2/4/23 - Some thoughts (July to September 2022)

Thank you for visiting my blog.

This blog is a work-in-progress "table of contents," with links to all of the threads I have written on Twitter, from when I started using the social media platform, in October of 2012, through September of 2022.

Every once in a while, I like to do a "thoughts" post, talking about my life experiences over the time frame for the threads I've recently posted links to.

For this post, the time frame is basically July through September of 2022.

***

As I've mentioned in previous posts, in 2021, my livelihood and finances were destroyed after some consultancy work I'd been doing, essentially since 2016, dried up completely. In October of 2021, at the age of 44, I basically became homeless. I moved out from the Front Range area of Colorado to the Western Slope, where I lived with my mom and my three adopted sisters.

I shifted from being a consultant to being a permanent, full-time worker (for a fintech company) in October of 2021. I supplemented my income there by working at the Walmart in my mom's hometown from October of 2021 through June of 2022. Within a few months, I had really decent cash flow in my life again -- though I'd amassed so much debt throughout 2021 that, even as of today (February of 2023), that debt is only about 35% paid off.

I'd thought for a while that I'd become a more permanent part of my family's life. I'd thought I'd try to find a much bigger house where we could all live. But my family didn't really want that. And even though I moved out of my mom's house and back into a place of my own in April of 2022, my having raised the subject at all of living with my mom and sisters permanently seemed to cause a lot of tension, especially with my oldest little sister.

In addition to that conflict, my mom and three sisters were having a lot more contact with some members of my biological family who, in my opinion (I could be wrong here), were -- and still are -- giving them some not very good ideas, not only about me as a person, but also about how to live in general. The influence from these family members seems, I think, to have made even more conflict between me and my little sisters (not my mom so much).

This conflict got so bad by early July of 2022 that I got extremely angry at my oldest little sister one day and shouted at her quite a bit while we were on a mountain drive. I went way overboard.

After that day I decided I needed to take a break from visiting my family so much. I'd been visiting them about twice a week. And, dealing with all the abuse I had to face (and, yes, young people do have the capacity to abuse adults, I'm sorry), I just couldn't handle twice a week anymore. And, in fact, I stopped doing anything with my family that required me to be inside my mom's house or that required my oldest little sister to be inside my car.

So throughout the summer and fall of 2022, most of my visits with my family took place at public events, and my mom and I would take our own cars to meet there. This basically meant that I would meet my family at the rec center in my mom's hometown to watch my little sisters do their sports practices or games.

But this wasn't such a bad thing, because over the course of the summer, my sisters did soccer, volleyball, basketball, and tennis. This basically meant that I was still spending at least one day a week visiting my family. During the busiest part of the summer, it was more than one day a week.

I think these months of stepping back from my mom and little sisters' home life were really beneficial for our relationship, to be honest. I was less of an influential presence in everybody's lives -- and I think that was something that everybody in the house wanted, even my mom. And I was able simply to "be there" for my family and pay attention to them and cheer them on when they were out doing things for themselves in public.

By the end of September and beginning of October, I think I had found a pretty good level of participation in my family's life. By the end of September, I finally started feeling comfortable going inside my mom's house again on a regular basis. And by November, I finally started feeling comfortable having my oldest little sister inside my car again.

What I think people who read my Twitter threads will see is that, through 2022, my threads become less and less focused on things I'm doing with my family and more and more focused on things I'm doing in my own life.

This is partly because I was sort of detaching my full life from my family's full life. But it was also because, as I was trying to find a new balance between my personal life, my life with my family, and my family's personal life, I felt more of a desire simply to focus my Twitter threads on my personal life.

My Twitter threads don't discuss everything I do in my life. They never have. And I stopped feeling like my family life always needed to be a part of my Twitter threads, even if my family life was, and is, a big part of my overall life.

My work life was pretty interesting during this time. As I mentioned above, in October of 2021, I started working for a fintech company. The company, based in San Francisco, has been experiencing all  the same difficulties as other fintech companies. So life was, to say the least, turbulent, with my company.

Between December of 2021 and February of 2023, we've done three mass layoffs, resulting in about 50% of our workforce being cut. We've also seen a lot of people leaving the company for opportunities at other companies. This, again, is pretty much in line with what has been seen at other fintech and other tech companies.

But at the same time, I have been growing a lot and learning a lot professionally at the company. I've been given a lot of opportunities to expand my voice and influence at the company. I've met a lot of cool people. And I've had a lot of fun.

