frustration

You know, clichés are clichés for a reason. Because they work. And while words and sentences should be allowed to fall into that category, whole ideas shouldn't. There's probably five hundred ways for this story to start that aren't clichés, but absolutely none of them are jumping to my brain. Not when the supposedly clichéd beginning solves all the problems, gets what needs to be said said, and sets everything up for the rest of the story the way it needs to be set up.

But if I can't get anyone reading past the superficial label of "cliché," then none of the above matters. I have to change it, just because of that label. And it won't be as good when I do.

Who the hell said that starting a story with a journey had to be a cliché in the first place???

call me a troglodyte, it's okay

But there is one aspect of LJ that I find absolutely fascinating. And it's checking my profile page every once in a while to see who's friended me recently. I mean, I know it's the point of LJ, really, but ATM there are eight people in my "also friended by" list, and I can figure out the connection that might have brought them here for about half of them.

So, if you've friended me recently, and I haven't friended you back yet, it's mostly because I can't figure out who the heck you are [g]. If you'd care to comment here and tell me, I would love to know...

Oh, and yes, I did click on the profiles. Not very revealing, most of those profiles...

I know everyone else has thought of this before

But apparently I'm slow.

Warning, I don't know if you'd call this a rant or not, but it's ahead...

So. Everyone here in the U.S. has been bellyaching about the price of vehicle fuel. I'm one of them. One thing I have always cherished (taken for granted, yes, but cherished at the same time) has been the ability to get in my car and drive anywhere I want to, pretty much whenever I want to. As have millions of other people in this country.

Then someone (I think it was debgeisler), made the offhand statement, "now that we're coming closer to what everyone else in the world pays for gasoline," and it suddenly dawned on me: this must be a tiny bit of what it feels like for white males when women and minority groups tell them they've got no business complaining about loss of privilege. Or when -- ann_mcn, do you remember the discussion we had about talking about religion? I never understood the resentment that white males and Christians must feel, but I do now, just a little tiny bit. I resent this limitation on a privilege I always took for granted, but that I've only been allowed to take for granted for as long as I did because of the group I belong to. And I feel really ugly about it.

I've always known in the abstract that I am a privileged person. I have always been grateful that I was born where I was, that I grew up in an upper middle class household, that I've always been able to support myself decently as an adult, that I've never known any real want. But it's different having something concrete taken away. Even something like this.

I know the price of gasoline is petty in the long run, even if I'm living on something of a fixed income at the moment (it's by choice, so I have no right to complain about that, either). But I resent the price of gasoline. Because it's not just a cost. It's the source of a privilege that I've had taken away.

I feel really icky about feeling this way. But I don't really know what to do about it.

No, I'm not completely unable to afford gas. I just have to watch my driving much more closely, and limit myself so that I make it go as far as it can. I'm still doing a little pleasure driving, but I suspect that this year's jaunt to WorldCon will be my last long car trip for quite some time (which I probably would have cancelled by now if I hadn't started planning for it a year ago, and if other people weren't involved, and is part of why I'm being so miserly about how much I'm driving now). I have a car that gets 35mpg.

But it's the principle of the thing.

Anyway. Didn't mean to rant. But I needed to say this. I resent the whole energy crisis thing, and I don't like feeling like I don't have the right to, darnit!