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Sleep talking

April 19, 2017UncategorizedAlecto

It’s been a couple of years since I posted. In my last post I asked the question whether I should stay or go in my then current career trajectory. I chose to stay in the career but change employers. And that was a growth and learning experience. But now, as I right this, I’m sitting in hospital room where I will spend the night as a companion to my mother who had a bone marrow transplant last week. And she’s talking in her sleep. And she’s saying really random and funny things that I can’t share with the targeted audience that would appreciate it because It violates her privacy. So thank goodness for anonymous blogs.

I’ve heard about exhaustion, naturally. But I’ve also heard about adultery. And I swear to god, she succeeded in saying flibbertygibbet in her sleep. She’s also sleep conducting like babies do. So in a really taxing and stressful time, at least there is a little bit of humor to ride me over.

Get over yourself and go to therapy, or is it go to therapy and get over yourself?

May 31, 2015VentingAlecto

In my head, I consider myself a relatively egalitarian sort of person. I’m happy to give every body the chance to prove they’re interesting to me. Everyone IS interesting within their own little niche of the world, but I can’t inhabit every niche. Taking my cue from a quote that I’ve seen attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt (I don’t know if I’ve seen accurate attributions) small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, and great minds discuss ideas. I’m an idea person. People who think and have ideas and are willing to methodically examine the idea’s merit in light of demonstrable fact are soul-sexy.

In spite of that I work in a field that, while self-conceptualized as an idea industry, takes status very seriously. Most of the preoccupation with status are the basic dominance games that are perpetuated across many species and cultures, but played out by the proxies of where you went to school, graduated in the class, how much money you are able and willing to part with, or who you’re related to. I went to the wrong school, only graduated in the top quarter, have no money, and as far as I know I am not related to anyone of consequence. I also can’t speak the language that will elevate me above those miserable proxies.

I’ve hit a wall within my soul, and my career trajectory, and now I face the question, should I stay or should I go? Either way, I, and the people I work with need to get over ourselves and get back to the ideas that can make this world a better place instead of pointless posturing in an increasingly isolated and rarefied corner of the world.

Too tired for angry rants

May 17, 2015UncategorizedAlecto

Life goes on and it is hard to carve out time to write out an angry rant. For myself, I’ve been working two jobs and starting a small business. So the terrible injustices of the world don’t really infiltrate my bubble anymore and I don’t rant on. (Part of that is choice– selective and intentional ignorance is part of the self care to maintain the ability to work three jobs.) The other Angry Ladies are in very similar situations. In my spare time I’m searching for a single that can replace the two jobs, or provide an adequate crutch until the business can be built up to support level. Maybe a rant will emerge in the near future.

Frustration with the vaccination debate

February 1, 2015Current social issuesarguments, debate, keepingit100, vaccinesAlecto

The other night The Nightly Show had a panel discussing the pro-vaccination/anti-vaccination (“I prefer to call it the pro-choice movement”) debate.

I was very disappointed by the anti-vaxxer’s showing. I realize my bias leans towards pro-vaccination, but I was looking forward to receiving information that would at least force me to reconsider or reexamine my position.

Using that show as representative of what the debate is about, here is what was advanced as the main arguments of why she’s against vaccination:

1) drug companies make money from vaccines (lots of money)

2) parents ALWAYS know what’s best for their children and are completely within their rights to engage in anti-societal behavior to the point of putting other parents’ kids at risk

3) healthcare providers do a crappy job of getting informed consent for vaccination

4) people are scared of science, math, and statistics, and discussing vaccines intelligently requires a sound understanding of all three

Not a single argument advanced on the show addresses whether vaccines do the job they’re supposed to do and whether they do that job safely with minimal risk.

My responses to the arguments raised are as follows:

1) There are lots of reasons to be distrustful of “the man.” But if your sensitivities are offended by the commercialization of medicine, fight for socialized medicine and government funded research expansion.

