Happy snap lockdown everyone! It's been a while since I last posted, in fact the last time I posted was our last snap lockdown....mayhaps this could become a regular thing? I could just post whenever life hands me a circuit breaker, because otherwise I'm a continuous circuit probably running in parallel most days.
Here's a list of things that have happened since my last post:
My couch has not happened
Hasn't come yet! We still sit on the floor on our trusty floor couch, but at least we have our Totoro rug here now so it's looking very homely despite all.
I passed my probation
It happened without fanfare, which is good I guess because it means no one has an issue about me. But also bad, because now they can really throw me under the bus. I'm on a pretty hard project right now so I'm definitely feeling the pressure to compromise on my mental health. Of course, we all like to think that we're good at prioritising ourselves and looking after ourselves, but when push comes to shove it is really hard to step away from the pressure and create your own space. You feel like just outside of that safe space is a multitude of things demanding to be done 10 minutes ago, and you're going to have to step out of your house some time.
So, how do you maintain emotional distance from the demands of your job? I guess the first thing is to not be so hard on yourself, and I guess at the end of the day work is just work.
We cleared our shower drain
This was causing real problems and we (Brendan) finally unscrewed the shower cap to check what was going on in our drain. I untwisted a wire hanger and Brendan stuck it in the drain to hook up whatever was blocking our drain. What followed was a traumatic home-video recreation of the thing from the Ring. Brendan basically pulled out a mass of hair and black wet gunk that seemed to have grown around what looked like a red-ish piece of fabric or clothing that must've got stuck down there ages ago. Anyway, just thinking about it again sends shivers.
I levelled up my home office
This is probably not very interesting to most people. But I have a standing desk now.
Brendan and I got engaged
You all know this by now (hopefully)!
Our wedding will be on my mum's birthday
Lol talk about sabotage. My mum will be turning 60 too. Oh crap I just realised that she's turning 60 - maybe we should make the wedding about her? It will be very horrifying for her, but funny for us. Mwahaha.
Brendan got a home delivery of Xero merch
What a thoughtful welcome! Have to say their reusable coffee cups don't look that durable though, felt like it was made out of paper. Anyway, reminds me of a scene from Jojo Rabbit (watch it if you haven't), where in the dying days of WWII when Germany was about to lose, young Yorki joins the German army and comes running to Jojo in his uniform which Jojo claims feels like paper -
I'm watching a replay of Masterchef
It's a blind pressure test and the chef whose dish they're recreating is this whitey-white guy who owns a restaurant down the road. Lol. Lately I've been seeing lots of things that I feel only white people would do. Like the other night we were meeting a photographer virtually - the photographer herself was great, but she also does a lot of baby and family portrait shoots. The babies look so cute, and there are some earnest shots of baby bumps, but it just felt like such a white person thing to do. My family has never hired a professional photographer to shoot ourselves - has your ethnic family?
The other thing I was thinking about a few weeks ago is that while ethnic families here just have family feuds, white families have lawsuits. I guess the main reason for that is that most ethnic families aren't rich enough to have assets worth litigating over, but also when your family has been in a certain place generations longer than others, you probably have much more stake in the institutions and cultures of that place and also are much more comfortable calling them to your service.
Brendan's been reading Bad Blood, a story of American corporate tragedy (Elizabeth Holmes and what she did with Theranos). One of the whistleblowers is this smart 23 year old American guy (white) who has to work against his grandpa who happens to sit on the board of Theranos but who was also ex-Secretary of State. Like what?!? Anyway, grandpa believes grandson hasn't whistleblown and offers the services of his estate lawyer to help grandson get out of trouble with some Theranos lawyers who believe grandson has already whistleblown. Grandson obviously already has, but doesn't tell grandpa because grandpa would get so mad, grandson then realises that he needs a lawyer but not his grandpa's one because conflict, but he races to speak to his grandpa's estate lawyer before grandpa does so that he can at least get a lawyer's honest opinion.
Anyway. Whaaaat. What a family, so many lawyers. Very white.
Other white stuff
Was scrolling on facebook and saw a thread that I thought was funny. The post was "apologise like a straight white man" and all the comments beneath were some variant of - "I'm sorry that you felt bad about my actions, but maybe that's really your fault for being so emotional?"
Anyway, here's a question for you - is reverse racism real? Can minorities be racist against white people? A narrower definition of racism would say yes. If I say something like "eugh, all white people litigate" then that would appear racist.
Another definition of racism is that it speaks to an omnipresent power structure that permeates every aspect of society. An Indigenous person might say that all white people are XXX. But they are saying it within a society that has historically massacred Indigenous people, have stolen their children, and have sought to breed them out. Today Indigenous people are more likely to go to jail than university. That is institutionalised racism, and while an Indigenous person might make some comment about white people who really has the power in that situation? Who has the power to hurt who more?
If I gave you a star AFL player and a 13 year old girl - who is likely to command more power and influence in Australian society? But when the girl called Adam Goodes an ape, and Goodes decided to call out that racism, society was divided. Goodes is Indigenous. The girl is white. Calling out a white girl for racism, even if you're an AFL star, is not ok apparently. A lot of people said Goodes should be the bigger person and just let it go, but the comment has nothing to do with the fact that it's coming from a teenage girl. Racism isn't about the single event of the racist exchange, moments like those are like the tip of the iceberg. It is a moment in which the undercurrents of Australian racism, present everywhere, crystallises into one identifiable instance of aggression. The reality, as any minority, is that life is full of micro-aggressions everyday. It is telling that the girl was being brought up in a world where she felt it was ok to call an Indigenous person an ape, and very likely she had seen people who should've been better doing the same or even worse thing in her life everyday.
Anyway, I don't know if micro-aggression is the right word for it (read this if interested), but a few years ago we didn't even have a word to conceptualise the things that minorities had already been feeling. Of course, english is probably not created for its second-language speakers, especially its colonised ones. Why would a language have the words to share the experience of those it is trying to oppress? When I first read 1984, I only understood in an academic sense what point Orwell was trying to make with Newspeak, but in the past few years as our culture wars have only intensified, I've understood how hard it is to share an idea when you don't have the words to describe it, you only know how it feels.
Edit
Went back and re-read this and it's not very coherent, especially that part where I rant about white people litigating. Lol not sure what i was thinking about but it probably sounded less stupid in my head, but I also don't have the energy to go back and change it.
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