A Musing in Three Parts
Well hello there.
I have a small window of free time, so I thought I'd post. What I REALLY want to post about is my annoyance with modern day feminism, but since my last post was about racism, I'll quit it with the social issues. Maybe I'll just get so annoyed that I'll actually post twice in a short span of time (crazy!).
I hastily scribbled down a few things that were on my mind a few months ago, so I thought I'd talk about those things if only so I can finally throw the little piece of paper away. With a 2 year old, to throw anything away is great. Here are my random topics:
Hypocrites.
Everyone has their own moral compass. It's odd when peoples' worst qualities are seen differently by different outsiders, but I guess that's also a good thing, to keep flawed people who are otherwise decent from being shunned. I'm not talking about people that kill or rape, or something equally as horrendous. Some things are just obvious. But little vices are seen differently from person to person. For example, if someone is a dick, maybe lots of people hate that person. But I always wonder why they are so angry, and try to find a way to get along with them. I don't necessarily hate them, and I actually have a good number of friends that many other people dislike or discount for that reason. I also don't hold cheating against people. I know I'm biased on that front because I personally don't see it as such a giant fucking deal as everyone else. Humans are evolved from animals. Animals procreate. A lot. Humans still have that drive, but it is smashed down inside because of society and their rules and restrictions. So yeah, cheating can and does happen quite a bit, but the amount of outrage about it is insane to me.
But my thing is hypocrites. I really don't like liars either, but everyone lies so there's not much to be done about that. But hypocrites drive me nuts because they either don't know themselves very well, or they think they are better than others. Those are the only reasons for being that way that I can come up with. Luckily I don't have too many of these people in my life, but when I see (for example) a Republican congressman who espouses family values to the point of restricting rights to the LGBT community and he goes and has affairs with young gay men, that just completely pisses me off. Put your affairs on your own conscience, don't make the rest of the world pay for them because you don't have the balls to be who you are. So yeah, hypocrites suck.
I'm Screwed for Life.
I like children. I've always liked children. Babies are ok too, but children are so fun to hang out with. I babysat from the ages of 12-18 consistently. So when it came time to start trying to build a family, I was all for it. I wanted a baby SO BADLY that I was getting jealous whenever I saw any baby anywhere. Then I got pregnant, and had one. And then it hit me: I'm going to be worried for the rest of my life. I was never a person to worry about much, very laiessez faire. But now I feel like my heart is held together by this thin string, and if anything happens to my child it will break into a million pieces. So I worry basically anytime he is out of my sight. If he is with Mike, "What if they get into a car accident?" If he is with my parents "What if..." any number of things because my parents are not responsible people. Even when he was with me one time running around at my grandma's house he ran up into the 55 mph country road and just stood there. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Luckily I don't worry when he's at day care, because he's been there for a year and a half now and I've built up some trust in them. It's always been hard for me to trust anyone. I think I was just born that way. And now I have to trust not only other caregivers, but my ever-growing son. Because I hate helicopter parents and hoverers, I like to let him do his own thing a lot. And sometimes it's hard to let him climb playground equipment on his own or use scissors and screwdrivers, but you gotta let them do it. I really hope this feeling lessens as he gets older, because it kinda sucks.
Ahead of the Curve.
I'll put this one last so that we end on a pretty good note: I heard recently on a podcast that if you can do something "ahead of the curve" in your life, you are doing pretty well. Thirteen years ago I stumbled into the sleep field because of a lecture in my college psychology class. I applied for an internship and I was the only one in my intern program to actively seek out a scientific lab type of environment. Everyone else would sit around the intern class circle and tell stories about their times dealing with young kids (pretty much everyone picked some kind of school psychology internship program) and I felt like an outsider. BUT. I wonder if they are anywhere close to where they were then, careerwise? I have done almost the same job since my internship started and I now make a very good living, because of all the choices I stumbled into. I left my first sleep job in 2008 because Mike wanted to move to Brooklyn, and then the recession hit. I would have been struggling at my old job because it paid out of NIH grants. The job I took in Brooklyn was a clinical gig, and there are lots of overweight people in that big city. Clinical sleep labs are very profitable for hospitals, and ours is doing just fine. So when a lot of my friends were scrambling around looking for work, I was sitting pretty, and I still am. Mike and I both work from home now too, which is the best thing ever when you have a little one. So I feel like I was definitely ahead of the curve on the "CPAP boom" if there is such a thing. Now I just need to keep this job forever and ever, and I'll be great.
