Retroactive affirmation of my economic perceptions.

So, I was reading the local newspaper the other week, and what do you know, there's starting to be movement in the state where I live around advocacy for a higher minimum wage for healthcare workers, and it would peg the wage to around $24-25 an hour right now, and all that when I've been saying for several years now that you'd need something like $25 an hour to re-stabilize eldercare workplaces!

And, in that newspaper article, someone commented that people can walk out the door right now and get a better paying job at a fastfood restaurant, so why would you want those healthcare jobs.

Exactly what I've been saying!

It really was that sudden and completely unexpected wage-growth from the bottom beginning around 2021 and into 2022 that left many healthcare workplaces short-staffed...  Over the past few years I've heard multiple out-of-touch Baby Boomers opine shit like "But those jobs have always been low-paid!", just not getting that there's pay gradations even among "low-paid" jobs, and how relatively equivalent pay found more easily elsewhere just severely reduces the number of people who want to get involved with jobs that require licenses certs etc. and would only lead to something "better" after years put in and more training and shifting around.

Unfortunately, I got involved in that sector like late 2017 into 2018 and I had just put in my time when the pandemic hit and stuck me in limbo, and then when things started letting up and I thought I could re-start my plans, boom, that pay situation of 2022. 

And, though solutions are now being talked about, they'd still have to be adopted, and then they'd phase in over time. Like, it's already 2025, so let's say it's adopted in 2025 or 2026, when would things be fully phased in, like 2028 or 2029? And does "fully phased-in minimum wage" mean "re-stabilized workplaces"?  Not necessarily! Stable workplaces can take time to build, so that might take even a few years more! So, that's already more than a **decade** after I'd decided to throw down with the sector, meaning, what's the point of even seeking to re-enter it again in hopes of something "better," when you're staring down the barrel of 2030 and you're like 50 years old?

Just another false start in my 15+ year run of bad luck, that many people don't understand, attributing bad outcomes to poor choices and lack of effort on my part.

Interestingly, when I mentioned some of this economic stuff to the one (lesbian) sister of my one (former) (assisted living client) with (disabilities), she said it didn't surprise her, given that economic chaos like that had followed previous pandemics, from what she'd read, back when she was looking to history for thinking through what might happen during and after the pandemic of our time...  She had actually said something about economic chaos to me early during the pandemic, too, and what do you know, it turns out that she was right!

A Desire to Return to (Thailand).

The other week my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker was saying that in a few years, she wants to move back to (Thailand), permanently, since she says that life is just so much easier there, and that I really have no idea.

Like, lately she's had to run around for immigration paperwork, including a two-hour one-way trip to a big city in a neighboring state.

In comparison, she said, you could just go to any government office in (Thailand) and do equivalent paperwork, and they even have locations in the mall and a bank there, too, and so you just drop your kids off at the playground in the mall, run your errands, and you're done.

She also said that even with more everyday things like banks, banking locations are everywhere, so it's not like here, where you're constantly traveling from one location for one errand to another location for another errand.

So, she said that she's dedicated to staying put for now until her oldest daughter graduates from high school -- several moves in several years have been hard on her -- but after that, back to (Thailand), no attempt made at acquiring U.S. citizenship at all.

She also said that it will be perfectly timed so her daughter can attend college in (Thailand), too, since it's so much less expensive there. 

. . .

(Pretty simultaneous with this conversation, my one [art school] colleague who wears [women's] clothes was saying that he had had a nightmare of a time figuring out where he could get a Real ID to travel by plane to a wedding, since he had gone to one far-away DMV location but there was some hiccup, and a closer DMV location was closed and there was a temporary office across the street but it wasn't known or marked, etc., and when I told him what my coworker had just said about a lack of convenience in the U.S., he found it comforting, to know that it wasn't just him seeing and experiencing this... For years, though, he has said that life in the one city that I used to live in and that he still lives in is way, way harder than it needs to be or should be, like it's just surprisingly and constantly difficult in ways that make no sense and don't have to be that way.)

An addendum...

...in response to so many questions raised about that one (Romanian) who would suck eggs through breaks in the shell, during his work-day at a(n English) market:

he would keep them under his market stall table and then when he had a quiet moment he would devour two, three or even four eggs in one go. since i was not a customer he would often do it in front of me and then extol the virtue of raw eggs. 

i also have some vague memory of him saying that he made pigeon pie from some pigeons that roosted in his attic. it could be that he was pulling my leg. it's difficult to say.

. . .

A memory of a (Romanian)...

