= \ What's next, brain?

[labelleizzy]

kinda feeling crappy about the world and my role in it.

last post about remembering that I have power? yeah. I have to remember that i have power in order to make a thing happen.

BUT i have to decide what i WANT to happen, first.

things i want:

• to stop beating myself up
  
• to figure out what kind of job I am willing and wanting to do and how to get there
  
• to find some way of getting back out into the poly dating world
  
• to find other means of achieving intimacy than sex.

(Because it's INTIMACY in its varied form that i miss, even more than sex.)
and

• find some way of making the whole world suck less. Literally, the government OF THE USA has LOST 1475 children THAT WE KNOW OF only because 20 or so were recovered as part of a child sex slaves sting.


Okay.

This sort of thing in the news is exactly the kind of terrorism that is designed to make us all feel helpless.
but we are not helpless. And there is hope.

we are the hope we need to see in the world.

I don't know what are the answers to the things on the list, except generally. If I want intimacy, I need to spend time with my trusted people. Which means that I need to ASK FOR THAT.

If i want to stop beating myself up, I have to practice habits of self care. Which include getting the FUCK off the computer when thinking about the news is making my head explode from rage, like Anger in Inside Out.
FOOM!!!!

How can I make the world suck less? Do more of the encouraging things I already do, and think of other ways to be encouraging/supportive/helpful. To make more art. To write more.

Join the ACLU. I've been meaning to for awhile. Join the Freelancer's Union, maybe.

Use my privilege for good. I do try to do that. My friend N said I could be a "social engineer"... when i asked what that meant, it was explained that me being white and upper middle class meant that I could apply leverage in ways that other folks can't. I don't know how I learn to do that, or if the kinds of situations N was describing even fall under my ethics requirements. But I can research a little on it.

I need to come back to this list. I need to do it soon.

Comments

[noahgibbs]

If they meant "social engineer" in the security sense, then it's physical penetration testing. Basically, try to show the problems in (often physical, not digital) security by poking holes in it. I follow Jek Hyde on Twitter, who does that for a living. She's awesome. Yay for live-tweeting after-hours dumpster diving for evidence :-)

As a physical pentest engineer, you wind up doing a lot of freeform calling people on the phone to see if you can get somebody to, for instance, give you the name of their extermination company (useful for later entry!) or other potentially-sensitive info. Anything that's directly sensitive, but also anything that would let you later impersonate people who can get entry to the building, or get questions answered. Finding out the name of their financial auditing company could easily qualify, for instance.

The more glamorous but rarer work is raiding dumpsters, searching property and otherwise seeing if you can snag evidence or get physically inside target buildings. Engineers being walked out by security is far from unknown, though they/you shouldn't wind up with a criminal record if you're doing it for a living.

While you *could* do this for illegal purposes, the ones who talk about it publicly generally do it for the company being tested. They or their company gets paid by that company for the gig. It's usually contract work for one company after another - I don't know of any big companies that keep a full-time physical pentest team, though it's not impossible that some do.

On non-penetrative intimacy

[serendipity17]

If you, like me, enjoy the tactile sensation of somebody else washing your body, I need to share about my side gig, which is body-wash evaluation for Actual Science (I fill out surveys and the researchers run statistics!). One of the products that we've been evaluating is the Olay Moisture Ribbons series, which foams quickly into a really slippery lather that *sticks* to the skin. Moderate nuisance to actually rinse, because it clings so well, but for sliding pressure without friction, this is gold. Shea butter w/lavender is in my shower now.