One example of the fun I've had was a trip to the company's headquarters, with my whole marketing team (pretty much the whole company works remotely), in July of 2022.

This trip was really meaningful for me for a lot of reasons. It was the first time I'd stepped onto a plane since June of 2017. It was the first time I'd been in an office setting at all since March of 2018 (my consultancy work was all remote). It was the first time I'd been in an office setting as a permanent employee of a company since June of 2016. And it was the first time I'd been in a big group setting in an office as a permanent employee since November of 2015.

The trip was also the first time I'd been to San Francisco since January of 2017. I'd really been missing San Fran. And so I was so happy to get back there.

The trip to San Francisco was really a sort of beginning for me with my company. And I feel that on a lot of levels I've grown a lot professionally since, and because of, that trip.

But there were also a lot of difficulties at the job. In my role, I support specific salespeople's efforts. I'm technically supposed to support two salespeople at a time. But, thanks to all the attrition at my company, this has never really worked out.

In December of 2021, I supported one person who neglected me so much I could only get work done with him when I was yelling and screaming about him to my manager and to the HR team. That person was very soon afterward promoted to manager (so I lost him), and he has since risen to even greater influence at the company.

In January of 2022, I got two new salespeople to support. One was totally checked out, and she left in March of 2022, leaving me with only one salesperson again. But that salesperson left in April of 2022, and I was left without any salespeople to support. I was basically doing work and round-robining my work to the sales team.

In May, I had a salesperson to support -- for two days. The person left the company after being a salesperson for two days. I had a lot of conflict with that salesperson's manager, before and after that salesperson left the company. I raised my concerns to my manager. My manager basically answered  those concerns by accusing me of colluding with my previous salespeople to create fake results for my work. And so I raised concerns -- again -- with my HR team. Things settled down a bit from there.

In June, I got a new salesperson. But that salesperson went on parental leave almost immediately. In July, I got another salesperson. And by the end of July, I was working with two salespeople -- but not for long, as one of those salespeople soon left the company, leaving me, again, with only one salesperson to support.

In September, the sales manager I'd had conflict with in May (he'd been on parental leave since mid-May) became a really big presence in my life and the life of my one remaining salesperson. This caused a lot of difficulty in my ability to partner with my salesperson and get work done.

Additionally -- I'd been working from home. I live in a fourplex. And one of my neighbors had been getting increasingly mean, bullying, and noisy. He'd also started creeping around my house -- even going so far as to stand outside the room I would do my work from and pound on my walls -- nowhere near his property at all. He would just stand outside my house, outside my room, and pound on my walls. Here's a picture of it.

I would open my windows and tell him to leave. He'd leave for a moment. But then he'd come back. He'd justify doing this by saying he was doing yardwork. But he wasn't doing yardwork. He'd stand on my property for hours. And when I'd make phone calls for work, he'd come stand outside my room and pound on the brick walls of my house.

This wasn't, by the way, very different from what my neighbor in my old house had been doing to me in 2020 and 2021. That person would hear me at work and would sometimes come onto my property so he could "do work" on his own house, in the meantime finding reasons to pound on the walls of my house. He'd just come onto my property with his tools, then bang his tools against the wall of my house while I was doing phone calls for my work.

Eventually, I confronted him about this, and he essentially told me I had no right to complain about him, because I was renting my house, he owned his house, and he could treat my property like he owned it, too.

Here's the video of that conversation.

That neighbor made my life so miserable that it really did contribute to the misery of my 2021 and, I'd argue, even my ability to hold down my job. I'd argue that the situation I've dealt with from my current neighbor is similar.

I, as a queer Hispanic person, am being harassed, pretty much constantly, in all my living spaces, by straight, white men -- young and old. It affects my ability to live peacefully, to think, and to my work and earn my livelihood.

I complained in 2021 to my landlords, and eventually to the police, and they did nothing. And now, it seems, in 2022 and 2023, my current landlords have still been determined to do nothing.

But, anyway, coming back to September of 2022, I got to the point where I could no longer deal with my neighbor. So I ended up going out and renting an office space to work from. Throughout the rest of 2022, I pretty much worked solely from that space. If I hadn't done that, the abuse and harassment I was experiencing from my neighbor, and which my landlords refused to do anything to stop, would probably have made it impossible for me to do my job.

Now, coming back to my actual job in September of 2022. My one remaining salesperson was coming more and more under the influence of the manager I'd had a serious conflict with in May. And that led to a point where I knew if I didn't -- once again -- make an HR issue out of the situation, I'd end up coming into the fourth quarter of 2022 unable to do my job at all, and I'd probably just lose my job.