...from my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair), referring back to a(n English) open-air market that he used to work at for a bit:

when i used to work at the market there was a romanian guy there who worked on a cheese stall and the lady next to him who used to run the egg stall would give him any eggs that happened to get broken. he would then snack on these raw eggs throughout the day, sucking the yolk through the break in the shell. 

. . .

"Proud to be an American."

Twice over the past year, I've been studying at a bar and some (drunk) (white) person has asked me what's up, and I say that I have a Ph.D. and went bohemian and I am breaking new ground on an ancient language in my spare time, and I do this as kind of like an intense and time-consuming artistic practice, and they totally just go with it, and, even more than that, they say that what I'm doing makes them "proud to be an American."

Something about it just strikes them, that I can just strike out and do this and live my love, and it just really captures their imagination.

Neither of the two people who said this to me seems to have had any substantial ties to the academy, either; one was a random (30s) (stoner) (white) dude, and the other was a (late 50s) (white) mom whose daughter was actually graduating that spring with a linguistics degree.

Somehow, they just seemed really proud, that someone is doing what I'm doing right there in their midst, in their community.

It really is just this deep and genuine reaction that I simply never would have anticipated taking place, where they're just taking me at my word and at face value and are just showing me the most immediate and most deepest fondness and respect.

An encounter with a visiting musician.

A few months ago, I was studying intensively at a local bar that often has live music, just zoning out and thinking and outlining about the one ancient language that I've been studying intensively for the past number of years now and have made myself into quite the expert in, and I was in a super productive streak as the jam night was breaking up, and just a little bit later than that this one (scruffy) (skinny) (bearded) (white) guy with rings on his fingers and a torn dirty t-shirt is chatting with this girl a few stools down from me, and then he glances at my dictionary and lolls his head onto the bar to look at what's written on the spine of the dictionary, and he starts to want to talk to me, and I'm like, "Sorry, usually I would love to talk, but I'm really in the middle of something right now, and I don't want to break it," and he then asks me if I'm set up to continue as I order another beer from the bartender, and I say yes, and he's like, "Cool, man," and he goes away affably.

And, later that night he circles back around, and I'm at a different place in my work, and he sits down on the stool next to me and we talk some -- he is totally on board with how I am spending my life, like many artists I know are, and he asks me if I am "fulfilled," further explaining that artists can usually never be "happy," but they can be "fulfilled" -- and he also says that he's a traveling musician who plays keyboard for some singer, and he says that his bandmates are at a hotel by the interstate and he Uber-ed into town and has been drinking all day, and he has to meet them in a few hours before their tour bus leaves town to head out to go to their next show.

And, I tell him about my one (white) friend from (Mississippi), and how the past few years he's been a traveling musician, and how he converted his truck into something he can sleep out of, and he just keeps a membership at Planet Fitness so he can take a shower whenever he needs to.

"Sounds like he's doing better than me," he was like.

"What do you mean?", I was like. "Like with gigs?".

"No, I don't shower enough," he was like, quite seriously.

He was also telling me that he tried doing the music thing in Brooklyn, but he didn't have any success with it until he moved to Texas.

"Because competition is so cut-throat and people sabotage each other in a scene like New York, even though everyone thinks that it's best to be there?", I was like.

"No," he was like, "I was doing too much cocaine."

At some point, too, he looks into my eyes and he's like, "What would it take to remember this moment forever?", and twice within five minutes he asks me how old I am, and also towards the end of the night like around 1am or so he buys a logo-ed t-shirt from the bar, taking his shirt off and standing there in the mostly-empty bar with his pale hairy chest as he goes to try it on, and then when it fits, he takes it off again and stands there shirtless like that and gets some scissors from the bartender, to rip it up around the sleeves and neck, to have it look better, somehow, when he wears it.

. . .

(Later I text my one [white] friend from [Mississippi] about this guy and the band he was traveling with as the keyboardist, and he had two things to say, for one, yes, he did know that band, and for two, that guy sounds like a drummer.)

Some (English) practice, with (Guatemalan) coworkers...

...at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

1) For some reason, one (Guatemalan) coworker wants to know how you say Que estas mirando in (English). 

And, I think that means "What are you looking at?", though why he would want to know how to say that, is beyond me.

2) My one (Guatemalan) coworker who is learning (English) with Duolingo also wants help with the pronunciation of the word "at," and he seems very confused that it can be pronounced either with a T at the end or with a glottal stop, since my guess is that those are two very different sounds in his (non-Spanish) (indigenous) language that is his mother tongue.