I just woke up in terror from a dream where I had gone back to my old job (after two years away from it), and my first day back clicked on a phishing email and had to run incident response while feeling like the world’s biggest dumbass, and trying to remember how all the tools worked and how to reach all the right people for response.
My kids had their Japanese-Korean friend from school over yesterday. At one point they were talking about getting married (idk the context I wasn't paying attention), and the little girl said "I'm never getting married, that's gross." And my daughter said something like "but you have to be married to have children" (I had to later explain this is not necessarily true, haha), to which the little girl said very loudly "I HATE CHILDREN."
My younger daughter replied "What!? But you ARE children!"
I then caught them peering around the corner recording me with their phones as I sat playing Sims 4 on one monitor and watching The Bachelorette on the other so that's great that they now have permanent footage of that.
My daughter is 10 and her IPC unit at school right now is about our impact on the environment. She came to me the other day ranting about how wasteful people are and how bad single use is and how we are ruining the planet. Then she sighed and said, "it's so hard to be better about it though."
I read an article this morning in Security mag about the top threats currently concerning CSOs and the most interesting take aways to me were that 1. nine in ten reported experiencing insider threats last year. and 2. climate change is rising as a top concern for cybersecurity.
Of course climate change is just a top concern, period. Obvious. But I had not really thought about it in terms of a cybersecurity threat beyond my general concern about how huge the impact of technology is in all ways to the environment (I died a little inside every time I had to gather our ewaste at my last job, there was always SO MUCH...)
But as I read this it was suddenly so obvious that of course our increased reliance on tech, especially in the energy sector, is just increasing the attack surface.
Just one more reason, not that there aren't already plenty, we should all care about climate change and our impact on the planet....
Stop to consider before you comment on someone’s outfit. Whatever you’re about to say, is it necessary? Is it kind?
For three decades I have quietly struggled with body dysmorphia. I am about as average as it gets. I am a US size 8, I am 5’6”, there is nothing about me that stands out very remarkably.
More important than my height or size is that I can climb a 5,000ft peak with my husband and run a 5k without trouble and go on all the adventures I please because I do my best to take care of myself.
Yet despite all this I often look in the mirror and somehow see an eight foot billion pound twenty armed sea squid staring back at me (metaphorically speaking). I can stare at myself and know there is nothing wrong with the jeans and t-shirt I have on, and then change my outfit five times before going back to the original outfit, stressing anxiously the entire time.
I have to deliberately practice self validation to walk out the door in the simplest outfit sometimes. I have to stand in a mirror and tell myself stuff like this:
“I have just as much of a right as anyone else to exist on this planet, no matter what I look like”
“It’s nobodies business what I look like”
“I’m not Korean and I am not supposed to look Korean” (this one is specific to the fact that I live in Korea and I have a very non-Korean shaped body).
“I should wear what I like unapologetically”
“The people important to me love me exactly the way I am”
No one I know would guess how difficult it is some days for me to just put on clothes and leave my house, especially because I love eccentric styles and am pretty sure I was a Harajuku girl in some past life. I’ve created this illusion that because my style is different then the average I must be completely confident about how I look. This seems to make people feel like they are entitled to comment on my clothing choices.
So when you meet up with someone, please don’t say things like “aren’t you going to be hot in that?” Or “jeez what happened to your shirt, did the cat get to it?” (Yes someone said this to me recently because I was wearing an intentionally distressed sweatshirt). “I don’t know how you are wearing that…”
Feel free to just say nothing at all about a person’s choice of clothing and instead say something like “I’m so happy to spend some time chilling with you today!”
You really have no idea what someone’s experience with their body and clothing is, no matter how comfortable and outgoing you may perceive them to be.
My daughter came home and told me her friend dumped her because she’s too bossy and I opened my big stupid mouth and said something like “well your other friends have also said they felt you were bossing them around, so what’s going on that everyone still feels this way?” And she ran down the hall screaming “HOW DARE I TRY TO TALK TO YOU AND EXPECT YOU TO MAKE ME FEEL BETTER YOU DONT UNDERSTAND ANYTHING!”
Then she locked me out of her room (she’s 10)
Sorry but what is the universe on today? For real though.