged confrontation. I grew up Mormon, in case I’ve never acknowledged that; I might as well acknowledge it now, when I’m talking about how I grew up in a culture and a household that discouraged confrontation.

Well, anyway. Enough about my computer shopping, and the culture I grew up in. ENOUGH!

I just wanted to clarify about a thing I wrote yesterday; that is to say, I think there’s such a thing as useful gossip, and then there is gossip that is assuredly not useful. And the examples I gave yesterday were the business of complaining about someone specifically because you’re trying to figure out whether you can resolve some conflict with the person, or you’re trying to figure out who is in-the-wrong in a weird situation, or you’re just using this person as an example of something you want to discuss, etc.

But then sometimes, you just need to vent. That’s another thing that might be considered “useful gossip,” in a way.

I am a big “venter.” I am a fairly “verbal” processor, meaning I cannot work things out just…you know, inside my brain. I need to either talk about a thing or else write about a thing in order to make any sense out of it.

An oft-used quote of mine is Joan Didion’s “I don’t know what I think until I write it.”

This is a terrible personality trait to have if you happen to be married to someone who thinks really fast on his feet and is also kind of an oddly high-conflict person, in addition to thinking of himself as very smart and always right.

Guess how I know?

But enough about how I’ve been divorced twice.

Here’s an interesting thing about Joan Didion, who allegedly said “I don’t know what I think until I write it”: one of the reasons people seem to admire her writing is because she is “cool” and “aloof,” which are two words that I have repeatedly read describing her writing and now I have stolen them from multiple articles I have read that are about her and her writing.

The reason that is relevant to what is on my mind right now is because most lady-writers carry the stigma of being ultra-confessional, in a way that is neither “cool” nor “aloof.”

There’s this yucky stereotype, in fact, that female writers are much more likely to write a goopy memoir than they are to write respectable essays or fiction, which may or may not be true; but the writer that instantly jumps into my brain is this woman whose name was Elizabeth Wurtzel, who was sort of famous for how her goopy memoir writing was so confessional that it made people uncomfortable. She wrote a runaway bestseller called “Prozac Nation,” and it was an utterly pointless overly-goopy memoir; I characterize it thus because I tried to read it about fifteen years ago and I thought it was boring, self-indulgent, and embarrassing, and I couldn’t even finish it.

And I love goopy memoir!

To be fair to Elizabeth Wurtzel, I also kind of don’t like Joan Didion’s writing, which is a thing that female writers are like, not even allowed to say.

I think Joan Didion’s writing sometimes comes off phony and pretentious; but admittedly, other than short stories and also part of her memoir about how her daughter/husband died within like a year of each other (I didn’t finish it because there was no suspense, I mean it was like—well, they died and it’s sad and what else happens, my goodness this is a lot of cold and mostly not-very-goopy words, I don’t know why I’m still reading) —when it comes to Joan Didion’s full-length novels, I have really only ever read “Play it As It Lays,” which I think was one of the worst and stupidest and dumbest books I ever read.

And I love coldly-written accounts of spoiled rotten celebrities with drug problems who have to get abortions to preserve their dumb and stupid careers!

Here’s the thing: I am pretty sure I would instantly hate the guts of either Elizabeth Wurtzel or Joan Didion if I ever had the opportunity to “hang out” with them, because they both seem like unpleasant supreme bitches, but they seem/seemed that way for completely opposite reasons. Aside from the fact that they both grew up kind-of rich, and kind-of had mental illness stuff happening in their families and in their own selves, the similarities between the two of them probably ended there.

I mean, Elizabeth Wurtzel is dead, and Joan Didion is such an unbearably classist overprivileged snob who voted republican her whole life and reportedly lives in an apartment or house that is reportedly so clean it will give you the creeps, which indicates that she would never deign to hang out with me even if I wasn’t a completely nobody and she wasn’t like 86 years old, but…

that has nothing to do with what’s on my mind right now, I mean—what was on my mind when I sat down with the intent of writing. So, what is on my mind right now, actually?

The difference between “venting” and “ruminating,” actually. That’s what was on my mind when I sat down with the intent of writing.