2) If you truly believe parents ALWAYS know what’s best for their kids, shadow child protective service investigators for a month. The saying is “it takes a village to raise a child.” And the truth is, children need to be around other children. Choosing not to vaccinate creates isolation by necessity for children who can’t be vaccinated for reasons more compelling than an individual parent’s judgment. In some communities choosing not to vaccination leads to the un-immunized child being ostracized.

3) If healthcare providers need to do a better job on informed consent, put your efforts towards making that happen. The anti-vaxxer came up with an interesting factoid (that I have not independently verified) that African-American boys were 3.4x more likely to experience an adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine when following the CDC immunization schedule. That fact does not support a conclusion that all vaccines are bad. That fact tells me an African-American parent has sound reason to slow down their son’s vaccination schedule, but the rest of us don’t.

4) I don’t know what to suggest for remedying No. 4. Other than to say, suck it up and use the thing between your ears towards its highest ability.

Peripherally, the Tuskegee trials were brought up during the show. I’m all for demanding accountability from the man. That’s what the American Experiment exists for and why we’ve got the bill of rights. But if something works, and the eradication of measles in 2000 suggested that at the very least the Measles vaccine worked, don’t f*ck it up for other people a decade later because you’re concerned about a flu vaccine. Different virus, different concern.

If you can learn and memorize Pokemon you can learn and memorize the different viruses and the vaccines that are available.

#keepingit100

Travel never goes according to plan

November 8, 2014VentingtravelAlecto

It’s taken a while for me to decide I’m ready to write about this experience, but I went and interviewed for that job in a bigger city with the exorbitant cost of living. And then in was time to come home. Now the interview went well and it didn’t go well all at the same time. I met lovely people and heard about some exciting opportunities, but in the end the prospect of relocation and long distance marriage meant I was not capable of putting my best self forward. (My ability to compartmentalize my emotional life from my public life is adequate, but not stellar). In the end they gave the job to the other finalist and I think they made the right decision.

But this post isn’t about self-sabotage originating at the subconscious level, rather it’s about air travel NEVER going according to plan.

After the interview a car service took me immediately to the airport to wait for 3 hours for my domestic flight. But weather delays meant I waited for six hours and missed my connection. I got to my connecting city and there were no more flights to my home city, and all routes with an additional connection were booked. The airline gave me a coupon for “reasonably priced” accommodations that I got to pay for out of my own pocket.

I now know what bedbugs look like thanks to that reasonably priced accommodation. And three months later my bank account still hasn’t recovered from so many airport meals. Travel just never goes according to plan and I’m scheduled to travel twice at the end of this month. Heaven help me…

The difficulties of honest communication between adult children and parents

August 27, 2014VentingdysfunctionAlecto

I’ve applied for a job. It’d be a pay raise. It’d also be a promotion. And relocating to a city who’s cost of living is nearly three times my current city’s. And living apart from my husband for at least a year. But I haven’t been offered the job yet, rather I’m just working the process to see if they’re going to make an offer that makes it worth taking that path.

I chat with my mother by text rather frequently. Today she’s trying to coach me into thinking about big picture life things like babies. By text. And she’s sharing that she has no regrets from turning down jobs and choosing to be a SAHM for me. Because the economic situation she and my father were in is close to the situation my husband and I are in, so her choices should reassure me that it’s all going to work out if I exit the workforce or stay in my current job where there is no reasonably foreseeable possibility of promotion, pay raise, or even COLA.

I know that at some point my parents debt load exceeded $300,000. And they managed to put my brother through college and raise me. But most of their debt was mortgage. And the house was worth about three times my dad’s annual salary at the time they purchased the house. So within the conventional wisdom of managing finances.

My student loan debt alone is over $300,000. (Yes, I had scholarships, but it still turned out that high). I think there might’ve been an oops as the loans got shuttles from servicer to servicer, but I didn’t keep enough documentation to be able to prove that. And I can’t afford to hire a professional who knows how to track that stuff down and get it fixed. Then there is the credit card debt and the mortgage and the car payment. Plus my husband’s debt for his education. And my husband doesn’t make as much as my dad did. So, the end result is my mom has talked me out of having babies because there is absolutely no way I can afford them.

