Advice for sugarcoating your resume...

...if a potential employer presses you on why you left your last job, per the one (older) (white) (female) (townie) bartender at the local brewery:

Just say "it became a toxic environment," and leave it at that.

. . .

(She says that those words do wonders nowadays, and it says everything and people won't go into it, though of course I should first say like I was planning to do anyways something innocuous like "I'd been there a while and it was time for a change," this is just if they press you on it like they don't believe your reason, this is a good thing to say then.) 

News of a death:

Around the turn-of-the-year, since I haven't visited the one resthome that I used to work at for a while and since the one resthome resident who used to give me candy didn't look too good on my last visit -- walker, oxygen, sitting a bit out-of-it in a chair when I arrived -- I look online for an obituary and I don't find one, so I jot her a note about how I hope that she's doing well, I had taken longer vacations to see my parents and for a conference and I hadn't had a chance to come by recently, etc. etc. etc., all very light and cheery, since who knows where she is, healthwise, and in big letters, too, so she can read it, and I throw it in the local mailbox like a block away from my house.

And, like a week after that, I pick up my mail and there's a medium-sized envelope that was delivered and sitting amidst my daily newspaper, and I pitch it on my kitchen table and I don't look at it closely until I get home that night from something, and then I look at the return address label and it's my old (white) (gay) (Midwestern) (retirement-age) coworker at the resthome, so I get a feeling that she died, especially since the envelope is large-ish, and I open it up, and right there is my returned letter and a card from him saying that she passed away a few months ago with her nephew and niece there, and he tucked in his Christmas newsletter about him and his partner.

And, I remember that I had phone trouble the very day that I last visited her, so I look it up on my phone, and the last date that I visited was exactly a year to the day that I got the letter from him, returning my letter and saying that she had died.

A life regret:

If I had known that I would end up as a bohemian dropout, I wish that I would have dropped out sooner, like in the mid-2010s or whatever -- no professionalization or unionization initiatives in higher ed, no great attempts to recalibrate career sectors, just go be a waiter and be done with it, all the way back then.

That would have given me another 4 years of productivity, versus all of the time and energy that I put into things that just had no pay-off. 

Like, I've been on my current path for like what now, 5-6 years?

Imagine where I could be now, if I had had that extra 4 years head-start. 

Comment to landlord, and delayed response.

Earlier this year I made a preliminary inquiry to my landlord about potentially trying to put a bathouse on the property, to attract bats and maybe cut down on the local mosquito problem.

And, he was nice about it, but it was "a hard no," he said, because bats can get in the attics of old houses like the front house and just wreak incredible damage, there.

Like a few months later, though, during a mid-winter thaw when all of the snow had melted away everywhere, he came over to the property, and I saw him up on the roof of my cottage, clearing its gutters of leaves.

. . . 

(Mosquitos often breed in such spaces.) 

Job application preparation irony:

I use the wi-fi at the local brewery and have a beer, as I take an online certification about state intoxication laws.

. . .

(. . .)

Another angle on quitting.

Part of the reason I have worked in eldercare and then in restaurants the past number of years is because I want a pleasant, low-stress, and predictable job where I can have a steady income stream and clock in and clock out and preserve my time and headspace for writing.

Walking on eggshells around a boss is incompatible with that -- -- -- and so, as soon as he changed the balance of the workplace like that, I was out.

Done. 

Aftermath of quitting...

...like five days after I quit my one job at the one (Thai) restaurant where I used to work at, in the college town that I now live in: 

As I walk to the one local coffee shop to go have a late afternoon coffee and use their wi-fi, I glance down the storefronts on that street, and there in the window of the (Thai) restaurant is their bright pale orange Plasticene sign soliciting applications for servers and delivery drivers, which they haven't had up for a while.