#or is it 'has a major breakdown looming on the horizon and want to at least get home before it hits' exhaustion

[gibbearish]

im thinking too much about the security breach endings now help

[katiebruce]

adios, amigo.

Well, 2020. What is there to say that hasn’t already been said, tweeted or Instagram-ed a thousand and two times about you? I’ll save us all the generic stuff—“unprecedented,” “nightmarish,” “absurd”—yes, 2020 was all of those things, but on a deeper, more personal level, there is so much more I have to say that doesn’t fit quite into those clichés.

So, this will be my attempt to document and reflect upon one of the strangest years I’ve encountered in my thirty-one years on this planet. Buckle up, buttercup.

Like many others before me have frequently observed, the way I spend my New Year’s Eve has always set the tone for the year to come, and boy, was this year a picture-perfect example of exactly that. Because I had to work on January first, I spent my New Year’s Eve at home watching a depressing movie with T, quietly kissing on the cold back patio as fireworks went off in the distance. I remember feeling both happy and sad about this evening (a duality that was a major theme for me for the fifty-two weeks to come, if only I had known). I was sad not to be celebrating my favorite holiday and even remember telling T that I didn’t want the year to come to be one I spent not going out, staying home, and becoming reclusive as I finished up the stressful process of finishing my MFA thesis in the course of ten (or, what I thought would be ten) short months.

But on the other hand, being held in T’s arms, I remembered feeling so happy that I could have this little quiet holiday—something that felt so private and personal—so entirely our own. It really set the tone for our relationship for the year, and for the obstacles we not only overcame together but dominated, one right after the next.

January was cold, snowy, and full of flight cancellations, which I remember to be something worth celebration at the time. I stayed home and snuggled my way into Aquarius season, the time for me and my brethren to shine, feeling positive that I had lived my thirtieth year to one of great satisfaction and maximum travels taken. (If only I had known then that that late-January El Paso layover where my crew and I walked across the border into Juarez to eat street tacos and laugh over Mezcal would be one of the only times I would leave the country for the year, well, I might have taken a few shots of tequila and really enjoyed my stay abroad just a bit longer).

February came, and with it, the promise of friends. My darling Kristopher, as always, flew to Chicago on the day of (also the day I completed and passed my eighth recurrent [!]) and, thanks to my other darling baby, Nicole, scored tickets to one of the highly coveted format reunion tour shows happening in March* for me, her, and my momma.

(*It did not, in fact, take place in March).

I turned thirty-one in the way I’ve come accustomed too—surrounded by my favorite people (this year at Dorians—a jazz club to end all jazz clubs) too drunk and too smiley to even coherently remember the evening properly. As much fun as I remember having, I told T that I thought it was my last year to host some sort of birthday gathering, and to hold me to it come next year. (He did very well—a few weeks later, after spotting an ad in a discarded newspaper for the Chicago tour of Moulin Rouge happening on my birthday weekend, we bought tickets and I sat peacefully with the fact that one of my new year (or, new age) resolutions was so quickly and poignantly adapted).

By this time, I was already deep in the throes of my first thesis writing course, meaning that I was pretty stressed out all of the time and surely a misery to be around (sorry to those of you who were). Basically, in three semesters’ time, I was expected to draft, edit, and rewrite a fully formed novel (70,000+ words) and the idea of accomplishing such a feat felt like a ton of bricks being carried on my shoulders. I had at least four mental breakdowns in the beginning of the year (again, we all know what lays ahead for the year, I know—but at the time, this seemed like an unbearable amount of stress for one person to have to carry. The joke is not lost on me).

In the coming weeks, things began to get even weirder. Covid scares began sprouting up in cities all around us, and as the government asked people to stay at home, airline ticket prices became massively reduced, so more people began traveling. I mean, this shit was like spring break on acid—it was hugely stressful, and though the threat of the pandemic had yet to reach Chicago, I felt more and more at risk with each passing day as careless amounts of people cashed in on what they thought was the deal of a lifetime.

By the time March reached its midpoint, I, like so many others, was terrified. We had no PPE at work—literally nothing. No gloves, masks, or even hand wipes. Cleaning the aircraft still wasn’t considered a “no-go” item, as far as regulatory practices go. I remember watching the news on my layovers only to keep myself up at night wondering if the virus was going to take hold of me or anyone around me, and if so, how long until they would recover, or perhaps wouldn’t.

St. Patrick’s Day came, and after fighting about whether or not to go out with friends (we didn’t—and for the record, T and I rarely fight—but this was, after all, his first St. Patrick’s Day as a Chicagoan—so his resentment was more than justified) we saw a matinee movie (Onward) and while in the theater, read about how Chicago restaurants, as a precaution, were shutting down the next day due to rising concerns about the spread of the virus. We reacted by grabbing drinks & lunch at one of our favorite neighborhood eateries and tipping the waitstaff more heavily than I think I’ve ever tipped anyone in my life (not mentioning this to brag, or whatever—just remembering what it was like to feel utterly helpless and unsure of what to do or what was to come—we had to find our positivity in some way, and on that day, this was how we saw fit, and it helped).

Then it all sort of happened at once—Lauren’s store was closed with no impending reopening date. The grocery stores (and I swear to god, I will never forget this) became a madhouse—people taking things out of other people’s carts when they weren’t looking. I remember going into Mariano’s with T and insisiting we tie bandanas around our faces for safety, feeling like a goddamn bank robber about to make a heist. But there was nothing left to even take. Frantically, we got what we could and got out of there, and I went home to have a full-fledged panic attack about the state of the world we were currently living in and what we were going to do if things didn’t turn around quickly.

As if overnight, everyone cancelled their airline tickets. It was for the better, and though it put my job in serious jeopardy, I was in massive support of it but still felt an eerie sadness looming around the countless empty airports, airplanes, hotels and city streets. There were times when my crew and I were the only guests in a place—times when I had zero passengers on a revenue flight. And then came the mass flight cancellations—and I mean mass. Everyday became a battle of anxiety as to what was going to happen to my job in the next twenty-four hours, and then cooing my stressed-out thoughts to sleep, only to relive the anxiety with every phone buzz waiting to find out if I had lost my job overnight. By mid-spring, I was hugely considering dropping out for a period of time, just due to the stress of it all, but thanks to support from my friends, family and T, I chose to stick it out and roll with as many punches as I could until I was finally knocked-out.