So I ended up making a big fuss with HR, yet again, and getting matters squared away. It was really tough, and really stressful. But I did it. And I'm happy I did.

So my work life was during this time both stressful and exciting. The bad times were pretty bad. But the good time were extremely good. Things continue to be this way at the company. And I'm pretty sure that, right now, in February of 2023, if you were to ask an employee of just about any fintech company, they'd tell you the same thing.

One thing that's noticeable in the threads from this period is my increasing community involvement.

There are a number of reasons for this. First of all -- I was able to have more of a personal life, as I'd stopped being so worried about money, and as I'd stopped working at Walmart. I had more energy. So I wanted to get back into doing community-based things.

But, second, through the end of August and into September, there were things that happened in my part of Colorado that made me want to get more involved with my community.

The first was that there were increasing protests against LGBTQ visibility on the Western Slope. This was in reaction to the annual Ouray County LGBTQ Pride parade in Ridgway, Colorado, an LGBTQ-themed float in Ouray County's July 4th parade, and the Ouray County Library's decision to do a drag queen story hour.

Here's the link to the article about the drag queen story hour.

I don't live in Ouray County. I live in Montrose County. But the news about Ouray County made me decide I needed to start going to the Montrose County library's monthly board meetings, just as a way to support my own library. The first one I attended was in September of 2022. They have become... well... some pretty contentious meetings over the past few months, as I'd been guessing they would.

I was also really saddened by the news that in Montrose, Colorado, a woman of Asian descent was arrested -- by the FBI -- as part of a sting the FBI has been doing against sex workers. The woman's name is Hua Yang. She is, if I remember correctly, in her fifties. And she doesn't deserve to be in jail for what she did. She doesn't deserve to have been part of an FBI sting.

What happened to Hua Yang is similar to injustices carried out against people of Asian descent in America for over 150 years now. And a lot of times, these injustices have been carried out by the FBI. It's really scary.

Here is the article about Hua Yang.

Anyway, that incident made me realize I needed to attend more city council and other city- and county-oriented events. I might not be able to do much for Hua Yang. But I would be able to get more of an idea of the workings of my city and county. And, if something like this happened again in the future, I might be able to voice my concerns about it and possibly have my voice carry some influence. So in September of 2022 I also started going to city council meetings -- somewhat regularly.

The third reason I got involved in more community events between July and September of 2022 was that I had been trying to get involved with my local Democratic Party since I'd first moved into my new place in April. It had been nearly impossible to get any sort of attention or news from my local Dems.

So I figured if I went to more community events I could at least have some kind of positive impact and I could at least support local Dems if I saw them there. I did see some Dems at some of the events I attended. And I was able to support them. So  I was... sort of... correct.

One final thing I'll mention here is that I started going to the movie theater a lot more often during this time frame. I'm really happy that I've started watching movies in movie theaters again. Movie theaters have always been a really big part of my creative life. And I hope they always will be.

So those are the main aspects of my life that influenced the Twitter threads I wrote between July and September of 2022.

Thank you for reading this post. And, if you read my Twitter threads, I hope you enjoy them!

9/26/22 - Some Western Colorado community events, theater, a movie, and a book

Here is the link to my September 26, 2022, Twitter thread about the first annual Delta, Colorado, Pride Fest, the first annual Hispanic Affairs Project Culture Fest, a Magic Circle Players Theater performance of Monty Python's Spamalot, the movie 3000 Years of Longing, and the book Someone Is Out to Get Us: A Not So Brief History of Cold War Paranoia and Madness.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

9/18/22 - Review of Montrose, CO, community events and some movies

Here is the link to my September 18, 2022, Twitter thread about Montrose, Colorado's SPARC youth conference, a League of Women Voters of the Uncompahgre Valley meeting, an Audubon Society presentation, a Montrose City Council meeting, a Montrose Regional Library District board meeting, and the movies Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Nashville, and The Last Tycoon.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

9/11/22 - Review of the book Merchants of Doubt

Here is the link to my September 11, 2022, Twitter thread review of the book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

9/3/22 - Reviews of Western Colorado trips, hikes, and galleries; and books and movies

Here is the link to my September 3, 2022, Twitter thread review of a visit to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, a First Friday event at the Montrose Center for the Arts, a visit to Ouray, Colorado, a fiesta held by Colorado's Mexican American Development Association; the books The Love of the Last Tycoon, Post Office, and Norman Rockwell's America; and the movies Thunderbirds Are Go!, and The Thin Man.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

