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I grew up ... not poor, I guess, but definitely working class. My mom's a secretary, and my dad drives an 18-wheeler. (They divorced when I was about 9.)
This informs a lot of my insecurities and greatly affected my career path. Rather than study something I really enjoy (German language and literature), I took a rather more mercenary approach: there are jobs in chemistry, which pay decent money. Then after I went to grad school & learned that I suck at research-oriented things, I went into pharmacy.
This is definitely not to say that I don't enjoy pharmacy. Far from it, really. How drugs work in the body is pretty darn cool. I really don't like working in pharmacy, which is rather more problematic. (Interacting with the public? No. Working shifting hours in a hospital? Hell no. That sort of limits my job opportunities, there.)
But after I quit my job last year, I was much happier, even if I stress out over money frequently. Or at least when I haven't had a contract in months and could really use some income.
Where was I going with this? Hell. One problem with hamster-brain is that it goes in weird directions that don't always make sense.
In my quest to be financially stable and the like, I've become ... bourgeois.* I'm a fucking yuppie. I have a 4-bedroom house on 1/4 acre in suburbia. We have 2 cars in a 2-car garage. We shop at the co-op, and are owners. We buy locally-grown produce. We feed our cats the best cat food (made from actual meat).
But there's this part of my brain that worries that someone will figure out that I'm just a prole in bourgeois clothing.
*Technically speaking, petit bourgeois, since I don't own the means of production, just the knowledge inside my brain, which I use to generate income by contracting with those who own the means of production.
This informs a lot of my insecurities and greatly affected my career path. Rather than study something I really enjoy (German language and literature), I took a rather more mercenary approach: there are jobs in chemistry, which pay decent money. Then after I went to grad school & learned that I suck at research-oriented things, I went into pharmacy.
This is definitely not to say that I don't enjoy pharmacy. Far from it, really. How drugs work in the body is pretty darn cool. I really don't like working in pharmacy, which is rather more problematic. (Interacting with the public? No. Working shifting hours in a hospital? Hell no. That sort of limits my job opportunities, there.)
But after I quit my job last year, I was much happier, even if I stress out over money frequently. Or at least when I haven't had a contract in months and could really use some income.
Where was I going with this? Hell. One problem with hamster-brain is that it goes in weird directions that don't always make sense.
In my quest to be financially stable and the like, I've become ... bourgeois.* I'm a fucking yuppie. I have a 4-bedroom house on 1/4 acre in suburbia. We have 2 cars in a 2-car garage. We shop at the co-op, and are owners. We buy locally-grown produce. We feed our cats the best cat food (made from actual meat).
But there's this part of my brain that worries that someone will figure out that I'm just a prole in bourgeois clothing.
*Technically speaking, petit bourgeois, since I don't own the means of production, just the knowledge inside my brain, which I use to generate income by contracting with those who own the means of production.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-28 10:39 pm (UTC)From:But, yeah. My family tends to go the over-educated and under-paid route, which is a tradition I'm continuing. But my version of "under-paid" is going to be noticeably different, especially since I'm not continuing the other family tradition of "marry young and miserable to escape your parents". And my cousin's daughters are growing up in an entirely different atmosphere than I did, and my cousin, who's almost a decade older than me, had a very different experience than I did, financially. It's just... bizarre.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 12:32 am (UTC)From:I don't have a lot of old friends. I wasn't very good at making them when I was younger. But most of my friends also had divorced parents, to the point where I thought everyone's parents didn't live together. I'm still kind of surprised to meet people whose parents are still happily married.
Oddly, my maternal grandfather went to college, but none of his children did, and his forebears didn't; and on my dad's side, no one did, either. So it was gramps, then me, then my sister and two of my cousins. Three didn't, and one's still in high school. Of the ones who didn't, one is mentally retarded, another is an HVAC tech, and the third just joined the Marines. The latter two's parents (they're brothers) are a mechanic and a hair stylist, who make (easily) more than I do. Karl repairs Mercedes, and Lela runs a salon.
My distant German ancestors (grandpa's grandparents) were machinists of some sort back in Silesia. Possibly something to do with textiles, and the town they lived in was one of the sites of the Weaver's Revolts of 1844.