I have a small window of free time, so I thought I'd post. What I REALLY want to post about is my annoyance with modern day feminism, but since my last post was about racism, I'll quit it with the social issues. Maybe I'll just get so annoyed that I'll actually post twice in a short span of time (crazy!).
I hastily scribbled down a few things that were on my mind a few months ago, so I thought I'd talk about those things if only so I can finally throw the little piece of paper away. With a 2 year old, to throw anything away is great. Here are my random topics:
Hypocrites.
Everyone has their own moral compass. It's odd when peoples' worst qualities are seen differently by different outsiders, but I guess that's also a good thing, to keep flawed people who are otherwise decent from being shunned. I'm not talking about people that kill or rape, or something equally as horrendous. Some things are just obvious. But little vices are seen differently from person to person. For example, if someone is a dick, maybe lots of people hate that person. But I always wonder why they are so angry, and try to find a way to get along with them. I don't necessarily hate them, and I actually have a good number of friends that many other people dislike or discount for that reason. I also don't hold cheating against people. I know I'm biased on that front because I personally don't see it as such a giant fucking deal as everyone else. Humans are evolved from animals. Animals procreate. A lot. Humans still have that drive, but it is smashed down inside because of society and their rules and restrictions. So yeah, cheating can and does happen quite a bit, but the amount of outrage about it is insane to me.
But my thing is hypocrites. I really don't like liars either, but everyone lies so there's not much to be done about that. But hypocrites drive me nuts because they either don't know themselves very well, or they think they are better than others. Those are the only reasons for being that way that I can come up with. Luckily I don't have too many of these people in my life, but when I see (for example) a Republican congressman who espouses family values to the point of restricting rights to the LGBT community and he goes and has affairs with young gay men, that just completely pisses me off. Put your affairs on your own conscience, don't make the rest of the world pay for them because you don't have the balls to be who you are. So yeah, hypocrites suck.
I'm Screwed for Life.
I like children. I've always liked children. Babies are ok too, but children are so fun to hang out with. I babysat from the ages of 12-18 consistently. So when it came time to start trying to build a family, I was all for it. I wanted a baby SO BADLY that I was getting jealous whenever I saw any baby anywhere. Then I got pregnant, and had one. And then it hit me: I'm going to be worried for the rest of my life. I was never a person to worry about much, very laiessez faire. But now I feel like my heart is held together by this thin string, and if anything happens to my child it will break into a million pieces. So I worry basically anytime he is out of my sight. If he is with Mike, "What if they get into a car accident?" If he is with my parents "What if..." any number of things because my parents are not responsible people. Even when he was with me one time running around at my grandma's house he ran up into the 55 mph country road and just stood there. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Luckily I don't worry when he's at day care, because he's been there for a year and a half now and I've built up some trust in them. It's always been hard for me to trust anyone. I think I was just born that way. And now I have to trust not only other caregivers, but my ever-growing son. Because I hate helicopter parents and hoverers, I like to let him do his own thing a lot. And sometimes it's hard to let him climb playground equipment on his own or use scissors and screwdrivers, but you gotta let them do it. I really hope this feeling lessens as he gets older, because it kinda sucks.
Ahead of the Curve.
I'll put this one last so that we end on a pretty good note: I heard recently on a podcast that if you can do something "ahead of the curve" in your life, you are doing pretty well. Thirteen years ago I stumbled into the sleep field because of a lecture in my college psychology class. I applied for an internship and I was the only one in my intern program to actively seek out a scientific lab type of environment. Everyone else would sit around the intern class circle and tell stories about their times dealing with young kids (pretty much everyone picked some kind of school psychology internship program) and I felt like an outsider. BUT. I wonder if they are anywhere close to where they were then, careerwise? I have done almost the same job since my internship started and I now make a very good living, because of all the choices I stumbled into. I left my first sleep job in 2008 because Mike wanted to move to Brooklyn, and then the recession hit. I would have been struggling at my old job because it paid out of NIH grants. The job I took in Brooklyn was a clinical gig, and there are lots of overweight people in that big city. Clinical sleep labs are very profitable for hospitals, and ours is doing just fine. So when a lot of my friends were scrambling around looking for work, I was sitting pretty, and I still am. Mike and I both work from home now too, which is the best thing ever when you have a little one. So I feel like I was definitely ahead of the curve on the "CPAP boom" if there is such a thing. Now I just need to keep this job forever and ever, and I'll be great.
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