8/20/22 - Review of book, four movies, and visit to Telluride

Here is the link to my August 20, 2022, Twitter thread review of the book The White Album; the movies Lipstick & Liquor, Live Nude Girls Unite!, The Bride Wore Black, and The Celluloid Closet, and an afternoon I spent in Telluride, Colorado.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

8/13/22 - Review of a book and five movies

Here is the link to my August 13, 2022, Twitter thread review of the book Dirty Pictures and the movies Erin Brockovich, Norma Rae, Over the Limit, Celine and Julie Go Boating, and Ball of Fire.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

7/31/22 - The Big Roads, Muttering Machines to Laser Beams, City Market, Bringing Up Baby

Here is the link to my July 31, 2022, Twitter thread review of the books The Big Roads (a deeper review than I'd given the previous week), Muttering Machines to Laser Beams, and The History of City Market, and the movie Bringing Up Baby.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

7/24/22 - A trip to San Fran, Black Canyon Quilt Show, books, and movies

Here is the link to my July 24, 2022, Twitter thread about a trip I took to San Francisco, the Black Canyon Quilt Show, the movies The Harvey Girls and Moulin Rouge, and the book The Big Roads.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

7/23/22 - Review of the book Dumb Dumb Dumb, by Mary Jo Pehl

Here is the link to my July 23, 2022, Twitter thread review of the book Dumb Dumb Dumb: My Mother's Book Reviews, by Mary Jo Pehl.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

1/22/23 - Some thoughts (April to July 2022)

Thank you for visiting my blog.

This blog is a work-in-progress "table of contents," with links to all of the threads I have written on Twitter, from when I started using the social media platform, in October of 2012, through July of 2022.

Every once in a while, I like to do a "thoughts" post, talking about my life experiences over the time frame for the threads I've recently posted links to.

For this post, the time frame is basically April through July of 2022.

***

As I've mentioned in previous posts, my livelihood and finances were pretty much destroyed in 2021. In October of 2021, I was in such bad shape that I moved from the Front Range area of Colorado to far out on the Western Slope, where, for a while, I lived with my mom and my three adopted little sisters.

In April of 2022, I was finally able to move into my own space again: a unit in a fourplex in a city about 20 miles away from my mom's hometown.

I'd spent from 2016 to 2021 working as a consultant for startup companies that were looking to grow their sales operations. But by September of 2021, I was so sick of the roller-coaster ride of consultant work that I looked for a permanent position at a company. I found a new job at the beginning of October and started that job in November.

I'd also, in October, started working at the Walmart in my mom's town. Between my day job and Walmart I was, between October of 2021 and January of 2022, working seven days a week, with the exception of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's.

From February through April of 2022, I'd taken down my days worked at Walmart, so I'd have one weekend day off. So now I was working six days a week. But after about a month of living in my own space, I finally stopped working both weekend days at Walmart. So I was working only five days a week. But between my day job and Walmart, I was still, on average, working way more than 50 hours per week.

Finally, toward the end of June of 2022, if I remember correctly I stopped working at Walmart altogether. The hours were just too much for me, especially since now I was driving between desert towns to get to work. I was so tired that it was impeding my ability to do both my day job and my work at Walmart well.

But, in addition to the hours at Walmart being too much, there were some things I didn't like about the culture of the place. The more responsibility I was given at the job, the more I found I was being pushed into having a mindset that all the people who came into the store were crooks.

It was really distressing to me to feel like my coworkers were forcing me to think this way. I insisted to them that I would never start thinking this way. But I knew it would be a losing battle for me. This was one of the reasons I left.

But I do have to admit there were some times at Walmart that I was myself cheated and spooked by customers -- sometimes in a big way. Maybe I'll tell some of those stories someday. They aren't unique, though, I'd guess.

If there were something, though, that scared me more than the shoplifters or slightly violent folks at Walmart, it would be the ultra-conservative conspiracy theory folks who came into the store. They were really scary.

People would come through my lane and tell me how they couldn't wait for "the revolution" to happen, so they could kill Democrats like me, liberals like me, Hispanics like me, and/or queer people like me. They wouldn't even have any qualms about saying they were just waiting for that moment when it became okay to kill people like me. And sometimes they'd even justify what they said by talking about some kind of conspiracy theory that proved people like me were just asking to be murdered.

Of course, I'd bag their groceries, hand them their receipt, and tell them to have a good day.