Quarantines were happening all around me, and without the ability to travel or the (former) grueling expectations of maintaining a social life, I started to reconnect with myself in ways that felt both organic and new, yet much like returning home after a long time away. Lauren taught me to knit, and we celebrated her birthday on the floor of our apartment in an Indian-food induced daze renting Emma and making thousands of tiny knots onto needles that would eventually become blankets. We took walks, did puzzles, and Lauren drove me to and from the airport on the rare occasion that I actually had a flight to work, as the CTA had, unfortunately, become a cesspool of targeted attacks on flight crew members (seriously) because they were often the only person in any given train car.

A rare glimpse of optimism then presented itself via two different opportunities: a chance to take a ninety-day leave from work, and a job offer in the form of editing a book for publication. I said yes to both and hoped that I would be able to take a step back and deal with the crumbling world around me easier with both of these opportunities now on my horizon.

This period of the year (May-July) started off swimmingly. Knitting, reading, and even smoking weed for the first time in nearly a decade (I took two hits and spent the rest of the evening sinking into the couch painfully aware of how bad I am at breathing and worrying that I might stop at any given moment). I fell in love with yoga and felt myself loosening up parts of my body and my mind that had been twisted into a series of knots for god only knows how long. I spent days reading in the sun, baking bread like everyone else in the world, and learning to make my own pies. Things were going really well, and I was even ahead in school, now on track to graduate in August—when things started getting heated.

I’m not going to go on a rant about race, although I very much could, but I will say this—the fact that we are still in a race war in this country in the year 2020 (and even now, a few days into 2021) makes me so sick to my stomach I don’t know what to do. Every injustice that passes by us, overshadowed by the next untimely death or wrongdoing makes me angry in ways that I cannot even fathom putting into words. It burns the color red that is so hot and so vibrant that I can see it soaking through my eyelids even when I squeeze them shut. This country lost a lot of love from me this year, and even more respect. There are not only things we can do better—there are things we must change. And honestly, most days, I don’t think most of the country is ready to not only admit that but to also work for. And that not only sickens me, but depresses the living hell out of me. I feel so stunted all of the time when I picture a world so at peace with its own injustice. It’s just so unfair.

I watched as the world was (rightfully, although woefully) destroyed around me. My neighborhood turned into a desolate, looted shadow of itself—one where Lauren and I could sit on our back patio safely until dusk, when the crime and gunfire became so rabid that on occasions, we sat in the living room in total darkness, listening only to the radio, afraid to let anybody at street level see that we were, indeed, at home. The opportunists that took advantage of the message of this movement made me numb to such a large demographic of the population, and I found myself crying myself to sleep enough times that I thought it might be time to leave the warzone that had become Chicago for a little while as escape down to Florida. So, we packed our bags and left. It is not lost on me that so many did not have this option, and for so many minorities, just simply existing during this time was enough to cause assault. I know I am fortunate—I carry it like lead in my pockets every day.

While in Florida, the first retailers began to reopen and I found myself waiting in an hour-long line to buy soaps and hand sanitizers, and to get a glimpse of what this “new normal” might look like when things started picking back up again. Like many, it was jarring to see empty tables, capacity limits on items, cashiers behind plexiglass sheets shouting to be heard over both the physical barrier and the cloth one strung across their faces.

By the time T & I arrived home, Lauren was already making plans to reopen her store “safely” and I felt sorry for her. How could anything be safe when nothing had changed? Why were companies acting as if business could go on like before—even though nothing had gotten better?

My final months of my MFA were just ahead of me, and I had one month remaining free from work to finish my first full-length novel, and I all I really remember is stress stress stress.

And then Andrew, being Andrew, offered a glimmer of hope, in the form of a drive-in concert celebrating fifteen years of Everything in Transit in southern California, a mere matter of hours from where Nicole had been working. It took a matter of two or maybe three text messages to confirm that we would be attending, and once the ticket was purchased I practically packed my bags and headed off to visit her and try and make light of my heart.

As suspected, the trip was magical. Being around Nicole, per usual, was magical. My heart felt so fully aligned seeing a little piece of her story and getting to experience her way of life once more—drunken hot springs and all their glory. There truly are few things in my life I love more than sitting in the passenger’s seat as Nicole drives us all over the country, and experiencing it again felt so right and so perfect that I honestly thought it was one of the happiest experiences of my life. Because I had requested so, she drove me all the way to Venice Beach the day of the concert so we could see where the infamous album cover was taken. We ate cbd gummies and listened to jack’s and ate in-n-out burger like our lives depended on it. When the concert began, it was eerie, yet hopeful to see all the new protocols of something that had become so familiar to me in my former life. Drinks were ordered through an app and delivered, as was merch, and clapping was replaced by the exuberant honking of car horns. We streamed the sound through the radio and laid the in the back of Nicole’s converted SUV as we cried and sang along to the songs that made everything, even just for one night, feel like it was all going to be okay again. We ended the evening marking ourselves with our first stick and poke tattoos—hers a sun to my moon, positioned to kiss one another when we stand next to each other on our preferred selfie side (lol). I left worried about how long it might be before I could feel her warm embrace again, the embrace of one of the truest friends I’ll ever know, but also recognizing that we were lucky to have had such an experience at all during such an insane year and feeling eternally grateful for its memory.

The last weeks of what I referred to as my Rumspringa were ahead of me, and one sunny afternoon I wrote the final pages of my novel. In a mad rush to edit, revise and complete my portfolio for official review, I never really sat with myself and what I had accomplished or congratulated myself; I wrote a book in seven months’ time, and even though I am unhappy with it (more on that later) there’s no denying that I actually did it. I did it, and nobody can ever take that away from me; it’s an accomplishment I will forever have, and it’s all my own. And I need to remind myself of that. I need to let myself feel proud.

I was back to work in September and taking a huge pay cut, though working the same hours. It was stressful, but once I found out my portfolio had been accepted and I, indeed, would be receiving my MFA I felt a bit at peace for a while. I had let my hair grow long all summer, and all but stopped wearing make-up (mascara makes me feel entirely dolled up now). I felt in an odd way free—almost bare.

