Self made
I was thinking about the whole thing about people who really strictly want to emphasize that there is self-made man. Also another post while I’m driving to work, two I guess. Oh yeah, I was thinking about how I always make a point whenever we’re talking about like financial situations or things like that to acknowledge the amount of privilege that I have been given by my dad, the circumstances of my birth. And I was thinking about how the only reason I’m able to have a house or to have money saved up or things like that at my age in this current economy is because of the support from my dad in a lot of different ways, like paying for my undergrad, or pushing me towards engineering when I was younger, or by for better for worse is making me focus on academics so heavily growing up. And I do think that if I had done the same amount of hustle and work and all of that, but without the financial support for my dad, there’s no way I could’ve for example bought a house. And so it feels only fair for me to all of those things with the fact that I have this privilege. But also, I do understand part of the kind of frustration a little bit in a very minor sense, where I also don’t want all of my hard work to seem like it was nonexistent. But it’s really hard to disambiguate it because anyone can say if I was given those opportunities I would be in the same position. But also, I mean if I think about it, if I ignore the house, I was able to save up $200,000 or I guess honestly mostly about like 140 K from my internship money that I had invested over six years. And I know that I went through my undergrad college fund, but my masters, I paid for myself. I think the additional 60 K was money that my dad would give me to make up for the amount of money. He was giving my sister so that it was fair. And I think about the fact that my sister grew up in very similar circumstances, also honestly went to an even better college than I did, and yet still ended up getting her masters a year after I did, even though she is older. And additionally, she didn’t really have internships or savings, and wasn’t as financially responsible, and also was struggling to find a job and only recently found kind of an entry-level job and so has been fully dependent on my dad for everything for a couple years. And I don’t want to drag her down because I understand that we both had a very shitty childhood and I think a lot of the issues and scars that caused a lot of damage were emotional and I always say it was kind of like a sinker swim situation and I put in a lot of effort to swim and that effort isn’t something that comes naturally and so I think she kind of sake. But also, we were both given pretty much the same amount of privilege and I think the contrast is stark. I guess I’ve never really thought about that before until today, but I feel like that highlights to me the portion where it is not just the privilege I was born with, but also the work I have done. and I also don’t want to sound arrogant or suck my own dick too much, but I have has so many friends and peers say how smart I am or how talented I am, and I have been used as a target or challenge to reach several times in my life. I guess I didn’t originally actually mean this with the title of the post but I do kind of want to at least verbally jot down a bit of how I have not necessarily had everything handed to me, I’ve had doors opened, and I have had things handed to me, but I’ve also earned a lot.