The Western Slope of Colorado isn't as conservative as people claim it is. In fact, continually, the conservatives only win votes over liberals in this part of the state by very narrow margins. If anything, this region is centrist. The problem is, ultra-conservative voices are amplified a lot out here, partly because of the funding they receive from national and global ultra-conservative groups.

But, just as in the rest of Colorado, the Democratic parties out on the Western Slope don't do a lot to invest in amplifying the voices of the more pro-equality people in the region -- especially where they are of the opinion that investing in these voices won't provide them on a suitable ROI (namely, winning an election). As a result, the Democratic parties on the Western Slope are lethargic and muddled, in my opinion.

In April of 2022, when I first moved back into a space of my own, one of the first things I did was visit my local Democratic Party. I tried to get involved with volunteer work out here, getting out the vote, as, again, I felt like there was enough liberal sentiment out here, and it just needed to receive outreach and encouragement.

I was essentially ignored in my requests to be involved in my local Democratic parties' outreach, basically all the way through November of 2022. I never stopped asking to be involved. And I never stopped involving myself in community events, whenever I could find out about them. But, ultimately, I was never involved in any efforts to get out the vote. I also feel like a lot of other volunteers in this part of Colorado would say they had a similar experience.

Nevertheless, I found ways to involve myself in the community, here and there -- even if that meant going to community events, events at museums, etc. I started making connections in the community. And I felt more and more like I was a part of the community. As 2022 continued, I think I developed that connection.

At my day job, things were pretty tough. A lot of people already know this, but 2022 was a pretty bad year for fintech companies like the one I work for. So my company, like many others, experienced a lot of turbulence. There were layoffs and, especially during the first seven or eight months of 2022, a lot of people left my company for other opportunities.

My job was affected a lot by the people who were quitting at my company and going other places. Almost from the beginning of 2022 I had very little stability in my day-to-day work -- mostly because, just as I was getting used to supporting a group of folks, all those people would leave. I'd be left without people to support, or I'd have to get used to supporting a new group of people -- only to have them leave, as well!

It was really stressful. But that stress only increased toward the beginning of May when my direct manager, having gotten a new manager of his own, was being tasked with cleaning up his operations. Part of this cleanup was, apparently, to target the work I'd been doing, with the aim, as I understand it, of showing how I and the people I supported were purposely working together to do a bad job.

This looked to me like a really bad and unfair situation. So I made a pretty big deal about it to my company's human resources team. I'd been speaking to them on a regular basis, anyway, almost since the time I'd started working at my company. I'd just wanted to make sure I always had a paper trail for everything I was doing and experiencing. So when I brought this specific issue to them, it was taken care of pretty quickly. But it was still a really scary situation.

My family life between April and July of 2022 was also pretty stressful. As I said in earlier posts, after I came out to live with my mom in October of 2021, I felt like I might like to go ahead and focus my life just on my mom and my little sisters from now on. But when I discussed this issue with my family, they made it clear they were happier with me living my own life. In particular, my oldest little sister was really emphatic about this -- so much so that I just started to feel like she didn't like me or want me around at all.

Additionally, as I've mentioned before, when I first moved into my mom's house, my brother had been living there. Not long after I moved in, my brother left the house, under some not very good circumstances. My nephew, who is twenty years old, moved in only a week later.

There was something very strange about the whole situation. But I can't explain it without unfairly dragging my family's stories into my own story. All I can say is, the situation wasn't very good.

But I will mention one thing. Every night that I worked at Walmart, I'd work until about 11:15 PM. I'd get home around 11:30 PM. And I'd generally eat my dinner, or at least a snack or something, when I got home.

But my mom, my nephew, and my oldest little sister would all three start waiting up for me. They'd then sit there, while I was eating, having the same exact conversation every night. The conversation would be about a specific type of crime. The three of them would say things like, "Death is too good for people who do that kind of thing," or, "If I ever learned that a person did that kind of thing, I'd just kill them -- no questions asked."

I had no idea why my family was so obsessed with talking about this specific thing. But it made me sick. And eventually I just stopped eating my dinner after work out in the living room. I'd eat my dinner at Walmart before I clocked in for work. And I'd bring a little snack home, like a candy bar, which I'd eat in my room after work, before I went to bed.

So, as I've mentioned, I left my mom's house in April of 2022 and moved back into a place of my own. Not more than a week or two after I left, my nephew left my mom's house and went back to live with his mom. And only a couple days after that, he was arrested, for the same crime he and my mom and my little sister would spend every night lecturing me about. This whole situation upset my mom so much that she, a diabetic, went on a huge sugar binge and almost went into a coma.

