Down the Tubes Productions

I’m a hypocrite. 

I’m a  hypocrite because while I have no trouble giving help, I have worlds of trouble asking for help. 

I’m a hypocrite because I don’t see giving help to others as a burden but I do see asking someone for help as burdening them. 

I make a living helping others. As a librarian, my job is to put people in touch with information be it in tome or in tech. The latter is where my hypocrisy pitches its tent most often. I usually spend a goodly bit of my tech help sessions attempting to convince the patron they’re not stupid. They grew up without needing to know what a Facebook, a MyChart, or a QR code is. Of course there’s going to be a learning curve. And I’ll ride that curve with them for however long it takes. 

Sometimes it can take months. 

I do it gladly and without docking any IQ points. I get it. Sometimes people need help. That’s literally my job. But it’s more than just my job, it’s who I am. It’s why I changed careers even though it meant leaving tens of thousands of dollars a year behind. As patrons gradually accepted that needing tech help wasn’t something to be ashamed of, that it wasn’t a burden to me, my hypocrisy wasn’t lost on me. 

I find myself needing hearing help quite often at work. The library is one of the few remaining places people can go and not be expected to buy something. That means I never know who’s going to come in on any given day. People I’ve not met have voices I’ve not heard. Which means I face the myriad of challenges that come with getting used to a voice. In-person is hard enough; on the phone is nearly sisyphean. And yet I didn’t advocate for myself at all for years.  

Eventually I mustered up the courage to ask for help at work and get accommodations. But not before I started passively. I bought a pin that asks patrons (and staff) to be patient, I’m hard of hearing. When the world didn’t end at that request, I moved onto an active accommodation. I asked for, and got, a T-Coil headset for the phone. Then I did the same for a ConnectClip for Zoom meetings. It took a lot for me to even ask for those things. I foolishly thought that would be the end of it. I’d have those accommodations and that was that. 

But that was just the beginning. 

It wasn’t until I met someone with decades of self-advocacy that I realized I needed to do it regularly. I knew, not even deep down but right there on the surface, that having a pin wasn’t going to be enough. Accommodations have short memories. I have to explicitly ask for repetitions. In other words I have to ask for help. The T-coil and ConnectClip aren’t always enough. The voice at the other end of the line may foil my plans for a host of reasons. So I have to ask for repetitions there, too. 

Every time I have to use the phone, I do battle with myself over whether or not to advocate for my hearing needs. Every time I see a patron I don’t know come into the library, I do battle with myself over whether or not to advocate for my hearing needs. Every time I see a patron I know come into the library, I do battle with myself over whether or not to advocate for my hearing needs. Every time I go into a store, I do battle with myself over whether or not to advocate for my hearing needs. Every time I go to a restaurant, sports arena, theater, museum, or any other place that has people, I do battle with myself over whether or not to advocate for my hearing needs.

It’s exhausting. 

And that’s just the effort to actually ask for hearing help. On those increasingly more frequent occurrences when I do ask, I must at the very least ask the person to repeat something a couple of times. 

I’m in awe of Julie’s casual and automatic “I use two hearing aids so please speak up.” Every interaction I question myself. To advocate or not to advocate, that is the question. Introverts are skilled in the ways of overthinking. My introvertion, my hypocritical resistance to asking for help, and the fact that my hearing loss affects every aspect of my life leads to advocacy fatigue. 

I was shocked to hear Julie say she can feel it, too. I thought practice would make perfect. Advocacy may be something everyone with hearing loss needs to do. But what we bring to the table is very personal. My fatigue comes from the three factors mentioned above. 

But wait there’s more. 

In order to do what I do with Down the Tubes Productions, I need to be vulnerable. Constantly writing, talking, and even thinking about things that I can’t do or things that I have trouble doing leaves me feeling raw. Even recharging my introvert battery by spending a day on the couch with a book in my hand and a dog on my lap poses a challenge. Because I’m never truly alone. That nefarious ne’er-do-well, tinnitus, is my constant companion. And so I get thinking about advocacy as a matter of course. Which keeps the vulnerability of my disability front-of-mind.  

Tired though advocating for my hearing needs may make me, it didn’t take very long to realize that it’s far better than not advocating. My hearing loss is going to exhaust me whether I advocate or not. So I may as well do it. 

Sometimes bluffing is
easier than speaking up.
Advocacy drains.