(no subject)
so.
specialist appointment is booked. they were a lot kinder than the PCP was and seemed to have no trouble with my insurance. welp.
they offered to put me on the cancellation list for peace of mind; I said yes, and they were able to move it up from March to February. so at least that's something? idk.
guess we'll see.
new employee is still good. he's trained on everything now and has access to the instrumentation I need him to have access to. he seems to enjoy what we have him on for now, and, well, yeah.
I told him that next week will be more of the same, and he nodded and said that he looked forward to it, so.
I got boosted on Wednesday! ...and promptly spent most of Thursday asleep. Ha.
It was funny, honestly. I got the booster and was like, "gosh, I really hope I don't feel shitty on Thursday, but at least I have stuff planned where the new employee can come in and get trained on another instrument if I'm out, I don't need to be here", and then...well...yeah.
woke up, felt incredibly nauseous, realized that I was fatigued as all get-out, went ahead and called out of work, then went to sleep and slept til 2pm, off and on. that almost never happens.
woke up again at 2, realized that my fever was spiking and I needed to get fluids in me, went ahead and made ginger tea and climbed into the bath, then settled on the sofa and rewatched some old episodes of Bakeoff.
Max got home around 2:45, I greeted him and as soon as my ep of Bakeoff was over, I went back to bed and slept til almost 7.
when I woke up, I realized that I was mostly recovered! huzzah! so I ordered in pho (it sounded good), and we watched Gravity Falls, then I listened to Our Fair City til bedtime. showered, went to bed, slept great, woke up and went into work and felt totally fine. yay, booster? yay.
so.
we're going to an open house tomorrow. really lovely house in a part of town I don't want to live in (too close to the university campus). still worth going. the real estate agent from the last house emailed us about it specifically. Max has apparently been in contact with her and let her know our budget and whatnot; she let us know politely that we seem to have our shit together and she'd love to work with us if we're amenable. so that's weird, but hey.
house budget and stuff came up today with a friend and I got to feel weird all over again about like, how things are. just.
our house budget is roughly $500k and we're putting 20% down. so, you know, $100k.
most people are like, "?!", but like - I have roughly that much in savings by myself. because of a handful of things, mostly:
-I don't have any debt beyond the car. This includes student loan debt. I went to school in-state and my parents made little enough that I qualified for some serious financial aid. Between this and scholarships, everything was covered. My doctoral program was funded (ofc), and every bit extra that I made went into savings.
-every cent I've made teaching over the last...five? six years? has gone directly into the House Fund. I have made roughly $60k teaching.
-Max and I still live like we're broke college students. This includes where we live - our rent is about $1k/month. If we lived in town, for how much space we have, it would be more than double that. Our biggest expense right now besides rent is probably food. We order out probably twice a week and that's not cheap, but it's our one splurge, so I just...don't give a fuck? I don't know.
-Thanks to Dad being a mechanic and me largely not giving a fuck what I drive, I was able to scrape by with two twenty-year-old cars through grad school. Most of the repairs I was able to either do myself or get help from my dad to manage. This meant no car payment and no need to worry about expensive car repair, which was probably the biggest worry before I bought the Hyundai.
...anyway.
I realize that I'm in a pretty lucky position, all told. I've managed to do more or less what I want to do and end up in a place where we can afford to buy a house and have a nice budget for it without stressing about how we're going to pay the mortgage or worrying about how we're going to save for the down payment or anything.
A...lot of my friends are not in a similar boat, and I get that and understand that it's not feasible for them. It's just - I realize that on some level this is going to sound like, "poor little rich girl", but - the number of nasty comments I've gotten about how my parents must have helped us or I must have gotten "lucky" and made money in some seedy way is just nuts to me? like.
no, it's not feasible for everyone. yes, I had some lucky breaks.