The fall came and went fairly quickly—the weekends alone at home and grocery-store-only outings feeling more and more like normalcy. It had been such a tough, trying year, that it suddenly felt nice to just stand still for a bit. So, I did.

In a brief amount of time, I watched (safely) as friends got married, got sick, got older and fell in love. I watched, with great anxiety, as our country voted in the most important election of our lives so far and took the deepest breath I’d ever taken as I watched that man face defeat—although he’s yet to swallow it. I watched as ex-lovers had babies, got engaged and never really stopped to think twice about any of it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the safety (and not in a lame, “safety-net” sort of way) of having T in my life has turned me into someone who not only craves quiet time at home, but really also sort of fell right damn into it very easily, though unexpectedly. I’ve heard the saying so many times before, but you really don’t realize everything is different once you find the right fit because that place feels like it’s always been home. I am grateful to not only have that now and moving forward, but most certainly throughout the trying, unstable times of 2020. In fact, I don’t know how I would have survived without it.

The holidays always creep up on me, and after being dealt a shitty hand from work (don’t even get me started, I’m still fuming) they came that much quicker. T & I were lucky enough to spend the holidays back home in the swamp, visiting my parents and his Dad. The time went by fast but was relaxing, fun, and reenergizing. We spent New Year’s Eve playing giant Jenga and yard Yahtzee with my parents in the cool, tropical winter of Florida. It was nice. We got tired right around 11, so we laid in bed until midnight talking, staying awake just long enough to share our new year’s kiss. It felt right—a proper send off to such a strange and unusual year. I was exctly where I needed to be—wrapped up in a blanket of T’s embrace, comfy in a bed in my childhood bedroom.

So now, here it is: 2021—the supposed upgrade to 2020, or so everybody secretly hopes. So now, as I sit here, drinking a warm, soy-chai latte (homemade!) I find myself having great difficulty setting an intention for the days ahead of me. I feel so beaten and bruised and physically fatigued for no reason but the experiences of 2020 and the courses they ran all over my life. I’m feeling reflective of having finished yet another year of my life (and my Saturn return! Halleluj!) and finding it hard to be anything but fatigued. I guess it’s from the year that’s just finished—more so than any other year it physically pained me at times to be alive at times. I’m missing so many of my friends who I haven’t been able to see for extended months at a time now. I am craving a sense of normalcy, of safety, so that I can feel better about making plans, but as for right now I just don’t have it. I am quietly trying to make subtle changes within myself and how I react to the world around me, but just like the start of this new year, that process is a slow one.

One of my resolutions (though I’m growing to hate that word more and more with each passing year) is to get back to writing. I had a good, albeit stressful, thing going while still in school, and after finishing my novel and receiving feedback, I couldn’t shake the feeling of absolute failure. It’s still there—it’s really hard to try and celebrate an accomplishment when you don’t feel like your work was good enough to warrant anything at all—especially not a fine arts degree. I never said I was a fiction writer—I just wanted to get better at writing fiction—so I need to remember that and allow myself to veer away from that for a while, to work on something new. Something I’ve been saying I’m not ready to write for many years now, something that when I now say that is just a plain old lie: My memoir. I’m ready to close the chapter in my life where I am a flight attendant, so the timing feels more than perfect.

I learned so much about what I want to do within my career and what sort of boundaries I don’t want to place on myself—and I’m trying, I really am. T gifted me with my own pottery wheel for Christmas and we are going to set it up this weekend and I am so excited to get my hands muddy and start creating. Until this year, I didn’t realize how much I needed a creative outlet other than writing—I had been depending on it for too long, my little cup felt bone dry. So, I’m excited to see where this new hobby takes me and how it influences my ability to return to the blank page—quite literally.

I know this year will not be the quick fix that so many are hopeful for—I think quite the opposite, actually. But here are some things I know for sure will happen: I will move out of my apartment and in with T. We will then, immediately get a dog and a new apartment. This, alone, feels like enough to fill the pages of the blank year ahead of us. I will go long periods of time without seeing my loved ones, and without traveling (bleak as this lifestyle may be). I will write, even when it’s hard to. I will publish something—I’m at work submitting pieces as we speak, and though the process is slow, I can tell this is my opportunity—I am ready t fight for it. I will turn 32, and the numerology of my life will seem more aligned. I will spend my birthday at home, alone, because of course Moulin Rouge has now been cancelled (I’m fine with it). I will learn more about myself the more I use my hands to create, to plant, to sculpt, to mold. I will love with fervor. I will smile more, because it’s actually healthier for you, even though my black heart hates to admit it. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get to attend a live concert, though I realize this might be wishful thinking at this point. I will do mushrooms and giggle with the colors. I will cry. I will hurt and I will cause harm. But through it all, I will persevere. Because if 2020 taught me anything, it’s that I am capable of regenerating into new versions of myself that I didn’t even have the time to dream up. I can adapt to whatever is thrown at me, though it will often times feel impossible. I can, and will, create. I can be reborn (as many times as I’d like to, too).

So, thanks, 2020, for teaching me more about myself than any other period of five years has ever taught me. I definitely feel like I’ve been through the ringer a couple of times, yet I find myself still standing day after day. It must be the way a domino feels, standing up, time after time, knowing that something right in front of you is about to knock you down. But instead of thinking about what I’m bringing down with me, I’m thinking of the entire collective as a whole—we are all experiencing this together. And maybe, just maybe, on the other side, there’s a kid with a smile waiting to do it all over again. And that’s perhaps where the beauty lays: we have to tear everything down in order to do better, be better, make change. Nobody likes to catch fire, but everyone loves rising from the ashes. We’ll all get to where we’re headed, one way or another. And eventually, I hope, we’ll see that the other side is better than we could have ever dreamt of.

I hope that 2021 is a bridge that brings us from destruction to creation. I hope the journey is long, so we all appreciate the outcome.

I love you all and wish you warmth and wellness into this year and beyond.

Happy new year—honor the circumstances you have around you and let them help you grow.

