When a friend says "Fuck You"

This morning there was a knock on the door. Funny, we don't typically get company in the morning.

Then my partner walks to the kitchen and hands me this, a mystery package from my fabulous, amazing friend, Notblueatall. It's my first birthday present of 2011!! Handcrafted especially for me.


What's this!?!?!                         Fancy package!



Fancy card!   



.....But wait for it.....
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Who's friend makes a FUCK YOU shadowbox? Mine does. 
She titled it, "Finessed."



Inside the fuck you.





Now it is hanging up in my office, so I can look up at it when I need to be reminded to Finesse the Fuck You.

Madeleine Albright Finesses the Fuck You

Madeleine Albright finesses the fuck you. If you've any doubt, watch this TEDWomen video to see her response to Saddam Hussein comparing her to "an unparalleled serpent":





Basically, Madeleine Albright found a fancy way to tell Suddam Hussein, "Fuck you." She also took something that was used against her and made it into a joke and a source of strength. That's finessing the fuck you.

There are no subtitles and no transcript to be found, so I transcribed the portion of the interview that I reference (0:30-1:40) fwiw:

Madeleine Albright: And none of this pin stuff would have happened if hadn't been for Saddam Hussein. I'll tell you what happened, I went to the United Nations as ambassador--it was after the Gulf War--and I was an instructed ambassador. And, uh, the cease fire had been translated into a series of sanctions resolutions, and my instructions were to say perfectly terrible things about Saddam Hussein constantly...which he deserved--he had invaded another country. And so all the sudden a poem appeared in the papers in Baghdad comparing me to many things, but among them an unparalleled serpent. And so I happened to have a snake pin, so (cough) I wore it when we talked about Iraq. (audience laughter) Uh, and when I went out to meet the press they zeroed in, said, "Why are you wearing that snake pin?" I said, "Cuz Saddam Hussein compared me to an unparalleled serpent." And then I thought, "Well this is fun--" So I went out, and I bought a lot of pins that would, in fact, reflect what I thought we were gonna do on any given day. So that's how it all started.

Pat Mitchell: Ahhhh. So how large is the collection then?

Madeleine Albright: Pretty big. (laughs, PM laughs, audience laughter) It's now traveling. At the moment it's in Indianapolis, but it was at the Smithsonian. And it goes with a book that says, "Read My Pins." (audience laughter)

Fuck me vs. Fuck you: Object vs. Subject

Written, more or less, a week ago...

Today has been a frustrating day. I am feeling defeated and down in the dumps. It’s one of those days where you feel like hope is slipping through your grasp.

But it wasn’t until I tweeted about my shitty day that I took a step back and realized I needed an attitude adjustment.

The thing about depression is that you feel un-empowered. You feel like you are spiraling into a shitpile and you have no control, and that you will always stay in that shitpile...and sometimes, that you belong in that shitpile, or you are that shitpile.

Anyway, today is a perfect day to employ my fuck you strategy.

FMyLife is a pretty popular website where people post shitty things that have happened to them. It’s an amusing website sometimes, but it's all about “fuck me.”

But fuck me is a statement representative of a defeatist attitude. It’s a statement where you are being acted upon. You are fucked, the end. You are not the actor, you are the object, and this is a dis-empowering way to think.

After I tweeted, I realized I was thinking this way. It’s very limited, preoccupied with the negative, and it prevents you from focusing on a solution.

I had to invoke the fuck you. While 'fuck you' doesn’t explicitly state an actor, fuck you is a command; and since you are the one commanding, you are the actor, not the object.

Fuck you opens new avenues of thinking for me. While 'fuck you' can be directed at someone, and sometimes certain naysayers are my motivation. Usually, fuck you is more general. Really, it's “Fuck this!” “Fuck that!” or “Oh fucking yeah?”

For me, fuck you is not necessarily directed at a person. More often than not it's an answer to my inner critic rather than anyone or anything in particular. Sometimes it's as simple as “fuck this idea that I belong in a shitpile.”

Fuck you/Fuck this necessitates confidence and competence. Mentally, it means stepping up to the plate. You have to be confident and know you're competent if you are stepping up and saying, “I'll show you.”.

When I invoke the fuck you, instead of feeling stagnant, I am willfully punching through life. It moves me past fuck me. If nothing else, it signals direction. And from there I can move forward.

“Okay, I'm not fucked. I'm angry, I'm motivated, and I'm fantastic! Now what the fuck can I do about it?”