The situation really upset me, too, on a lot of different levels. It seems bad enough, just as I stated it. But there's a lot more family history, even behind this, that I can't talk about, but which really upset me even more. And, at the same time as all of this was happening, I was being hounded by my manager at my day job, who was being told by his manager to uncover something bad in my cooperation with my colleagues that couldn't be uncovered, because it simply didn't exist. So I was pretty upset and pretty depressed.

But in addition to this, my relationship with my oldest little sister just kept getting more and more strained. I made a point of spending two days or nights per week with my family. But things were just getting so stressful there that I had to limit my interactions with my family to one day per week, usually a weekend day.

I was tired of always only hanging out in the house with my family. So I started making my visits with them into little road trips, which I thought they liked. But my oldest little sister really used our time in the car, in a pretty cramped and close space for five people, to needle the hell out of me.

It finally got to a point on one of these drives in early July that I yelled at my little sister. I was extremely hurt and upset. I'd expressed these feelings before. But I expressed them pretty explosively at this point.

After this day, I went... I don't know... possibly two or three months without hanging out in my mom's house at all. I also went... maybe five months... before I allowed my oldest little sister back in my car again.

Pretty much all through the late summer and early fall of 2022 the only time I spent with my mom and my little sisters was if they met me at public places and public events. Most of the time, this meant that when my little sisters had sports practices or games, I'd go watch them. That would be my family time.

I think a lot of this stuff shows up in my patterns of activity on Twitter.

As I've mentioned before, as 2022 progressed, I wrote fewer and fewer Twitter threads focused on one topic. Instead, I'd write threads that were more journal-like, and were based on a number of different experiences I'd had over the past few days.

Also, whereas in 2021 and previous years, I wrote Twitter threads at a frequency of maybe three times a week, I now started writing threads only once a week, if not even once every two weeks. So my Twitter threads were far less frequent and were about far more things.

But I think what is clear from the Twitter threads I wrote in April through July of 2022 is that I was trying to get outside again and get myself more involved in the communities I lived in. I was also trying to open up my range of artistic experience and present more of a general range of thoughts in my reviews of the art I experienced than I'd done over the past couple of years.

There's a lot more I'd love to write. But I think I'll leave things here. This all gives a pretty good picture of this time frame.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

7/10/22 - Review of Ouray County Pride, Montrose July 4th, Black Canyon, etc.

Here is the link to my July 10, 2022, Twitter thread about the Ouray County Pride festival, the Montrose 4th of July parade, a visit to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Stranger Things season 4, episodes 6 and 7, the book The Coloradans, the novel A Legend of Montrose, the film Ziegfeld Girl, and the film Anything Goes.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy. 

6/29/22 - Review of Reservation Blues, Stranger Things, and some community events

Here is the link to my June 29, 2022, Twitter thread review of the book Reservation Blues, by Sherman Alexie, Stranger Things season 4, episodes 6 and 7, a protest following the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a visit to the Montrose County Historical Museum, and a local business networking day.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

6/20/22 - Review of books, movies, electric coop meeting, and museum visit

Here is the link to my June 20, 2022, Twitter thread review of the books The English Novel and Glinda of Oz; the films Happy Together and My Beautiful Laundrette; the Delta Montrose Electric Association's annual meeting; and a visit to Colorado's Museum of the West.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

6/12/22 - Review of books, movies, series, and gem show

Here is the link to my June 12, 2022, Twitter thread review of the books Sanctuary and The Good Time Girls of Colorado; the movies The Women and The Booksellers; Stranger Things season 4, episodes 3 and 4; and a visit to a local gem and rock show.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

5/30/22 - Black Canyon, Ute Indian Museum, and Stranger Things season 4 ep. 1

Here is the link to my May 30, 2022, Twitter thread about my visits to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, the Ute Indian Museum, and a hike I took in Montrose, Colorado; and season 4, episode 1, of Stranger Things.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

5/26/22 - Review of the book Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her

Here is the link to my May 26, 2022, Twitter thread review of the book Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, by Melanie Rehak.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

5/21/22 - Review of three movies and the Museum of the Mountain West

Here is the link to my May 21, 2022, Twitter thread review of the films Cabaret, Damn Yankees, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas; and a visit to Colorado's Museum of the Mountain West.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

5/19/22 - Review of the book Fast-Talking Dames, by Maria DiBattista

Here is the link to my May 19, 2022, Twitter thread review of the book Fast-Talking Dames, by Maria DiBattista.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

5/15/22 - Ute Indian Museum and Montrose Botanic Gardens

Here is the link to my May 15, 2022, Twitter thread about my visits to Colorado's Ute Indian Museum and the Montrose Botanic Gardens.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

5/5/22 - Review of The Well of Loneliness, by Radclyffe Hall

Here is the link to my May 5, 2022, Twitter thread review of the novel The Well of Loneliness, by Radclyffe Hall.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

4/24/22 - Review of Auntie Mame, Heartbreak House, The Rowan, etc.