[thesouthernpansy]

sacred geometry (5/?)

stanford pines/bill cipher

ford arrived at backupsmore university ready to put his head down and get lost in his classwork. his new roommate seemed to have come prepared to haul him back out, again.

that, and eat uncooked blocks of ramen.

somehow, that isn’t even the weirdest thing happening on campus, and the prospect of strange new mysteries and stranger new friends has ford feeling almost glad to be here.

it’s a college au, let’s crack some books

(here on ao3)

Observable time seems to contract around Ford through the course of his cursory morning routine, the necessary human inanities stretching out dim and red and slow like light on the lip of a black hole. Ford's thoughts spaghettify desperately around it, spinning away into stringy, unrecognizable particulate. He scratches shampoo into his scalp and tries to let that speak louder than the event horizon of the buzzing in his ears.

In the end, somehow, Ford still makes it to his first class of the day with seconds to spare. Fiddleford has a seat saved for him, but there isn't time to give him more than a grateful nod before the professor arrives.

“Late night?” Fiddleford asks under his breath, brows raised. There's a very specific innocence to his tone that gets Ford's hackles up immediately.

“I overslept,” he snaps in response, neither confirming nor denying Fiddleford's insinuations, which goes unnoticed by neither of them.

Fiddleford makes a little noise of assent, like he understands, and lets the matter drop.

Thankfully, even afterwards he has no opportunity to grill Ford on his assumptions. His next class is one clear across campus that he always rather literally needs to run to, some elective he's been cagey about since the beginning of the semester, and it isn't that Ford doesn't want to know what it is, but every time it comes up he gets the impression that Fiddleford wouldn't actually tell him even if he did ask, which puts a cold unexpected damper on his curiosity. The weight of the mutual unspoken hangs over their parting like guilt.

Ford doesn't have time for that; he has Intermediate Newtonian Mechanics in twenty minutes. It's Obscure Linear Algebra after that, then a meeting with Professor Neilson, then a sprint back to his dorm room to retrieve supplies for the tutoring session he'd forgotten about promising to one of last semester's TAs. All the while Ford feels out-of-focus, like he's watching himself through a pair of cloudy poorly-cut lenses. Professor Neilson suggests he cut back a little on his independent studies and get some more sleep; the TA asks if he's “hungover or something”. Ford tries and fails and tries again not to think about the circumstances of his morning, his patience and concentration hapless casualties in the fruitless mental crossfire that ensues.

By the time he makes it to Warbleheim, Ford is nursing an oppressive headache and half a dozen very credible reasons why he has to bow out of the evening's plans. Bill is already out front, mid-conversation with two figures that Ford doesn't recognize. He looks over as Ford approaches, the flat line of his mouth deepening for just a flash before it breaks open into a grin.

“Well, well, well, speak of what the cat dragged in! That punctuality of yours is no joke, huh, Fordsy?”

“Did I come at a bad time?” Ford notes now the tension he's walked into, the hunched, scolded postures of Bill's friends.

“You came exactly when you were supposed to,” says Bill tightly. “We're the ones running long here, right, guys?”

Bill's friends nod sheepishly, glancing between themselves and back to Bill again.

“Sorry,” says one of them finally, knuckling the side of what sounds like a very congested nose. He's bowlegged and stocky and somehow gives off the impression of having an underbite and overbite at the same time. The other stoops over him anxiously with his hands pressed together, broad boney face marred by a grimace and a large port-wine birthmark on an even larger forehead.

“Sorry doesn't help us, does it, Teeth?” asks Bill pleasantly. Not waiting for an answer, he turns to take Ford's arm and pull him closer. “Fordsy, these party animals are Teeth and Keyhole; boys, say hi to my good friend Stanford Pines.”

The two muster a meek “Hi” in obedient response.

“It's, uh, a pleasure to meet you,” says Ford, feeling awkward.

“We've heard a lot about you,” says Teeth gamely.

“Oh? I, uh,” says Ford lamely, because what comes immediately to mind is “I haven't heard anything about you,” and even he can tell that sounds hostile, gloating and jealous and by all accounts wholly uncalled for. The urge is still there, though, worsening as Keyhole looks him up and down like he's a toddler on the verge of a tantrum.

“I still think you should take one of us with you.” Keyhole jabs his chin in Bill's direction, stuffs his fists down into the front pockets of his hooded sweatshirt.

Bill leans forward to pat Keyhole firmly on the cheek, teeth bared. “Buck up, there, buddy! Jealousy's ugly, and you don't need any help on that front.”

From this angle all Ford can see of Bill's face is the taut set of his jaw. Keyhole looks up at him miserably, for all their being at a relative height with one another. Bill cocks his head to one side, holds out his hand, and waits.

Reluctantly, Keyhole pulls one fist out of his pocket and opens it. A soft clink, and a cluttered ring of keys plunks into Bill's waiting palm.

“Ha! That wasn't so hard, now, was it? You'd think I was asking for your bones or something, jeez.” Bill gives the keys an enthusiastic jingle in his friends' direction. “All right, boys, you scamper on home, now, Fordsy and I will take it from here.”

Teeth sticks an elbow in Keyhole's side, and the two exchange a glance. After a beat, Keyhole shrugs and shakes his head.

“Sure, see you later, Bill.”

“Good luck,” Teeth adds.

“Luck is for suckers!” replies Bill brightly.

“It was nice to meet you,” says Ford.

Before either of them can respond, Bill leans into the space between them, tugs at Ford's tie. “You'll meet again, IQ, time's a ticking!”

Ford gives a final wave and follows where Bill leads.

They end up at the back entrance by the concert hall's loading dock. Humming, Bill flips through his newly acquired keys to one that's been marked with a piece of gaffer's tape; the lock clicks in compliance, and the door opens into the dark maze of Warbleheim's backstage. Stacked risers and scrap plywood rest along the far wall by the stage manager's desk, itself cluttered with the nubs of old pencils and playbills weighted down by a bulky black plastic headset. Around them loom the ceiling-high cages protecting the valuable AV and recording equipment the hall lends out across campus, microphones and reel-to-reels and plastic-wrapped wheels of tape, video cameras and thick snakes of cable and the treacherous, loose-wheeled carts meant to transport the lot, somehow, safe and whole to its destination.

