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.

An example of historically unpleasant behavior...

...by the (husband) (Thai) owner of the one (Thai) restaurant where I used to work at:

It's a busy shift and I'm coming back with dishes and putting them in the dish-tubs and the bell rings for food, and I go to wash my hands because they're filthy before I pick up the food, and the (husband) (Thai) owner is there and asks why I didn't come right away when the bell rang, when the bell rings you come pick up the food, and I say that I had to wash my hands first, and then he says why did I have dishes anyways when I needed to pick up food, and I say that I already was in the middle of bussing them when the bell rang...

. . . 

(Just stuff like that...  When I told that to the one (older) (white) (female) (townie) bartender at the local brewery, she got this displeased look on her face and is like, "He was talking to you like a child," and I said yes, but it was only every few months or so in very very short interactions where you didn't even need to respond most of the time, you just nodded and went along with what you were doing...  Sometimes, I added, he didn't even make any sense, like once when I was working on a two-person lunch shift and we were absolutely slammed, he said that to manage tables we had to divide them so one person helped one table and the other person helped another, which made absolutely no f*cking sense and would actually have been more inefficient than what we were doing, the problem is that there was such a glut of people that 2 servers couldn't handle it all at once, sometimes restaurants are like that...)

Addendum addendum.

Like earlier last year, the (husband) (Thai) restaurant owner said something in the back to my one (Chinese from China) ex-coworker, and he was upset afterwards, and you could see tears actually forming at the edges of his eyes, he was so angry and so distraught from what the boss had said to him.

And, I didn't get into it with him, but I said that the boss was sometimes like that and that I just let it roll off my back, etc., but multiple people were **shocked** when I told them that story, when I was considering quitting and ultimately did quit.

It was just that abnormal to them, where I had been normalized into accepting and excusing that behavior from an employer, although perhaps in that particular case it was in part due to my not observing the actual interaction between them and not knowing exactly what went on, although that said, there's no reason anyone should come away feeling like that after an interaction with someone.