I’m ridiculous. My computer will stay open. Because that happens.

I can’t check Twitter again today. I have to stay off the forum.

Not forever. I know I need them as resources sometimes. Not today. I need a break.

I can do Duolingo. I can have Slack open (I am entirely failing to add people. I keep trying and no one is getting emails. I hate the internet.) mostly because no one has talked to me there yet. Ha. I can read up on stupid hair care shit so I can stop whining in front of my friends so they think they are supposed to offer solutions. (Everyone’s hair is different. This process is individual and that sucks.)

I think that during Noah’s self-date the kids and I will walk to the park for a picnic.

Self dates are important. We all take them. You have to get to know yourself. You have to like yourself. You need time with just you.

I am deeply embarrassed by how much of my self date time lately is getting a fucking donut. I’m totally obsessed with this place near my house. They are so pretty and delicious and the perfect kind of fluff to solid ratio and…. an arm and a leg. They are ridiculously expensive.

I can’t drink. I can’t smoke. I can’t take as much pain medication as I frankly need. Sleep is hard.

You will pry my over priced donuts from my cold dead hands, motherfucker.

I feel petty and stupid and ridiculous.

I *am* petty and stupid and ridiculous on this topic. But oh well. That’s something that folks do sometimes. I’m not special.

What do I want to grow up and be? I’m almost 37 years old. It’s kinda time. Why am I looking at “growing up” as if that means the same thing as empty-nesting? That’s the equivalent timeline I’ve given myself.

I want to be able to work with people who do not look like me so that we can all grow to understand incest as a phenomena and experience more fully. So we can figure out what kinds of actions are more helpful for us.

Because we are a fucking subgroup of the population. Incest alters how you experience life in dramatic ways that can be clearly mapped.

We are marked by our experiences.

There are some of us in the immigrant detention camps. Will I do them more good in the long run if I finish the process I am putting before myself to learn the kind of mental and physical control that will allow me to effectively do the research I want to do?

Somebody has to go to law school so they can be the lawyer representing the people in the camps.

The person sitting on the front line is someone who either did their prep work long ago or someone who is on a different path to being supportive.

Is the work you are doing today in the service of dismantling the system of oppression or upholding it? There are a million different tasks that are all part of that.

Fucking hair care so that I look like a respectable, respect-worthy bitch is part if this motherfucking process for me.

Do I love it? No. Do I want to do it? No. Is it actually in service of my ability to reach my long-term goals?

Yes.

So far I’ve had at least three solid commitments from other women who want to help on this research when it seriously gets going. Those women understand the security and privacy concerns in putting this kind of information on the internet in a way I will never understand. They are on the front lines of ensuring security for the entire fucking internet because I am lucky in my friends. I have lived in the right place to meet some extraordinary people.

They are waiting for me to finish growing up.

I need to put some serious specific dates around this and get my ass in gear. I can’t fully wait until YC is 18. I can’t do that to this project. I can’t do that to these women. I can’t do that to my whole damn cohort.

I won’t live forever.

We need to find a way to find each other and learn how to communicate. This is going to have to be intersectional as fuck.

And my face can never be in the forefront or it’ll be one more white bitch homogeneous project.

That’s complicated. And important. If I want the project to succeed… it can’t ever in any way be about my ego. Because this is the most vulnerable part of *all* of us. I can’t take that identity from people and make it mine.

I nuzzle this sweet infant on my lap and have mixed feelings. She won’t get the carefully curated Montessori early childhood my big kids had. I put an overwhelming amount of work into creating that. And…. yeah. Now we are leaving. Sorry, kid.

No one gets everything.

I can’t be at every protest. I can’t get every kind of college education or do every job.

Am I working to dismantle the system?

Yes.

Ok. That has to be enough for today.