For how alien it seems in the quiet dark, Ford isn't unfamiliar with the space; Fiddleford puts a little extra in his pockets every now and then on the back of Backupsmore's collection of outdated tech, and Warbleheim's lighting systems in particular are reliable only in their schedulistic breakdowns. Ford has tagged along on a few of Fiddleford's trips to repair the deteriorating rigs, and even come out here in his friend's stead, once or twice. Last time it had been during a piano major's midterm presentation, which had been cut short by an implosion in the balcony speaker system. No one had bothered questioning his identity when he showed up, and Ford had spent the afternoon crouched overhead while the performance resumed. Even if the music hadn't been terribly memorable, Ford had found himself impressed by the instrument itself, an unexpectedly beautiful black baby grand that Warbleheim's bored-looking techs had swaddled in a padded covering and wheeled away immediately afterwards.

Is that why they're here? Why Bill had wanted to make sure they came alone? Maybe if you're good I'll play for you sometime, he remembers with a rush of heat. Ford thinks of the two of them out on the stage or tucked into a cramped storage room, shoulder to shoulder on a single piano bench, Bill's fingers on the keys, on Ford's wrist, under the sleeve—

“I know what you're thinking,” Bill says, and Ford's throat clamps shut.

“You do?”

“Mm-hmm!” Bill stoops to rustle though a battered cardboard box, pulling out a single light-bulb, which he waves in Ford's direction. It tinkles lightly, clearly blown out. “And you're right, Fordsy, why would I bring you all this way just for a game of chess?”

“Atmosphere?” suggests Ford, trying not to think about it.

Bill smirks, glancing sideways at Ford in a way that...doesn't help.

“'Atmosphere', he says. Joke away, you're gonna need that sense of humor in a second cos oh boy, do I have some devastating news for you. You ready?”

“What are you talking about?” Dread and curiosity rise in equal measure at the back of Ford's throat.

By now their route has brought them to another locked door, heavy-looking metal with a faded plaque bolted to it.

No Admittance Beyond This Point – Authorized Employees Only

Bill grins. “We,” he says, swiftly unlocking the door and pushing it open to an unlit stairwell. “aren't here to play chess.”

Ford hesitates. “What are we here to do?”

Bill tugs his jacket sleeve, reeling him onward. “C'mon, trust me!”

The stairs go down into a series of dim concrete tunnels below the concert hall. Thin rusted pipes run the length of the walls, hissing steam at their joints. Every now and then they pass rooms that appear to be intended for maintenance or long-term storage; the massive grey cylinders and copper pipes of Warbleheim's boiler system, thick stonelike slabs of block insulation, tangled heaps of music stands, the gutted carcass of an old spotlight. Eventually the rooms become rarer, their contents stranger; huge panes of leaded stained glass, shelves lined with jars of murky yellowish liquid, torn slips of paper that upon closer inspection turn out to be playing cards, just the joker, taken from hundreds of different decks of various shapes, colors, and languages. Before them the tunnels stretch on, but Ford is convinced he and Bill must be well past the footprint of the building they'd started in by now.

“What is all this?” he asks finally. “How far do these tunnels go?”

“Farther than you'd think,” replies Bill.

“Do they go across campus? Is this, do they connect to other buildings?”

“Two other buildings,” confirms Bill meaningfully, jangling the light-bulb he's still carrying for emphasis.

Understanding hits Ford square in the chest. “Beta Delta Theta and the financial aid office.”

“And that's a bingo for the man in the front row!”

“You found, I, this is incredible, do the tunnels follow the exact trajectory of the ley lines?” The confirmation sings through his veins, he has to—he needs his journal, where's his map? “Does this mean the founders of Backupsmore knew about them when this place was built? Or, the walls changed from concrete to stone three turns back, did you see that? Were parts of the tunnels were already here? Were the founders somehow influenced by the energy in the area to build here?” He shakes out the map, scrawls several quick notes in his journal's key.

Bill laughs. “Slow down, IQ, you're gonna pull something in that big brain of yours.”

The momentum of Ford's joyful excitement all but deafens him to the statement. “How many times have you been down here? How much have you explored? Would you describe anything you've seen as 'illustratively unusual'?”

“You really are a force of nature, huh, Fordsy. Let's see!” Bill ticks off on his fingers, “Twice, not including today, as much as I could get into, and I'm trying to show you.”

“As much as you could get to, are there parts of the tunnels that are inaccessible? Are they blocked off, or collapsed? Have you, wait.” Bill's words finally sink in, and Ford pauses. “Trying to show me what?”

“What we're here to do.” The duh is unspoken. “And we're close, now.”

Ford stands slowly, gathering his papers, unable to take his eyes off Bill. He thinks, with an abrupt, exhilarated sort of acceptance, that he wants nothing more right now than to hold Bill's hand and run.

“Okay,” he says.

They go.

[healthpolicymaven]

Medicare For All-An Idea Whose Time May Have Come

With the 2020 Presidential election looming on the horizon and tortuous months of political speeches one thing that clearly sets the Democrats apart from the Republicans, currently in control of the national purse strings, is their vocal promotion of healthcare access and protections for all. Republicans raced into Congress on the anti-Affordable Care Act platform only to learn that voters like their government sponsored healthcare, resulting in their rout in the midterm elections last November. This article reviews the motive, financial implications, and method to assess a national Medicare Plan.

Motive

The United States spends 40% to 60% more for healthcare than any other industrialized country and this does not produce improved health or better outcomes than nations spending considerably less per capita. In 2017 the U.S. spent $10,224 per person for healthcare, as tracked by the Petersen-Kaiser Health System Index Tracker. (Cox, 2019) This total is 28% higher than when my book, Unraveling U.S. Healthcare-A Personal Guide was published in 2013. (Winter, 2013) The next closest country in medical spending was Switzerland which still spent 28% less than the U.S. France, whose health system provides family clinics, coverage for all, and high tech services spent $4,902, less than half of the U.S. And Australia spent only $4,543 per capita for their national healthcare system. Canada spent $4,826 per person for their national healthcare program. Everyone of these industrialized nations are capitalistic in terms of business, but they offer healthcare to all of their citizens.