Here is the link to my April 24, 2022, Twitter thread review of the movies Auntie Mame, On the Town, The Big Sleep, and Calamity Jane; the novel The Rowan; and the play Heartbreak House.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

1/8/23 - Some thoughts (February to April 2022)

Thank you for visiting my blog.

This blog is a work-in-progress "table of contents," with links to all of the threads I have written on Twitter, from when I started using the social media platform, in October of 2012, through April of 2022.

Every once in a while, I like to do a "thoughts" post, talking about my life experiences over the time frame for the threads I've recently posted links to.

For this post, the time frame is basically February through April of 2022.

***

As I've mentioned in other posts, in 2021, my life was basically wrecked when, after I'd done sales consultancy work for about five and a half years, I lost my main gig and was unable to find any decent positions.

I eventually went back to doing work as a permanent full-time employee for a fintech company in November of 2021. But by that time, my livelihood and finances had been so decimated that, in October of 2021, I moved in with my mom, out in Western Colorado.

In addition to my 40-hour job for the fintech company, I worked about 25 hours a week at the Walmart in my mom's town, so I could get started up as quickly as possible repaying all the debt I'd accumulated over the course of 2021. As of now (January of 2023), I am still only about 33% paid off on that debt.

I was, for a while, working seven-day weeks between my day job and Walmart. But, at the end of January of 2022, I stopped working Sundays, which put me down to working only six days a week.

As soon as I got my first paycheck from Walmart, I started contributing to my mom's household expenses -- paying for groceries, the internet, etc. But in January of 2022, I also had to start paying the rent on my mom's place, due to some rules about her living situation.

Paying my mom's rent was fine. And, in fact, I started thinking about living with my mom for good. I could see how much money I'd be making from my fintech job. I knew I could find a much bigger place than the one where she and my three little adopted sisters were currently living. We could all live there. And I could help take care of the family.

I don't think I've ever mentioned this. But, at first, my hope had been to be able to leave my mom's house in mid-January of 2022.

I told my mom this. And she asked me not to be so quick to move. She'd said it in such a way that I felt like she really actually wanted me to keep living with her.

That wasn't an idea I was fond of. But my mom is getting older. And she has three girls she's taking care of. And I thought, If my mom needs me, then I'll stay with her. And that's what made me seriously entertain the idea of finding a place where we all could live.

But it turned out that my family, especially my oldest little sister, didn't really want this. And, in fact, it started to feel to me like my family would be a lot happier if I moved out of my mom's house sooner rather than later.

At first, my life outside of work revolved around my family. After all, I thought I was going to be living with them for good. Then, after I realized I would be moving, I allowed myself some time to myself. But, as much as I hate to say this, I also started spending less time with my family because my oldest sister was making it really painful for me to spend any time with the family at all.

Additionally, there were some things that were really stressful for me, some involving my nephew, who was also living with my mom at the time. But I just can't write about all of this stuff, even now, without getting too emotional about it.

By March of 2022, I had enough money to get into a place of my own. And I knew I needed to get out of my mom's house. So I focused a lot of my energy on getting into my own place. By the last week of March, I was in my own place -- though there were a few days when, thanks to internet issues in my new house, I still went to my mom's house to do my day job.

My new place was in a town about 20 miles away from my mom's place. Out in Western Colorado, that's pretty customary. In my hometown of Denver, a drive between suburbs might be six miles and take 20 minutes. Out here, the drive from my house to my mom's house is 20 miles, and it takes 30 minutes. So it feels like basically the same thing.

March was a tough month for me, because, in addition to working six days a week, I was driving to places, in pretty much all the towns "near" my mom's town, looking for a new house. My focus was on that more than anything else.

April was tough as well. In addition to working six days a week, I was also driving back and forth between my new town and my mom's town, where I was still working at the Walmart six days a week. Some days I'd wake up around six-thirty in the morning, start my day job at seven, work until four in the afternoon, drive to Walmart, work until eleven, or likely a little later, drive home, get home around midnight, unwind, and get into bed at maybe one in the morning, if not later.

