This is probably a bit of a rant. I doubt it is put together well and might even wander from point to point.

I have been running into discussions/post about Privilege a lot lately. White Privilege, Male Privilege, Class Privilege, etc.

I am very frustrated with it all. The push has been to show how people are or are not privileged and then there is the listing of ways people deal with the guilt of being privileged (“get off the hook”). But there doesn’t seem to be anything about what to do if you find out your are Privileged. There is no positive movement forward. Just a list that makes you feel bad if you have a lot of it or maybe justified of why your life is a mess if you don’t have much of it.

I go through the lists and I admit I do start to feel a little bad about being “Privileged.” But when I really think about it, I have decided I have nothing to feel bad about. Yes I am Privileged. I got a very good start in my life. And I don’t think I should have a problem with that.

My grandparents didn’t get farther than high school if they even finished it but worked very hard and built businesses and lifestyles that included money. Both of my parents have college degrees and went back to get Masters. When I was young, we lived at an upper middle class level I think. My parents also have very unique ways of interfacing with life so standard measures of success don’t really work with them but they both have most of what they want out of life and I would say that is a success.

I feel I have actually reversed the trend my grandparents started. I don’t work nearly has hard as they did or as my parents. I coast a lot. I work at a mid-level for a living without much if really anything to retire on. I am mostly getting by. But I had a mostly good family life, good schooling, I was given my first car, I have a college education and paid for my own Masters, I had the luxury of taking whatever classes I wanted, I have lived in Europe, traveled around, moved across states, had choices on where to work, I have lots of stuff and the ability to get more things I want, I am surrounded by people that are like me and accept me as I am (My type of people TM), I have the opportunity to do inner work on my psyche and can afford it. There are lots of things that qualify at Privilege and I was given them. Because of them, I have tools to make other Privilege things happen. Like getting a 20hr a week job at 50K a year practicing programs I only know a little bit and want to know more.

I don’t know what the problem with having this Privilege. I don’t know why I should give any of it up. Some of the things I am reading say that Privilege people don’t see Privilege because they want to hang onto their privilege.

I haven’t seen anything that says what you should do if you find that you are Privileged that is a positive action. The things I have seen have come from a defensive position and don’t do anything to move people forward, only to hold people back.

I am very aware that others don’t have the benefits I did. I can’t give them mine. I can only use mine to help them get their own, but they do have to work for it themselves. It can’t just be handed to them. I think that is why I am not as “successful” as my grandparents or parents. Most of my privileges were handed to me. And if someone with less privilege gets the opportunity to acquire some of elements of privilege through their interest in them and work towards them, then they are going to be able to run circles around me. And more power to them.

I used to volunteer tutoring kids from the Tenderloin. These are kids that aren’t given many of the opportunities I had. I was looking forward to sharing my enthusiasm for math and science with others and to work with them to deliver the information in a way that they understood instead of the way people want to teach it. Sadly, it was more babysitting and fighting with them to get them to do their basic homework that I was discouraged and stopped volunteering. I am not a teacher or a motivator. I am really good at providing information if people are interested in it. That means I am only useful to those that meet me in the middle.

I can’t correct the fact that some people did not have a good start. I can’t hand out what I have been given for my start. I can offer a hand and support to those that want to be more than where they began. As long as I am not attacked or pulled down, I am usually happy to do what I can.

(To be balanced, I have to say I had some shitty things happen to me growing up as well as all the good. It is all part of my starting point and what I need to work with all the time. Part of the process of living life is to find a way to get around the bad or deal with it and use the good. I find the only use of finding the bad is so you can package it and move it forward. Focusing on it and saying that is why I am in a bad way and then doing nothing about it gets you nothing.)

OK, I finally went ahead and did it. I created a filter for the bleeding I do on LJ. I went through and put people on it. There were a few of the “why would they want to be on this filter?” but if there was a response to my filter query in the positive, they got added. I will not be signifying that something is or is not a filter post. You will either see it or not.

I am adding some people to my friend’s list and don’t want the only impression they have of me to be dark insides I have been exposing on LJ. I have gone back to april 2007 and switched appropriate posts over. It is surprising that there are fewer than I thought that needed filtering. I think that is because I write a lot of them in my head and they don’t make it to the computer. This depression is lasting too long and I don’t know about everyone else but I am tired of it. I have the urge to smack me in the head and say “Get over it already!” Sadly this doesn’t work. I am running out of ideas on things that would work. I am feeling like I am heading to broken again.

If you see this, you are on the filter. At any time if you want off, just let me know.

It seems that my craving, my NEED for for Sugar, is going away. I haven’t had anything sugar based since Sat (cheesecake, chocolate cake with cream cheese filling). I have looked at items I have or can pick up easily (cookies, brownies, eggnog, peanut butter cups, etc.) and haven’t really wanted them. They would be nice but I would rather not eat them just because I don’t want to, not because they would hurt. I don’t feel the need for the numbness they can produce. I doubt I am completely done with them yet, but they have cut way back.
cut for possible TMI

At work, something will come up and it takes all of my attention. When I am done dealing with the problem, I have to figure out what I was pulled away from.