The cost of healthcare in the U.S. is impeding resources that could be used to improve education, rebuild critical infrastructure such as bridges, and improve the quality of life for most families. By refusing to enact and enforce national healthcare policy the nation continues to be overcharged by profiteers who gouge the American public. The government has the domain to negotiate better policies for drugs, medical devices, and reimbursements at the clinic/hospital level. However, only Bernie Sanders from Vermont, had the political will to actively run on a platform for nationalizing healthcare. This phenomenon all changed with the mid-terms and public polls show a sizeable majority of the American people want government run healthcare. Families are tired of being forced to spend more on their health insurance than for housing.  Diabetics are forced to skip their doses, because of the high cost of insulin, which has resulted in deaths. Even seniors, who have benefited greatly from Medicare, the Bush Medicare Modernization Act which provided drug coverage, and the Affordable Care Act which closed the doughnut-hole exclusion for drugs are still gouged for the cost of care. A public case could be made that Medicare enrollees are better off in terms of healthcare access and coverage than working class families in the United States. This situation is untenable financially and politically. The 2020 election will give us a chance to see how far the American people are willing to go to reform their expensive and exclusionary health system.

Means

In 2003 I was part of a team of graduate students at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine who analyzed a single payer health system. In fact, I published an article on it in this column in 2009.[1] My role, as an MHA student, was to come up with a financing model that was plausible. For a 3% increase in the payroll tax, born equally by employees and employers, which currently funds Medicare and Social Security, we could implement a national healthcare program.

A second way to fund healthcare is through an income tax increase, which is how most other nations do it. Crucial information which would inform any financing of a citizen’s initiative would include the 2020 census findings. However, Trump and his administration aren’t anxious to conduct this census and are still seeking to restrict access and questions based on citizenship and other factors.

Social programs are consuming a larger portion of the national budget, which is normal for an aging population. Republicans like to brag about defense budget increases yet rail at any increase in spending for entitlements for our residents. Higher taxes are necessary to even meet the current Social Security and Medicare projects, which must be addressed.

 U.S. Proposed Federal Budget-2018 is  $4,407,000,000,000

Defense, includes security for national nuclear supply,  Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, State Department, Afghanistan, Iraq,  Syrian wars; Does NOT include discretionary private contracting which  consumes another 10-20%

Proportion of Federal Budget

20%= $892,700,000,000

Social Security- paid through trust fund until 2032@1.046 trillion  Medicare-partially funded by payroll tax Medicaid-100% paid from general fund@1.037  trillion

Proportion of the Federal Budget-2018

24%+24%= 47%

$2,083,000,000,000

The federal budget item that is growing the fastest is the national deficit, which the Trump Administration exploded with it’s corporate and wealth tax cuts in 2018. Currently the deficit is 985 billion dollars or 22% of the federal budget. (Amadeo, 2019)

Method

Any healthcare program in the U.S. will include private insurance at some level, as Medicare, the healthcare expansion model currently does. The idea that the behemoth private medical insurance industry will go away is wrong. However, private insurance has a much higher administration cost than Medicare/Medicaid, which uses 6% of cash inflows for overhead as opposed to 15-20% for the private sector. And you can expect that the insurance industry/medical/pharma lobby, which is the largest and most well-funded of the shark infested Washington DC lobbying cabal will be drafting the details, just like they did for the Affordable Care Act. They succeeded in eliminating the Medicare-for-all idea during the Obama Administration, but that was just buying time. The longer the nation waits to draft a sane health policy the costlier it will be for the tax payers.

Many employers would thankfully get out of the medical insurance business. Also, a national health policy which has the same costs everywhere, would create an even playing field for business competition and innovation. It will also greatly reduce regulatory costs, which are the bane of clinical staff everywhere. Efficiency could go up in clinics because the doctors and nurses would have more time to actually see patients instead of processing insurance paperwork.

Finally, with national healthcare policy, we could also fund the scary shortage of primary care providers, by providing free medical education (and maybe forgiveness of school loans) to those who go into primary care, such as pediatrics, family practice, and obstetrics.

End to the Madness

Obviously, we will have to enact some type of policy which will mute the overcharging, take back control of generic drug prices, create true price transparency for services, and quit gouging American families. We can hardly expect the Millennials, whom will have to clean up our mess, to pay higher and higher payroll taxes and not get anything in return. We can start by offering affordable healthcare for all, which won’t happen under the current, reimbursement based on the prevailing inflated cost method of pricing.

 And this is the health policy maven signing off encouraging you to learn as much as you can about healthcare systems outside the U.S. so that we can build a better one for our people.

Works Cited

Amadeo, K. (2019, January 21). US Federal Budget Breakdown-The Components and Impact on the US Economy. Retrieved from The Balance.com: https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305789

Cox, B. S. (2019, February 10). How does health spending in the U.S. compare to other countries. Retrieved from Petersen-Kaiser Health System Tracker.org: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/#item-start

Winter, R. E. (2013). Unraveling U.S. Healthcare-A Personal Guide. In R. E. Winter, Unraveling U.S. Healthcare-A Personal Guide (pp. 31-35). Rowman & Littlefield.

 This article was written by Roberta Winter, a freelance journalist and health policy analyst in the Seattle area.

[1] https://healthpolicymaven.blogspot.com/2009/08/overhauling-healthcare-czarina-style.html

[newstfionline]

Building a Less Fragile Life

The Simple Dollar, 23 May 2018

One of my main motivations in my own financial turnaround was to escape the paycheck to paycheck life that we were living. I had begun to realize that people were really depending on me--not just my wife and my infant son, but my “future self” as well--and by living a lifestyle that could be so easily disrupted by unfortunate events, I was doing all of them a disservice.

What would happen to all of them if I suddenly lost my job? It wouldn’t be a good picture. We weren’t all that far from being homeless or having to move back in with my parents or Sarah’s parents if that happened. What kind of future trajectory does that give my life? It’s not one I really wanted.

What would happen to everyone if I got sick? What would happen to everyone if my car broke down? What would happen to everyone if we were suddenly robbed? What would happen to everyone if we were evicted from our apartment?

I didn’t have good answers to those questions. The truth is that our life, as it was, was incredibly fragile. There were all kinds of things that could easily cause it to shatter into a bunch of pieces.

I owed it to my infant son, my wife, my future children, and my own future self to build a much less fragile life, one that would be harder to disrupt due to an unexpected event or two. Over time, of course, that goal transitioned into financial independence, but even that goal is really just an anti-fragility goal.

So, how exactly does one make their life less fragile? Here are a number of steps I’ve taken over the years to achieve this very thing.