But I also still made a point of spending at least two days per week with my family. And I couldn't always work it so I could fit visiting my family in with going to work at Walmart. In fact, one night per week I usually drove out to my mom's house to attend a weekly virtual class for families with adopted children. So that was, now that I remember, another night per week I drove to my family's house, outside of driving to work.

The strain got to be too much for me -- as weak as that sounds. And by the end of April I stopped working Saturdays at Walmart -- though I think there were still weeks where I worked three nights at Walmart: three weeknights, I mean.

So by May I was only working five days a week. But between my day job and Walmart, I was still working about 55 to 60 hours per week.

Life at my day job was pretty stressful, too, at this time. As many know, 2022 was a pretty bad year for the tech world. And the fintech world wasn't spared. People who worked at my company started leaving in droves. Then people started getting fired in droves. And then more people left in droves. This is just the story of upcycles and downcycles in companies. I'm familiar with it. But it never stops being stressful.

It was really only a month or so after I'd started working at the company that I could see this was all going to start happening. And so I would have been stressed about losing my job, just thinking about all this stuff myself.

But, as the tension started ratcheting up, some of my managers and teammates started getting really weird. It's like they were looking for reasons (not that they needed any, legally) to fire people, including me.

As soon as I could see all of this happening, I started talking with my human resources department on a regular basis, so I could keep a paper trail of what was happening -- for whatever good the paper trail would serve later on. I've kept this communication going all the way through to now.

However, while people were acting weird, dealing with the stress of the market situation in their own weird ways, and -- let's face it -- checking out from this company while they were looking at other companies to check into, they were also supportive of me, as a teammate, and as a new employee at the company.

Partly because of my own skill, and largely because of the support of my teammates, I exceeded the expectations set for me almost immediately. All the way through 2022 I exceeded the expectations set for me each quarter. I dealt with a lot of stress at my day job in 2022. But I also received a lot of support. And I achieved a lot of success.

The two Twitter threads I wrote on April 3, 2022, are... well... weird. I wrote both of them, basically, after my first full week of living in my new house. And both of them were written while I was drunk, as I clearly mention in the threads.

Working at Walmart was an interesting education for me. I had gotten so used to not doing any serious grocery shopping over the years. But as I worked at Walmart, and as I watched what other people were buying, I became more and more intrigued by all of these products. And -- despite all the talk in 2021 and 2022 about inflation, I was really intrigued by how affordable a lot of these products were!

Anybody can see from my art and philosophy that, despite my having a somewhat Marxist analytical view towards economics and finance, I do believe strongly in capitalism, and I am absolutely in love with consumerism. And working at Walmart was such a great inspiration for me, and such a great education in consumerism.

That said, I rung up a lot of alcohol for people while working at Walmart -- all that sweet, canned-cocktail-type alcohol -- the spiked sparkling water, the twisted teas, the hard lemonades, the crazy blue Smirnoff whatever -- all that kind of thing. And I started getting really curious about those products.

That curiosity, plus all the stress I'd been dealing with, made me decide that as soon as I got a place of my own, I would have a night where I just bought some of those drinks and got drunk.

I had that night on April 3rd, while I was watching the Howard Hawks film His Girl Friday -- which, I'm sorry -- it was so relevant to a lot of stuff going on in America today that I, drunk, totally flipped out and wrote the wild threads I wrote.

I didn't drink like that again. For a few weeks following that night, I would still buy some of those crazy sweet alcohol drinks for dinner. But I tired of them pretty quickly.

I don't really like getting drunk. But I do see how that night of getting drunk may have been an okay thing for me, and a kind of catharsis for all of the stress I'd dealt with over 2021 and into 2022. So I don't regret it. I just also really don't want to do it again.

So those are some thoughts about my life from February to April of 2022.

Thanks again for visiting my blog. Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

4/3/22 - Cut-and-paste of statement by President Obama from 2016

Here is the link to my April 3, 2022, Twitter thread, where I essentially cut and pasted a statement President Obama made at his final press conference of 2016.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.

4/3/22 - Review of Ada, The Drama of the Oceans, and His Girl Friday

Here is the link to my April 3, 2022, Twitter thread review of the novel Ada, by Vladimir Nabokov, the book The Drama of the Oceans, by Elisabeth Mann Borgese, and the movie His Girl Friday, directed by Howard Hawks.

I messed up on this thread. It breaks off and then begins again at this link.

Thank you for reading. Please enjoy.