RANT AHEAD!
If it’s one thing I have zero patience for, it’s a Gatekeeper. “You’re holding your yarn wrong.” “You shouldn’t use Gmail for your work email.” “You should always make your pottery logo stamps yourself, by hand.”
I’m not talking about unsolicited advice (which I also ignore, fyi). I don’t mean “have you thought about this” and “you know what you should do” and other random implied criticisms that you might not have thought a thing through just because you didn’t launch into a twenty minute soliloquy about how you came to what you’re doing (side note: the people who jump to give you unsolicited advice are usually the same people who wouldn’t listen to you tell them how you got to where you are with your thing in the first place).
I’m talking about people who cry out, from the top of their mountain, how any way other than their way is the wrong way. Or people who say that you’re not a REAL whatever because you don’t do it their way.
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We used to get people in the yarn store who told us they’d been told they were knitting wrong, and I was always like… “Are you having fun? Are you getting a finished product you like? Then you’re not doing it wrong.” Most of their troubles came from either holding their yarn in a way that didn’t feel natural to them (side note: however you wrap the yarn around your hand or wrist or finger or fingers to get the tension you are comfortable with is fine, and whatever hand you hold your yarn in is fine) or they were knitting through the back loop (side note: knit through the front loop for normal every-day stitches, knit through the back loop for certain decorative looks). Neither one of those things are wrong, they’re just different, or applicable to a different project.
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Thanks to my last name, I’ve never had this happen to me personally, but I’ve seen it out there in the wild and I know it happens to other people. “Oh, you’re a big Sheri S. Tepper fan? You’ve read everything she’s written? Have you read the two mystery series that she wrote under a pen name? No? Then you’re not a REAL fan.” “Oh, you’re a big Stargate fan? Well did you know that the real reason that so-and-so left the series was because [insert some questionable gossip]? No? Then you’re not a REAL fan.” I also hear this happens a LOT with women wearing band t-shirts. “Name your five favorite songs! Go!”. Ok. Name your five favorite times Harlan Ellison was called a sanctimonious little prick to his face. UNO REVERSE!
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Recently I saw a video by a potter who was basically saying you’re not a real potter if you don’t make your potter’s stamps by hand. That they had drawn out a dozen or more ways they thought they wanted their mark to look, carved them into greenware, bisque fired them, and tested them out to see which ones really translated into a potter’s mark. They also said they changed their potter’s mark every decade or so, which I’m sure some OTHER potters would frown at them for, so I don’t know why they thought that only in making your own stamps were you “real.” Look, I love the idea of making a potter’s mark, or even my own stamps, myself. But that’s not the only way to go. What if you want a logo and it doesn’t translate well to a hand carved stamp? What if you sign your name instead of having a mark? There are a hundred different ways to mark your pottery and a hundred different reasons why someone might choose one way over another. Your way isn’t the only way.
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Another one that I saw recently (this was a blog post, not a video) was about how you shouldn’t use Gmail for your work email. That it makes you look like a scammer, and unprofessional, and most people will just block gmail address in their email clients. Listen. I’ve had this haldecraft gmail address for 16 years. Everyone uses my haldecraft gmail account to contact me about HaldeCraft things. Sure; I could slowly start moving everything over to my haldecraft branded email from my gmail one, but… right now, that email is “lorena at haldecraft dot com.” Lorena with a lowercase “l”. So it can look like Iorina if you’re not paying attention and are typing it in having seen it somewhere else. So what am I supposed to do? I can’t change that, the client doesn’t allow capital letters. So do I start a new one that’s something like “admin at blah blah blah”? If so, then do I also do “customer service at blah blah blah” and “orders at blah blah blah”? Pretty soon I’ll have five or six different email addresses I have to check multiple times a day and let me tell you, I can barely keep up with how many places people can contact me NOW.
Sorry, I got off track there.
(OMG! How about “boss bitch at haldecraft dot com” hahahahahahahahaaha)
I can understand branded email if you’re a big company. Like, if “coca cola at gmail dot com” emailed me, I’d 100% think it was a scam. But if I’m looking to message a small handmade maker about something, and their email is “small handmade maker at gmail dot com” I am 100% fine with that. There’s a lot of things that come with the gmail ecosystem that can be used for small businesses – integrated calendars, task lists, documents/spreadsheets, advertising, Google’s merchant center. My haldecraft branded email doesn’t have access to all of that. Which would mean finding alternatives. Places like Coca Cola have the funds to hire people to do all that for them… I don’t.
You know what makes an email look professional? Correct spelling, grammar usage, and punctuation. You could have an AOL or Yahoo account for all I care. As long as you present yourself like a real live human being behind the computer, it shouldn’t matter.
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All of this bitchery was to say that Gatekeepers really step on my last good nerve. The world is a shitshow right now, and even if it weren’t, there are millions of humans out here with millions of ways of doing things, and some ways might be more or less effective than other ways, but no one person holds the knowledge of the sole way something can be done. Let people get by the way they can best get by in this shitshow we’re experiencing right now. If someone wants to buy a pottery stamp, if someone wants to call themselves a Star Wars fan even if they haven’t seen all of Andor, if someone wants to knit through the back loop, if someone wants to show off a pretty picture of their pumpkin spice latte…. shut your cakehole and let them be them. Stop keeping that gate. Spend your energy somewhere else.
The only times we should be holding out our hands to another human being is to help them up. Not to stop them at the gate and refuse them entry.