I also worked my ass off to get to where I'm at now and it still doesn't feel real.
there's been a lot of implication about how I must not be a good leftist because I've succeeded in a capitalist hellscape and it makes me want to roll my fuckin' eyes because like, sure, totally failing at leftism here, totes benefiting from capitalism, not trying to, you know, save the world or anything and taking a major fucking paycut to do it...
but that's part of it, I guess - this insidious idea that if you succeed under capitalism you must be part of the problem instead of someone who has managed to dodge all the traps to date, and who might still fail. people start attacking people like me instead of taking a long and hard look at who actually controls the systems that lead to things being the way they are. like, if you want to come after me for having the money to buy a house, why not look at who ruined the housing market and start going after them?
except it's of course much easier to just be like, "this person I know is part of the problem" instead of identifying that the problem is actually much older, much deeper and much harder to dismantle than any one person is capable of. so.
I dunno, I keep hearing ridiculous fuckin' takes about how you can't be a good leftist if [x]. the one that made me quit Mastodon probably for good was a big ol' thing about how you can't be a good leftist if you have a career in STEM, because you don't get "taught" art or ethics or anything beyond how to ruin the planet and exploit others.
like.
even at my kinda-shitty state school I had to take fine arts classes and a semester-long class in ethics, but okay. sure. why not. apparently me tryin' to make better solar panels and energy efficient windows and some other stuff is ruinin' the planet. great.
it feels like it's a whole collection of takes about how if you want to be a good leftist you have to be perpetually broke and disenfranchised and also 20-something because old people "don't get it", and I'm just...over it.
so I'm gonna keep doing the shit I do and trying to save the world I guess, even the people I don't like. because fuck, man, it goes back to what I told the therapist: if you have the ability to help, you do. even if it's something that in the grand scheme of things doesn't feel very big.
I have the know-how to help and I'm trying to work with DOE and NREL to do it. that's gotta be enough for me. if I quit my job, it's a net loss. so.
we keep going.
Originally posted on Dreamwidth at https://hafnia.dreamwidth.org/1438219.html, comment here or there, you'll more likely get a reply there.
specialist appointment is booked. they were a lot kinder than the PCP was and seemed to have no trouble with my insurance. welp.
they offered to put me on the cancellation list for peace of mind; I said yes, and they were able to move it up from March to February. so at least that's something? idk.
guess we'll see.
new employee is still good. he's trained on everything now and has access to the instrumentation I need him to have access to. he seems to enjoy what we have him on for now, and, well, yeah.
I told him that next week will be more of the same, and he nodded and said that he looked forward to it, so.
I got boosted on Wednesday! ...and promptly spent most of Thursday asleep. Ha.
It was funny, honestly. I got the booster and was like, "gosh, I really hope I don't feel shitty on Thursday, but at least I have stuff planned where the new employee can come in and get trained on another instrument if I'm out, I don't need to be here", and then...well...yeah.
woke up, felt incredibly nauseous, realized that I was fatigued as all get-out, went ahead and called out of work, then went to sleep and slept til 2pm, off and on. that almost never happens.
woke up again at 2, realized that my fever was spiking and I needed to get fluids in me, went ahead and made ginger tea and climbed into the bath, then settled on the sofa and rewatched some old episodes of Bakeoff.
Max got home around 2:45, I greeted him and as soon as my ep of Bakeoff was over, I went back to bed and slept til almost 7.
when I woke up, I realized that I was mostly recovered! huzzah! so I ordered in pho (it sounded good), and we watched Gravity Falls, then I listened to Our Fair City til bedtime. showered, went to bed, slept great, woke up and went into work and felt totally fine. yay, booster? yay.
so.
we're going to an open house tomorrow. really lovely house in a part of town I don't want to live in (too close to the university campus). still worth going. the real estate agent from the last house emailed us about it specifically. Max has apparently been in contact with her and let her know our budget and whatnot; she let us know politely that we seem to have our shit together and she'd love to work with us if we're amenable. so that's weird, but hey.
house budget and stuff came up today with a friend and I got to feel weird all over again about like, how things are. just.
our house budget is roughly $500k and we're putting 20% down. so, you know, $100k.
most people are like, "?!", but like - I have roughly that much in savings by myself. because of a handful of things, mostly:
-I don't have any debt beyond the car. This includes student loan debt. I went to school in-state and my parents made little enough that I qualified for some serious financial aid. Between this and scholarships, everything was covered. My doctoral program was funded (ofc), and every bit extra that I made went into savings.
