It was actually stormy today. It seemed like a great day to stay in and work on my Mozilla bug. I didn’t have any other plans but lunch with Dave later so I grabbed my tea and laptop and got to work. Luckily, Peter had given me some really great pointers in a comment on the bug so I knew where to begin. I had to do a ton of “find and replace” but I think it helped me improve my Vim skills.

Dave came over early to work with Andrew on his new test server. He had been working on it for a couple of days now and was also building a new file server for home. They were busy with that and I was buried in my bug until well past lunchtime. We all decided it was food time so Wayne, Dave, Andrew and I braved the, not bad at all, rain and walked over to the Thai place around the corner. It was yummy but my food was just a bit too spicy for me. We came back home and Wayne and I immediately headed to Fred Meyer to get some stuff for dinner. We ended up getting some Christmas presents as well.

When we got back home I decided to read through my Twitter feed and someone posted something with the #BenevolentRacism hashtag and strongly suggested white people read through it. I’m white, married to two white men, 99% white friends, watch movies and tv shows that reflect my whiteness right back to me, lived in a very white, conservative city for the last 25 years, in all that time never heard the term “social justice”, had no idea that was even a thing and currently live in a city that is so much more white than I realized before moving here. Yeah I was pretty sure I needed to be reading through that timeline.

The whole thread was upsetting but certain things really stood out to me so I re-tweeted them. It’s not a thing I normally do because I’ve always been one to keep my mouth shut. I despise confrontation and hate making waves. I’ve been pretty pissed off though about this world I live in and pissed off at myself for not being an active voice in the things that upset me. The fear of making people mad at me even if they are a friend of a friend on Facebook has kept me from posting and replying to things I find disagreeable. But then I was reading a story about racism and white privilege and someone asked what they as a white person could do to help. The response was to stop doing nothing, stop biting your tongue, re-tweet that controversial tweet instead of just favoriting it, comment on posts you disagree with. Yeah! I’m totally going to do that! Aaaaaaaand I proceeded to immediately fuck up.

I re-tweeted something I took a certain way and being the ignorant white person that I am didn’t realize I was doing the exact thing I thought I was tweeting against. Yup, I’m just that talented. The result was that I upset someone I deeply respect and look up to. Not good! I apologized and then sat mortified for quite some time as I thought about things. I considered deleting Facebook, Twitter, this blog. “These are weapons I am not qualified to wield.” I thought. I finally, shamefully, confessed my stupidity to my husbands. Then Andrew said, “You are lucky they thought enough of you to say something and correct you.” And he’s right. They totally didn’t have to take the time to do that but they did and I’m so thankful.

So I think I’m going to keep posting and keep re-tweeting and read and learn and try my best not to fuck up but I’m human and ignorant about so many things so I’ll probably mess up again. It’s uncomfortable and frankly, terrifying and I’m glad because that’s where growth and change begin. I am writing this blog primarily for me (maybe my future relatives will find it interesting) and my plan is to start reading it daily a year from when I began. I hope the future me looks at the past me with kind but much wiser eyes.

Today I learned…..see above.