It’s hard to share the immensity of the problem in the first place. But even when I do, having to listen to experiences that completely fail to acknowledge the fundamental differences of our situations makes me cranky. But at the same time, I’m not sure I could handle a tough love of approach where she tells me I’ve made my bed and now I’ve got to sleep in it.

Raising the minimum wage

August 15, 2014Current social issuestools in congressAlecto

So, it’s kind of depressing that anyone who makes minimum wage and has to support additional people is living in poverty, or way below poverty if they’re in a high cost of living area. Seriously, look it up, unless you’re single without dependents, minimum wage pay is below the poverty line for the entire freaking country.

Some people are concerned that raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 will hurt businesses (it certainly will make payroll hurt more for a while) and result in job loss (maybe, maybe not, it’s basically speculation at this point).

Maybe the solution is to have this conversation every two years instead of once a decade. There should be incremental raises of the minimum wage that correspond with the overall rate of inflation and growth of the economy. After all if congress deserves multiple raises within a decade, surely the people who are supposed to pay the taxes that support Congressional raises should make more money so they can pay more taxes…. Okay, so that line of reasoning got away from me and came out pro-government instead of pro-individual, but the point remains minimum wage needs to be evaluated frequently.

So, three years after the last increase in minimum wage it could have been increased to $8.50, and then three years after that to $9.75, and then this year to $11.00 without creating an economic “shock and awe” that rattles businesses, and leads to more people being able to buy the stuff that businesses sell on their own dime rather than the taxpayers. So many benefits from having frequent minimum wage conversations instead of waiting until it reaches damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t crisis levels.

But Alecto, didn’t you hear that the economy was bad? Yeah, I did. I lived through it too. And it’s still sluggish, but sacrificing the low income earners is what keeps it sluggish and increases the strain on various safety-net programs. People who don’t make enough money to invest spend all their money on rent and consumer goods. If they have more to spend, money keeps circulating in the economy so businesses stay in business.

So congress, pass a law that requires you to increase the minimum wage every time you increase your own salaries….

Like a Bad neighbor, we’re never there — or over commitment at a national level

August 10, 2014Current social issuesAlecto

The world has multiple humanitarian crises at the moment. There is the fighting in Gaza (when is there not fighting in Gaza?), there is Syria, there is an Ebola outbreak, there is the Ukraine, etc. Then there are the Central American CHILDREN who have risked life and limb, left everything they know and everyone they love, to try to seek ASYLUM here. In our country.

Asylum is a big deal ya’ll, and the most important of these crises for us to address as quickly as possible. Once we develop a plan and solution to provide for these children then we can focus efforts on the next most pressing crises and work our way down the list. These are not divide-and-conquer situations, most of them are unite-and-improve situations.

With respect to the children refugees, I would suggest the solution is not sending them back to raping, pillaging, and drug violence because we don’t want to plant the seeds for a wave of retributive semi-domestic terrorism in twenty years. If we send them back, some of these kids will survive, become war-hardened and focus efforts on those that did them wrong. We don’t need to creat a bin laden-like guerrilla leader on our southern border.

Our entire country was founded and developed by people trying to get away from persecution or war in their homelands. We did really bad things to native peoples in our quest to get away from bad things and create a society that provided safety for refugees whether they’re white, black, brown, yellow, or whatever other shade human skin tones come in. We cannot have a national mid-life crises and say, “I don’t want to do it anymore.” This is our identity and we must continue to provide sanctuary to peoples of different stripes and creeds.

We need to find ways to provide these children refuge with good shelter, healthy food, appropriate clothing, competitive education, and due process of law. We need to bring them into the fold and make them part of us. They’re children. Really brave children. Don’t punish them because they’re only children and can’t yet fix them problems in their home countries. They need our help. And they need it now.