I have recently taken up journaling again! It’s not new years resolution thing so much as a “I spent a year and a half shoving knowledge into my head for a graduate degree while I also ran for office and now my head shall simply explode if I don’t make a physical product with some of allll that.”
So anyways. One of my lil exercises that both brings me great joy and gives me ideas on how I can more effectively communicate about things in my community is to take note of my privilege. Kind of like a gratitude log or habit tracker (I do those too sometimes, it’s fun.)
And not just white privilege. I’m glow in the dark level white. That’s not new or earth-shattering, nor does it involve any level of critical thought to acknowledge I have it.
To me, the truly impactful conversations and thought exercises on privilege involve the weird ones. The ones that are intertwined with the other bullshit in our lives that doesn’t feel super privilegey.
Here are a few of mine:
Tuesday 1/14/25 — HPV Vaccinated
I have a really fun little genetic condition called Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP – yes, you can laugh at that). It causes colon polyps that I have to have removed annually and heightens my risk for a few other types of cancer, primarily thyroid cancer. I came due for my ~3 year thyroid ultrasound this year, and while I was having it done I had a delightful chat with the nurse about our mutual experiences with cancer and cancer screenings.
We’ve both had to deal with plenty of nightmarish financial and emotional experiences to getting treatment we need, but we did also celebrate the simple reality that we were both alive to be talking about them. Through privileged circumstances and sometimes just downright luck, we’re both puttering along alive and mostly well.
Additionally, while she was doing the “rest of the neck” part of the ultrasound I noodled on the fact that I am HPV vaccinated – which protects me against several reproductive, head, and neck cancers. My parents were not the greatest in a lot of ways, but I was always vaccinated for all the things I could be -for that I am forever grateful. With anti-vaxx ideologies being so pervasive in our American culture, it’s important to reflect on just how privileged most of us are to have relatively easy access to basic vaccines (by global standards)
Wednesday 1/15/25 — Securely Housed & Fed
I have for most of my life, been relatively securely housed and had access to food. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve done my fair share of couch surfing, and my address has at many points been legally ambiguous. But I have mostly been struggling upwards in the Not Freezing to Death In A Hovel game for the duration of my adult life.
That is increasingly not the case in our modern world.
Algorithmically curated Elon Muskiness of right wing populism shouts simplistic nonsense about this – about working hard and how struggling folks are ungrateful because they have refrigerators (one of the greatest Fox News hot takes of all time, IMHO). This really detracts from a nuanced perspective that allows us to be grateful for the general upward trend of humanity while still being pissed that it’s nowhere near as good as it can be.
I can be enraged that the planet is on fire and that American imperialism is doing this culture wars bullshit here and actual “exploding people” wars abroad – but I can also appreciate that I get to go home and play Animal Crossing at the end of a long day of existing within all the emotionally heavy bullshit of my work and life that stands in opposition to that. I can protect my mental and physical wellness so I can wake up tomorrow and do it again. I can rest when I need to.
Thursday 1/16/25
I had conversations about art several times this week! Each of them was delightful. Conversations about zines, social media platforms, multimodal art, “full time” artists, the consumerist model of mass produced TJ Maxx art – all of it was delightful to explore with my friends.
I was struck with my own privilege as the daughter of a musician at several points though – I was raised by a “struggling artist” type, and although that has had its own economic and emotional bullshit associated with it, I am truly and genuinely grateful that I was taught to understand and appreciate art from basically the day I was born. So many folks really struggle to learn how to appreciate art as necessity later in life. Art comes with internalized capitalismy guilt and frustration about art as “wasted” time and that at least is one flavor of bullshit I have no hangups over.
Art is essential.
Music was specifically the essential when I was a kiddo, but I have had the pleasure to grow and become educated into expanding my understanding of “the arts” more broadly. In a world that is ruled by commodification, consumerism and capitalism, I truly believe that relearning simple engagement in “the arts” – no matter what that looks like to an individual – is going to be essential. I’m grateful to have a solid foundation on which to appreciate and engage in truly revolutionary art as a survival method, mode of communication, and ultimate human experience