-every cent I've made teaching over the last...five? six years? has gone directly into the House Fund. I have made roughly $60k teaching.
-Max and I still live like we're broke college students. This includes where we live - our rent is about $1k/month. If we lived in town, for how much space we have, it would be more than double that. Our biggest expense right now besides rent is probably food. We order out probably twice a week and that's not cheap, but it's our one splurge, so I just...don't give a fuck? I don't know.
-Thanks to Dad being a mechanic and me largely not giving a fuck what I drive, I was able to scrape by with two twenty-year-old cars through grad school. Most of the repairs I was able to either do myself or get help from my dad to manage. This meant no car payment and no need to worry about expensive car repair, which was probably the biggest worry before I bought the Hyundai.
...anyway.
I realize that I'm in a pretty lucky position, all told. I've managed to do more or less what I want to do and end up in a place where we can afford to buy a house and have a nice budget for it without stressing about how we're going to pay the mortgage or worrying about how we're going to save for the down payment or anything.
A...lot of my friends are not in a similar boat, and I get that and understand that it's not feasible for them. It's just - I realize that on some level this is going to sound like, "poor little rich girl", but - the number of nasty comments I've gotten about how my parents must have helped us or I must have gotten "lucky" and made money in some seedy way is just nuts to me? like.
no, it's not feasible for everyone. yes, I had some lucky breaks.
I also worked my ass off to get to where I'm at now and it still doesn't feel real.
there's been a lot of implication about how I must not be a good leftist because I've succeeded in a capitalist hellscape and it makes me want to roll my fuckin' eyes because like, sure, totally failing at leftism here, totes benefiting from capitalism, not trying to, you know, save the world or anything and taking a major fucking paycut to do it...
but that's part of it, I guess - this insidious idea that if you succeed under capitalism you must be part of the problem instead of someone who has managed to dodge all the traps to date, and who might still fail. people start attacking people like me instead of taking a long and hard look at who actually controls the systems that lead to things being the way they are. like, if you want to come after me for having the money to buy a house, why not look at who ruined the housing market and start going after them?
except it's of course much easier to just be like, "this person I know is part of the problem" instead of identifying that the problem is actually much older, much deeper and much harder to dismantle than any one person is capable of. so.
I dunno, I keep hearing ridiculous fuckin' takes about how you can't be a good leftist if [x]. the one that made me quit Mastodon probably for good was a big ol' thing about how you can't be a good leftist if you have a career in STEM, because you don't get "taught" art or ethics or anything beyond how to ruin the planet and exploit others.
like.
even at my kinda-shitty state school I had to take fine arts classes and a semester-long class in ethics, but okay. sure. why not. apparently me tryin' to make better solar panels and energy efficient windows and some other stuff is ruinin' the planet. great.
it feels like it's a whole collection of takes about how if you want to be a good leftist you have to be perpetually broke and disenfranchised and also 20-something because old people "don't get it", and I'm just...over it.
so I'm gonna keep doing the shit I do and trying to save the world I guess, even the people I don't like. because fuck, man, it goes back to what I told the therapist: if you have the ability to help, you do. even if it's something that in the grand scheme of things doesn't feel very big.
I have the know-how to help and I'm trying to work with DOE and NREL to do it. that's gotta be enough for me. if I quit my job, it's a net loss. so.
we keep going.
Originally posted on Dreamwidth at https://hafnia.dreamwidth.org/1438219.html, comment here or there, you'll more likely get a reply there.