…inspired by reading a ridiculous article originally posted in Lifehacker and then in Forbes Magazine entitled 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do. Triskadekophobic behaviour is presumably not on the list.
What is on the list is the usual bullshit – excuse me, but there is no polite word for it – I’ve made it my business to fight. On that site you can see an excellent article by Patricia Casey about the harm that can be done by using the wrong kind of language. This article pretty much hits the jackpot. I got into a discussion with fellow writers Niamh Boyce and Arlene Hunt about it over on the tweet machine and we were all, to a woman, unimpressed.
Firstly, its concept of “strength” appears irritatingly vague – is this the strength of tempered steel, or of the inexorable erosion of the sea; is it the strength required to lift 200lb of weights above one’s head, or the strength to give birth to a child? Does it consider this – oh no, wait, it’s not really interested in the nature of strength. It’s interested in the usual stigmatising nonsense. It’s full of bromides such as “Don’t dwell on the past” and “Don’t believe the world owes you a living / raise yourself by the bootstraps”. Don’t complain, don’t give up, keep going. Do you know what?
Mental strength is sounding a lot like corporate servitude from where I’m sitting. And I’ll tell you something else.
I’ll tell you what real mental strength is. It’s when you open up the blank page and the blank page is waiting back at you, infinitely patient and white. It’s when you drop every single artificial tactic of self-deception and “character-building” this article advocates, it’s when you unveil your naked, emotional, unresilient self, unattractively, embarrassingly open – as open the book as you’re about to write.
And start writing it.
Go on, I dare you to have the courage.
Susan Lanigan - WWI Historical Fiction 
Oh, don’t read articles like that. Ten ways to build a better life, fifteen ways to upset a hamster… etc. When I hit the Forbes link above, it had a banner ad at the top listing 10 ugly things women do that put men off (hello, 1962?0) — and another below it of the same ilk. They’re just cheap page-fillers, full of trite generalisations that mean nothing and steal time. Tag it up as shit journalism and be glad to write something better.
“10 ugly things women do that put men off”
Exist? Jaysus. Yeah ::sighs:: you’re right, I just worry that it’s part of a general tyranny of the emotionally repressed over the rest of us. But anyway, I need to stop being angry, it’s bad for the brand…sigh.