Build an Emergency Fund: An emergency fund is simply cash on hand that you can use in case of an unexpected event. Typically, most of one’s emergency fund is stored in a savings account at a local bank, though some may keep a small amount of cash at home in order to cover more extreme emergencies. Credit cards generally aren’t good emergency funds because they will fail you in many events such as identity theft, natural disasters, electrical grid failure, communication network failure, and so on.

Having an emergency fund secures your life against many different kinds of small emergencies, such as a short period of unemployment, a car breakdown, appliance failure, many natural disasters, and so on. Simply having a couple hundred dollars in cash in your home or a thousand or two in cash at the bank makes those problems easy to handle when they would otherwise be rather difficult to overcome.

How can I get started with building an emergency fund? The easiest method is to simply take a little bit of money each week out of your checking account and put it into your savings account. Most banks allow this kind of transaction to be fully automated, so you don’t even have to think about it. Each week, $10 or $20 goes from your checking into your savings and you don’t even have to give it a second thought. After a year, that becomes a $500 or $1,000 emergency fund. I never shut my transaction off--if I find that my emergency fund has become unnecessarily big, I might invest some of it, but I usually just let it ride because there will always be an emergency at some point.

Eliminate Debt, Especially High Interest Debt: Personal debt creates fragility. If you put yourself into debt, you’re lashing yourself up to a monthly bill, which means that you have to be earning more money each and every month to keep the bills paid. If you don’t pay those debts, you may have things repossessed, face legal repercussions, and almost certainly see your credit score devastated. This puts additional pressure on you to keep earning money, and the consequences of unexpected expenses or a job loss become greater.

Of course, debt can be eliminated. Once you pay off a debt, you’ve lowered your monthly bills, which gives you more freedom to invest and save for the future and more flexibility in terms of life options while also increasing your ability to handle unexpected events.

How can I get started with eliminating debt? Start by making a debt repayment plan. A debt repayment plan is simply a listing of all of your debts, usually ordered by interest rate from largest to smallest (my preferred method) or by balance from smallest to largest. In either case, you make minimum payments on each debt and then make the largest possible extra payment you can afford on the debt at the top of the list each month. When the top debt is paid off, cross it off the list and keep going until all of the debts are gone.

Strengthen Your Resume: Perhaps the best possible thing you can do to keep your career safe and secure is to keep your resume polished and strong. Having a good resume that’s attractive to employers and widely available will make hunting for a new job much, much easier. It will make the difference between success and failure if you find yourself out of a job or need to seek out a new job for any reason.

A good strong resume isn’t just one that’s updated with your latest activities, but is full of items that are relevant and interesting to potential employers. You want to make it your goal at work to take on tasks that are resume-worthy and potentially interesting to employers so you can add them to your resume, and you’ll also want to take on opportunities that bolster your educational certifications and skill set.

How can I get started with strengthening my resume? The first step, of course, is to get your resume freshly updated and available. One great way to do that is to simply use LinkedIn. You should also keep a document that contains a well-formatted resume and cover letter that mirrors the information on LinkedIn. In addition, you should look at jobs that are available in your field right now that you might be interested in and make sure that your resume addresses what those job listings are looking for. This might mean formatting your resume appropriately, but it also likely means seeking out certain kinds of resume-worthy tasks and educational opportunities at work. As you do those things, add them to your resume and keep it fresh.

Build Strong Social and Professional Networks: When things get rough, a strong social network in your personal life and a strong professional network can help you through those challenging times. A great personal network can come through when you’re facing a personal crisis, providing help with things like emergency transportation or a place to sleep or things like that. A great professional network can do the same thing in your career, opening opportunities for you when you least expect them and also helping you transition to your next job when you need to.

Having those networks in place is invaluable when things go wrong, but it requires effort when things are going right, an effort that many people don’t put in.

How can I get started with building social connections and professional networks? Talk to people. Keep tabs on them by texting or calling or emailing or contacting them on social media regularly. Listen to them--don’t use this as an excuse to talk about yourself. Remember things about people and touch base with them on those things. The real key? When your friends or professional acquaintances need help, particularly when that help can be offered by you with little effort but can have a big impact on them, do it without question or expectation of anything in return. That builds goodwill, and that kind of goodwill is always a positive for you.

Eat Healthy Foods and Maintain Basic Physical Fitness: Just like the more financially oriented aspects of your life mentioned above, your health is also fragile. It can be hard to see it that way, especially when you’re young and really healthy, but your health will eventually slide off the rails if you don’t take care of your body from the beginning.

This has a financial implication, too. As your health declines, the cost of health care will go up and up and up. You’ll spend more on doctor’s visits, medications, devices… the list goes on and on. Having healthy life practices at the very least delays those costs and can even reverse or eliminate them.

It’s not that hard to keep your body healthy, either. Just eat more plants and don’t overeat. Walk more and find some fitness activities you enjoy and do them. It’s really not hard. You don’t need to master some sort of secret diet or secret super fitness routine. Just eat better food, not a ton of it, and move around more.

How can I get started with eating healthier and becoming more fit? When you’re loading up your plate, put more healthy things on it. That doesn’t mean avoiding the less healthy things you like--just put more healthy things on your plate and eat them first. Then, stop eating when you don’t feel hungry any more, not when you feel stuffed. Rather than just sitting around in the evening, go for a walk, or get up a little earlier and go for a walk to wake yourself up. Find some physically active things you enjoy doing and do them.

Save for Known Expenses on the Horizon: There are big bills that come around regularly in our lives, but often less frequently than once a month. Insurance. Property taxes. Income taxes. In the cycle of paying monthly bills, it’s easy to forget about those extra expenses.

Over time, even bigger expenses loom. You’ll have to replace a major appliance. You’ll have to replace a car. Those things are coming and you know they’re coming.

The thing is, those expenses often pop up and hit you hard. They wreck your financial plans for the month. They force you to go into debt. They devour your “emergency fund” (even though it’s not an emergency). They expose the fragility of your financial life. Don’t let that happen. Plan ahead.

How can I get started with saving for upcoming expenses? Make a big list of every upcoming expense and irregular bill that you can think of, how far off those bills are, and how big they probably will be. Then, for each bill, figure out how much you’d have to save each month in order to be able to afford that expense. Planning on spending $10K on a car in five years? That’s $10,000 divided by 60, or $167 a month. Then, start putting aside that amount each month. Do it by setting up an automatic transfer at your bank from your checking to your savings. Then, when the expense comes around, you’ll already have the cash and it won’t cause you any stress at all.

