Am I a victim?

Am I a victim of my circumstances, or am I responsible for the situations I find myself in? I was raised by a single working-class mother in an economically depressed area of Philadelphia. In my community victims can be found everywhere you turn and look. There are victims of violence, victims of drugs and alcohol, and others are victims of racism, classism, and all the other “isms” that are out there. Now, I was born into all that, I carry the communal scars in the form of stories of hardship, struggle, and pain. My family, my friends, we all have the same stuff. So the question is, am I a victim all that?

I’ve been having some problems at work. There has been miscommunication, lack of follow up and follow through, people running around trying to do a thousand things at once, and no one listening to each other. I will take full responsibility for my share, but why is it that I now feel beaten up on by my bosses. I feel victimized, thus I now don’t want to work as hard as I’m used to. I have been at my current job for three years, and I find myself grumbling and complaining about my boss’s faults in leadership and management skills. And looking back, I hear the echoes of friends and family doing the exact same thing, for the exact same reasons. Is the victim mentality so ingrained in me that it comes out at the slightest hint of annoyance in the work place? Is the victim mentality the reason why I'm thirty years old and I haven't finished college and make less than $25,000 a year? Am I a victim of society, or am I a victim of my own mediocrity? Perhaps I'm being slightly too melodramatic. My fear is that, as I go on this path of wealth building with an ultimate goal of buying a house at the end, I will screw something up, and all the work will be for nothing. Or, I will get in my own way, and not succeed. I have hope that this will not be the case, but perhaps I have reached a plateau at this level of success.