Since I get bored at work with actual work stuff (formatting documents or doing design stuff), very often I will be poking around the internet or reading LJ or playing some stupid flash game/solitaire. Then I will crunch through whatever I am suppose to be doing quickly.

I just got off the phone from dealing with some issue and was casting about for what I was doing when the phone rang. It had the feeling of one of those absorbing activities like LJ, reading an article online or game playing. Then I realized I was devising a way to calculate the size of a graphic for a table of numbers. Each number gets a different size circle to indicate size relative to a max and min number. Each row has a different set of max and min numbers. I have been playing around in Excel creating formula for exact size measurements for the circle for each cell of the table (5×8). I am digging into my Pervey Math Fancier side and really getting a kick out of the formula building.

I so enjoy playing with Excel beyond the simple table format it provides. Math teaching you a way to think. Do step one and that leads you to what you need for the next step, and so on. I really like things that match that way of thinking. Even the games I play are of that sort (i.e. solitaire, picross).

I am such a geek. And I love it.

I have finally gotten around to watching a huge chunk of Torchwood. I have been saving it since I knew there would be a dearth of new programming around Xmas and later. It is not the greatest show in the world, there are plot holes you can drive a hummer through, Capt. Jack Harkness is not as …mmm…flamboyant? as he is in Dr. Who, they treat this super secret black ops group casually driving around in a big car with their name all over it and it seems like everyone knows who they are, they find strange technology and toss it on a desk or poke at buttons without setting up any kind of precautions, plus other weakness.

But I find I am craving it. I love this show. I want more and more and more. I am through episode 8 – They keep killing Suzie. It isn’t even hitting my cheese button, in other words I don’t love it because it is cheesy but because I actually like the show.

I even like how something will happen, it gets completely ignored the next episode but becomes central in the next. It actually seems to be part of the characters that they can set things aside and it leaks out later.

The other guilty pleasures (shows that are not high on quality but I am willing to over look that) include Moonlight and Blood Ties.

I keep forgetting I really am as sensitive as I claim. I just sat for a few moments at someone else’s computer to help them with something and I hurt.

The monitor is set with the window behind it and it has a wide black frame around the screen. The buildings through the window are brighter than the screen and way brighter than the 2″ black frame so there is a much more than 5 to 1 contrast ratio. Also the refresh rate is set around 60Hz, which means I can see the screen flicker.

From just the short time I was there (less than 5 mins) my eyes hurt, my head hurts and I can feel the tension going down the side of my neck. Little pains but noticeable. I am so grateful I don’t have to sit at that machine like that normally. If it was my work area, the window screens would be down lowering the light and the refresh rate would be raised. Even where I am now, I don’t have the room lights on whereas my co-worker on the other side of the room has his. I just get a headache from the light overhead. At a guess I would say my screen to background brightness ratio is around or under 2 to 1.

At least I can tell why I hurt. I don’t know how most people can stand the flicker rate at 60Hz and the other things they put up with.

Yeah things are crappy and I have a miserable attitude but some good things do happen.

I am very pleased with my job. I have been here since July 9th and I still like it. I like the people I work with both directly and for. I laugh a lot in the office. Everyone seems tickled with I get bouncy. They ask me questions about Excel and other software programs that I can answer. They are very happy to have a goto person to show them how to do things that aren’t helpdesk types of questions. They love that I ask so many questions (which amazes me). My two direct co-workers think I am easy to work with and have high communication skills. I like joining in on the pot lucks and quizzes and other odd things some people in the office set up. I did the holiday card we sent to our clients and we got some really positive feedback.

The other co-worker that started at the same time I did quit before Xmas. He was getting quieter and more removed. Going over things he has done, we are finding that he just made things work instead of asking how something should be done. In the past, my co-workers/supervisors get annoyed with me because I keep asking how to do things if I can think of more than one way they should be done. This is a case where the opposite is true. We don’t have a set way of doing things so oddities come up all the time. We are growing so we are trying to make standards and this is where those questions are useful. Things then get done the way all of us would do them instead of some different way that doesn’t make sense to anyone but the person who did it. I feel sorry for the missing co-worker. And so very happy that this place suits me so well.

I am still messing up here. I am still having a horrible time getting in on time and go through cycles of self loathing because of it. I zone out on solitaire type games when I run into snags for hours during work. I can take upwards of 4 hours to finally get around to getting something for lunch and be pretty worthless except for the basics until I eat. I am operating at my low end of functionality here. I believe all of this is my self destructive patterns playing out and I am hoping I will work through them and become an even more valuable resource for this company.

There is good in with the bad and my job right now is part of the good. In a way it is a little sad that work is the most positive thing in my day and my weekdays are so much better than my weekends.