Real Blog Time: A Short and Scatterbrained Autobiography. By Shannon Donahue
I am a hipster. To say that I am obsessed with all things vintage would be an understatement. I live in Austin, Texas, known to some as the blue dot in the red state. I am a vegan and I'm gluten free, so basically I am the worst kind of person. I have a lot of tattoos and I hate when people ask me how many I have because I am not keeping count. I ride a scooter and collect vinyl records. I read a lot of non fiction and drink a lot of tea and red wine.
I am also Shannon. My name is Gaelic and means, "small and wise," which I find very fitting even though I am not particularly fond of the name itself. I was almost named Mona which I would have hated as a child but loved as a young adult. I am about to turn twenty seven years old. I am a hypochondriac and have anxiety. I am very much against taking any sort of prescribed medication. I grew up in Boston. I like to write and draw but I am mediocre at both. I am unusually good at saving money. I am petite and a ginger and most people say I'm quite cute. I agree with those people. I have an irrational fear of bees.
I am very friendly and polite which has always served me well in life. I have a lot of big dreams and never enough drive. If I could live anywhere in the world I would choose either London or New York City. I love spiral staircases, exposed brick, and glow in the dark stars that stick on the ceiling.
My parents got divorced when I was 20 years old and my father remarried a woman a few years older than myself. I thought I should resent her but I don't at all, I think she's great. My mother is over protective to say the least. The expression on her face often becomes one of deep confusion and skepticism anytime I talk. She and I have never gotten along for more than a few hours. Her mother was murdered by a former lover. I have one brother who is six years older than me, and lives in a suburb with his wife and two young sons. He used to play guitar but now he plays golf. His patchy beard grows in dark brown, red, and grey. I like him but I am not like him.
I live alone with a polydactyl black cat named Neko Chan in a colorful and oddly shaped one bedroom apartment on a busy street. I keep the thermostat at a cool 79 degrees. I watch a lot of cartoons and documentaries.
Why I have no patience for "social justice" shit on here
I'm gonna give a little background on myself and my family. It may get a bit long and wordy so I'm putting it behind a cut.
My parents met in NYC. My father was raised Jewish in, at the best of times, a lower middle class family. He started working when he was a teenager to have money to do things because it wasn't handed to him. Both my grandparents worked to afford their bills/food/etc. My father didn't even have a Bachelors degree until well into his 40s because he couldn't afford it. In his free time he hung out in central park with his friends (who could best be described as hispanic ghetto toughs) drinking cheap wine or wandering around Rockaway Beach. My mother was raised very strict Catholic and worked in an institution in a very dangerous part of the city at the time. In order for my parents to be allowed to marry by HER parents, my father converted to Catholicism for her. A few years before I was born my parents moved to VA just outside of DC because my dad finally found a job that would pay enough for my parents to make ends meet.
Before moving to the south (this area was a LOT different back then) my parents changed their last name to my father's mother's maiden name to avoid discrimination for having a Jewish surname. I was born a few years after the move. When I was around 3 and a half my parents wanted to finally own a place instead of renting, but VA was too expensive. They moved to West Virginia where it was affordable and my father commuted a little over 5 hours a day to and from work for YEARS.
So the thing about discrimination, it isn't always about race or religion. I was very much into the punk scene growing up: band shirts, jeans, Doc Martens, shaved head etc. Being in WV, this made me a minority. Most of the population of my hometown and school were either rednecks or kids with glorified images of being "gangstas." I got into fights on a regular basis because of this. I also have a scar on my inner arm from a mugging at knife point gone wrong for my assailant and, well, let's just say there was an incident involving me being on the wrong end of a firearm when I was younger (long story for another time). I was miserable, but we didn't move because my mother had been an army brat and didn't want to move again. I suffered for years because of it. I graduated high school a year early just to get away from it. After graduation my family moved back to VA. I went to college but didn't finish my Bachelor's degree because we couldn't afford it and I didn't want to be tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
After I left college I lived with one of my ex girlfriends in Maryland for two years fixing computers as a side business and working unskilled labor being trained as a carpenter building houses. When the ex and I broke up I moved back in with my parents for a short time. I got a job as a cook in a Thai restaurant, then, through a guy I met at a Starbucks, went to work for Motorola where, in the course of a year of busting my ass, I become one of the managers and was recognised as an RF engineer. It was a contractor job, though, and when the contract ended I was out of a job. Early in my tenure at Motorola I woke up to a note taped to my bedroom door from my parents informing me that I had until the end of the month to move out.
During this time I started dating someone and we moved in together. We struggled financially, barely paying our bills and eating. Sometimes we had to choose between paying a bill late or starving for a week. While we lived together she got pregnant and my son was born. When I lost my job at Motorola I was freaking out. I took a job with a geotechnical engineering company making next to nothing but getting certifications and, eventually, getting the VA Civil Engineer license. I did this for 2 years, but when the housing market collapsed work dried up and I lost my job. I went to work at the Geek Squad in Best Buy. I worked my way up to a supervisory role there. During that time, the girl I was seeing and I got married.
After a couple of years with Geek Squad, one of my friends got a job with a boutique government contractor. He told me there were openings in IT and had me send a resumé. I got a job there and left Best Buy for good. During my first week at the new place I came home from work one day to a note informing me that my wife was leaving me. I found out she was cheating on me. We got a divorce and I have full custody of our son, who I love very much.
The company I worked for was bought out by BAE Systems and quickly disbanded. They only wanted us for our UK division and the software we used. Fortunately, one of the guys I worked with had gotten a job at Booz Allen Hamilton. He got me an interview and I was promptly hired. Two years later and I am still there. My son is now 6 and still lives with me. His mother, after no contact for years, has just recently taken an interest in him and we try to maintain civility for his sake. I am where I am now through hard work and making and taking advantage of connections, but it took me over a decade of starvation and near homelessness to get there.
Going a bit further back, on my father's side I am only a third generation American. They are Polish Jews. Most of that side of my family did not make it to the other side of World War 2. There are only maybe a dozen people left in the world with my last name. My mother's side of the family is half Italian and half Irish. Many of the Irish were sent here to work as coal mining slaves. The closest relatives came here in abject poverty from Limerick, Ireland. The rest of that side of the family I know very little about. They are greedy bigots and we have nothing to do with them. I don't know most of my family and we've had no support from them.
Long story short, poverty and discrimination (which I've felt for my lack of degree, but hey, we never hear about education discrimination on here do we?) are things that are a part of my family and things I have felt firsthand on a regular basis. Do I think these are good things? No. Would I love to see true equality for everyone in my lifetime? AbsoFUCKINGlutely. At the same time, I really don't appreciate being racially profiled by ignorant bleeding hearts because I have white skin, a dick, and I'm attracted to women.
In my experience, the noisier people are with those kinds of opinions the less they have TRULY felt the injustice they cry about so fervently. These groups remind me a lot of high school. More specifically, they remind me of the "activists" who only did shit because they perceived it as the cool, grown up, responsible thing to do. If you want to make a difference in your life, work for it. If you want to make a difference in the world around you, get out from behind your computer and work towards the change. Your words are hollow and your existence saddens me because you don't understand that hatefulness on the internet doesn't make things better. That venom will only eat you away from the inside until you are just as, if not more, harmful to society than the people you claim to despise.
