Addendum.

A bit ago at the recommendation of my one art school colleague who wears (women's) clothes I read this one memoir of the artist/philosopher Adrienne Piper.

If I remember correctly, one of the observations that she makes is that it's easier if you're a misfit to live in a foreign country, because if you're swimming against the tide in your native country, you're always out of step and it takes a lot of energy to always see others observing that, but if you live somewhere else, people will see right away that you don't belong and will never assume that you should, and so it's just easier to psychologically live.

Sometimes I wonder if she's right; trying to live abroad really does have that attraction for me, especially as I grow older and I'm professionally dislocated, and as I always tend to get these just fairly constant questions and looks from folks, about why I am in the place that I am and the insinuation that I should be someplace different. It's like this constant blame of me for not being someplace better, for not having money and not having a position and not having a house or whatever and being established somewhere, especially when they get scattered glimpses of what I do or what I have already achieved, it's like not only about why am I not a step above where I am now, but why I'm not two or three or even four steps up from that, they look at me and feel something is off and they just don't get it, and somehow they end up blaming me for it.

It's just weird.