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(and if I were actually enumerating them.)
While my grumbling hasn't made it to this journal, I've been doing a lot of it recently about (a) how much money we lost when we sold our old house (see the journal entry just prior to this) and (b) how much of a pain it is being to find a house that's big enough, close enough to work, affordable, and possessed of various other qualities we want (like being able to fit our dining room table).
As I said in an email to my dad recently, 'there's a phrase going around the Internet right now which is used to describe problems which, in the grand scheme of things, really aren't that bad: "first world problems". Those are the kind I have.'
To start off with, I have an incredible array of advantages--that are mostly not my doing--that make my life easier every day: I'm tall, male, white, not overweight, and have regular features and a voice that is both fairly low and penetrating when I want it to be. I'm sure I don't even notice all the ways that these things and others smooth my way almost everywhere I go.
I got a good education without having to pay for any of it: my BA was covered by my parents and the graduate school was paid for--with stipends, even!--by various other people and organizations.
I have a job that probably quite a lot of people would give someone else's left arm to get. And I enjoy it, and I think that it's contributing to important and useful work.
I have a smart, funny, attractive, fun, practical, and incredibly supportive wife. I have four kids who are healthy, intelligent, and (I expect) no more trouble than most groupings of kids their age would be. We can afford to let Megan take time off working if we want to. We can eliminate houses from consideration because they're not convenient, or we just don't like them very much.
The likelihood of us getting assaulted or robbed anywhere around here is quite small. We can drink the water and assume that it won't make us sick. We don't have any serious medical problems.
The list goes on.
Heck, if angst over trying to decide between various houses generally costing upwards of half a million dollars isn't a "first world problem", I don't know what is.
So yeah. If I can't make this work, it's my own damned fault.
While my grumbling hasn't made it to this journal, I've been doing a lot of it recently about (a) how much money we lost when we sold our old house (see the journal entry just prior to this) and (b) how much of a pain it is being to find a house that's big enough, close enough to work, affordable, and possessed of various other qualities we want (like being able to fit our dining room table).
As I said in an email to my dad recently, 'there's a phrase going around the Internet right now which is used to describe problems which, in the grand scheme of things, really aren't that bad: "first world problems". Those are the kind I have.'
To start off with, I have an incredible array of advantages--that are mostly not my doing--that make my life easier every day: I'm tall, male, white, not overweight, and have regular features and a voice that is both fairly low and penetrating when I want it to be. I'm sure I don't even notice all the ways that these things and others smooth my way almost everywhere I go.
I got a good education without having to pay for any of it: my BA was covered by my parents and the graduate school was paid for--with stipends, even!--by various other people and organizations.
I have a job that probably quite a lot of people would give someone else's left arm to get. And I enjoy it, and I think that it's contributing to important and useful work.
I have a smart, funny, attractive, fun, practical, and incredibly supportive wife. I have four kids who are healthy, intelligent, and (I expect) no more trouble than most groupings of kids their age would be. We can afford to let Megan take time off working if we want to. We can eliminate houses from consideration because they're not convenient, or we just don't like them very much.
The likelihood of us getting assaulted or robbed anywhere around here is quite small. We can drink the water and assume that it won't make us sick. We don't have any serious medical problems.
The list goes on.
Heck, if angst over trying to decide between various houses generally costing upwards of half a million dollars isn't a "first world problem", I don't know what is.
So yeah. If I can't make this work, it's my own damned fault.