Live Below Your Means, No Matter How Secure Your Income Is: My fundamental rule of personal finance is to spend less than you earn. The reason for that is simple--if you live that way, you’re always going to have money with which to pay off debts and save for the future. If you live below your means, saving for retirement is easy. Doing the big, long term things that make your life strong and secure become easy.

There’s another advantage, too. If you’re used to living below your means, an unexpected drop in income isn’t devastating to your day to day life. If you suddenly have to get a lower wage job and you’re used to living below your means, it’s just a small bump in the road. If you’re not… well, your entire life is now in tumult. That means your life is fragile, and fragility is what we want to avoid.

How can I get started with living below my means? The easiest way to do this is to just automate as much of your savings as you possibly can. Have your workplace make automatic 401(k) contributions for you. Set up automatic Roth IRA contributions from your checking account. Set up some automatic transfers from your checking account to your savings account for your emergency fund and planning ahead for big expenses, as noted above. Then, simply learn how to live on what’s left over without accumulating credit card debt. It’s that easy!

Don’t let your life become fragile. If it is fragile, it’s well worth the effort to strengthen it.

[braintooth]

resolution

[Entry #3, #4, #5]

Brain Tooth Diary - Entry #6

while yesterday’s entry was inspired by three conversations (well, one conversation and two back-forth arguments) that shook up a lil’ bit of animosity and a need to dropkick my frustrations onto the internet, this one stems from the afterglow of my well-received honesty.

two of those three situations continue to make me want to ram something blunt into the eyes of my irritants. one pleasantly didn’t-quite-surprise me in how simple it was to resolve. the latter is what decided the topic du jour.

honesty: do it. live it. breathe it. feel it. embrace it. sometimes it’s shitty, sometimes it’s not and all the time it’s the right thing to share. because when you’re honest, regardless of whether or not it’s, ‘i killed a man with a complex series of riddles that exploded his brain’ or, something more likely, ‘i need to tell Person something that might disappoint them and it’s driving me mad with guilt and self-inflicted pressure to perform-as-others-expect-me-to’, you will feel lighter for having told the truth. no excuses or half-reasons or lies because you think you’re sparing someone’s feelings when all you’re really doing is tangling yourself up in a garrote that tightens the more elaborate you get.

now, this could relate to hiding less-than-stellar marks in school, wanting to cancel plans because you’re just not feeling it or having borrowed a book that was destroyed because your cat decided it was exactly the right thing to claw to oblivion. just. tell the fucking truth. the reaction might be downright cruel and leave you wanting to go into Witness Protection to escape the vendetta you know is on the horizon. OR it might be a lot less dramatic. in fact, it usually is. either way, you’ll feel heaps better for laying it all out there. you’ve done your bit. all you have to do is wait for Person to calm down or forgive you or understand and tell you you’re a moron for thinking that their reaction would trigger World War III.

in my case (as mentioned near the end of yesterday’s entry), i was anxious and guilt-ridden and about ready to find a bridge to jump off of (... i’m a Drama Queen ... live and let live), having a meltdown over not wanting to disappoint someone who has always been nothing but wonderful and thoughtful and there for me. obviously, i want to be there for them just as much but, with Lil’ Voldy taking up valuable real estate in my head, i can’t do all of the things Normal Me is capable of.

so, my response to this was to have a major breakdown. once i’d picked myself back up and talked it over with my mumsie, i realized i was being an idiot and that i should just explain what’s going on. especially since Person would understand - disappointed or not.

as i sat in my doctor’s office, i was given an hour to think over how i wanted to broach the subject and, when i started typing (because, yes, honesty may be the best policy but i’m still a chicken-shit who hides behind text messages ... whatever, Person was at work ... justified), it all kind of poured out in a mess of overlapping truths and reasons and ‘please don’t hate me’s. yep, i was begging forgiveness before Person even had a chance to read the damn messages.

i’ll admit that i have my insecurities and one of them is a lack of self-worth in the eyes of others. i’m very happy with who i am and i’m comfortable with all my quirks and flaws; being a nonathletic homebody who prefers pajamas to regular clothes and the company of Rory and Lorelai Gilmore to IRL Peeps. unfortunately, it’s how i feel others perceive me that leaves a feeling of inadequacy. which is insane because, in friendships, it’s easier to walk away when you know someone isn’t right for you and Person would have done so long ago. so i should trust Person implicitly to conk me over the head and tell me when i’m being ridiculous.

anyway, sat in the waiting room, my thoughts now released into the universe to find Person, i breathed a sigh of relief; whatever the reply, i knew i did what was right by me. it needed to be said and Person is someone i should’ve trusted to receive my honesty with open arms, good or bad. hell, that’s what real friends DO. i suppose, somewhere along the line, i’d forgotten that or it was buried beneath enough guilt to rival the combined weight of a football team. 

yeah, when i got Person’s response, i felt pretty damn foolish for having wound myself up with all the worst case outcomes my mind had merrily explored. it was all so ... anticlimactic.

instead of wanting to hit me over the head with a wooden spoon for disappointing them, had i been in range, Person would’ve hit me over the head with a wooden spoon for presuming i would be blasted out of their life like a clown from a circus cannon. i’m a dumb-nut XD

it was liberating to get everything off my chest and explain how i felt when presented a list of plans that i would normally be open to and excited for but couldn’t be because of the effects of having a head-mate.

with everything out in the open, we were able to come up with a suitable solution that works for both of us. i couldn’t have asked for more!

the moral of the story is: be honest. do yourself that kindness. tell the truth. be vulnerable and throw it all down because, nine times out of ten, it will be appreciated and taken better than lame excuses or white-lies. you won’t have that little black stormcloud looming overhead, following you around until Person notices it, raises an eyebrow and the cloud projectile-vomits all the bullshit into their lap anyway, despite your best efforts.

as menacing as it is, the truth ALWAYS comes out. ALWAYS. AL-WAYS. i don’t think you realize: it could be a DECADE later and WHAM, there’s Truth, skulking in a dark corner with a twisted smile because, guess what bud, i’m here to rain on your parade.

just. getter-don’, eh?