Flashbacks to public transportation, and healthcare, and safety.

Recently four things brought me back to the city that I used to live in:

1) When I visited there recently for a concert I rode the same subway line that I had ridden for like fifteen years before its safety and security started slipping...  Just more seediness on platforms that you never used to see it on, like odd people with plastic-bagged belongings just slouching about, and like twice during daytime/evening-slightly-off-peak-but-not-crazy hours I had just missed a train, and it was 18-20 minutes until the next one. And, even late at night, the maximum frequency used to be like 15 minutes between trains!

2) During the first day of school, it came across my social media feed, someone's experiences on the morning of the first day of school, where it was like 20 minutes between trains on a major line and on a major street the bus was full, and it was like 37 minutes until the next one.

(Between the two, I simply can't imagine still being in the city that I used to live in, and still being dependent on public transportation, and still facing crap like this for the past 2 years, like I was for almost a year before I decided to move.)

3) When I was cleaning out papers in my apartment, I went through my table where I had health insurance and tax stuff, so I could put that away in my files...  I had kept 3 piles of health insurance stuff, 1 with my fly-by-night lowest-cost-on-the-ACA-marketplace insurer from back then, and then successive years of my new insurer in the college town where I live now.

I have *still* been getting whack bills that I've had to challenge all the way back from some screening stuff in 2021 -- a big part of the reason that I've been keeping stuff out in piles! -- whereas now when I went back and excavated stuff, I saw that there were two brief "blips" of billing problems with my new insurer -- the first time I had used insurance when I was here for Covid booster stuff and a physical, someone forgot to input my insurance number, and once with a third-party provider -- but they were quickly, quickly resolved, and otherwise everything operated smoothly.

And, it was also striking to me how I've default had continuity of care here, versus an endless revolving door of insurers and providers back in the city that I used to live in. Sure, there's problems like I can't get an appointment right away and I have to check back in if there's cancellations or something, but it's just low-level normalcy aggravation, versus what was just unbelievable hassle to get mere basics.

4) I saw like 2 bits of crime stuff in the news, where a robbery crew hit a restaurant on the main business strip in the neighborhood that I used to live in, and then on the same spree they were all the way in the neighborhood where my one (assisted living) client with (disabilities) used to live, and they robbed the little neighborhood supermarket there on a weekday evening.

Also, over a few weeks there was a few armed robberies on another business strip on a main street just north of where I used to live, where I used to go to this great bar and walk home sometimes at night like midnight - 1 - 2 am, always without a problem, and where you'd never hear of anything happening.

(Just too many close calls and weird stuff still happening in places where I used to frequent, it was a good decision to move.)