Badass life

I realized on my first train home today, that it’s time to acknowledge that I have a pretty badass life. A few examples:

• I regularly get on a train home and have stimulating conversations about feminism, sci-fi/fantasy book discussions, current events, and a myriad of other topics
• I get to spend my day doing what I like: educating people about resources and teaching them about data management
• I get to spend other parts of my day trying to answer questions that are interesting to me and that I think are valuable to the science and library science community
• I get to come home to family and three (!) dogs.
• I have a home and have enough discretionary income to have hobbies and jewelry

It’s not that I have never had moments of profound gratitude. But part of my life has always been the feeling that I have worked hard to narrowly escape poverty and a life of financial uncertainty. Now there is no genuine thing as security; anything I have can be taken away at any time. But for this moment, when I spend most of my mental energy trying to figure out how to dog-paddle for all I’m worth to keep productive in my work and home lives, I finally realize that I’m swimming in a pretty good pond.