It’s pretty simple, if you ask me, except I guess maybe that’s just because I have this bad habit of wanting to categorize things into “either/or” relationships, which is incredibly unrealistic and in many cases not even useful, but here’s my analysis anyway:

“Venting” is the exercise you do when you’re trying to work something out, when you feel the need to express big feelings that you’re having about the thing you’re trying to work out, when you’re still “working through” what those feelings even are, and whether the feelings are legitimate, and

“Ruminating” is rehearsing the same old conflicts over and over, either because it makes you feel better to badmouth someone else, or because you need affirmations from the people all around you that you weren’t “in the wrong” in some dumb situation and you never seem to be able to get enough of it, or it’s because you never had the opportunity to properly work through the thing in the first place, and you just keep bringing up little bits-and-pieces of the thing, in embarrassing, unresolved fits-and-starts, and that could go on for fucking years.

(Note: that last thing is a thing I have done and still do sometimes. It’s at least partly because of the aforementioned Mormon culture thing, which would necessitate really quite a long analysis in order for me to explain it properly, and nobody wants that. Or at least, I don’t want it, not right now, it sounds emotionally exhausting to write.)

Conversely, ruminating could be rehearsing a conflict wherein you need to actually work it out with the other person, but you can’t bring yourself to work it out, so you just keep complaining about the same shit to people who can’t do anything to help you resolve it,

…which is sometimes just part of “venting,” kind of. I mean, until it gets to the point that you are driving everyone crazy complaining about the same unsolvable problems all the time.

That’s partly what I was writing about yesterday, see? I mean, that I was doing that a lot, during 2010-2015, when I lived in Utah.

Those were really terrible years, guys.

This whole thing is an offshoot of another thing that is on my mind a lot, which is the current trendy-psychobabble-speak admonition that everyone who likes to engage in armchair-psychology seems to deliver nowadays: YOU NEED TO SET BOUNDARIES!

I’m so fucking tired of hearing this. Yes, I know it’s true. Everyone needs to set boundaries with every single person they know, sure, yes, of course they do.

But they’re not gonna do it with certain people in their spheres, because certain people have certain types of power over them—that includes their managers-at-jobs, or even their co-workers-at-jobs, or their older siblings, or their moms, or their dads, or their oldest goddamn friends.

So, what are they going to do about these annoying maddening people who hold some sort of power over them, instead of attempting to set a boundary, which threatens to throw some uncomfortable power dynamic into a terrible life-ruining tailspin?

First, they’re gonna vent. And later, they’re gonna ruminate.

So, there’s that distinction, which is probably boring and/or oversimplified and/or entirely incorrect.

But you know…as I think about this right now, as I’m still thinking about—still mentally venting about how I dislike both Joan Didion and Elizabeth Wurtzel on some subterranean level that probably includes jealousy or insecurity or some other embarrassing emotion-reaction that I hate to have to claim—I guess they both exemplify a thing that I should have learned how to do at least thirty years ago: that is to say, they learned how to tell the truth in their writing even if the truth is ugly and even if it will mean that other people maybe won’t like them.

Yeah, but no, I never learned how to do that. I mean, listen: I do write like that, but I was not ever brave enough to share that kind of writing; I over-edited my writing and cleaned it up and toned it down and turned it into unreadable pablum; I even did it with the memoir I spent the entirety of last year writing—that is to say, venting and ruminating on until I was waking up angry every morning: angry at people for things they had done 30+ years ago, back when I should have learned how to write honestly.

…I say this because I just came across an early-early draft of it, for long-story reasons that involve my Microsoft Word account and trying to switch everything over to this chromebook until I buy a new computer (a Lenovo, probably) and yesterday I saw that the last draft of my book in the Microsoft cloud was from like nine months ago—and WOW was it different. It was so much more raw! It was so much….

better.

I edited the shit out of it, and by “shit” maybe I mean “guts.” I kicked all of its guts out, in an effort to make it more…palatable?

But I think that, because I grew up in a (MORMON) culture that discouraged people (WOMEN) from ever setting boundaries while simultaneously discouraging people (WOMEN) from either venting or ruminating, maybe…it’s not 100% my fault that I still struggle with ugly-honest writing?

Maybe it’s not 100% surprising that I would be afraid to share those kinds of raw and exposed-guts-kinds of things with other people?

I don’t know, I’m just venting here.