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 January 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 December of 2021 through January of 2022.
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As I've mentioned in other posts, in 2021, my life was basically turned upside-down. I lost my job, had my finances destroyed, and, by October, was basically homeless.
I moved out to Western Colorado to live with my mom in early October. Not long after this, I got a steady and well paying day job. The job I got was the first permanent job I'd had in about five and a half years. I'd spent that time working consultancy jobs.
Not long after I got my steady day job, I also started working at Walmart in my mom's hometown, mostly so I could start repaying all the debt I'd accumulated over 2021 as quickly as possible.
My day job started on November 2nd. I continued working at Walmart. I worked at least 40 hours a week at my day job. And I worked an additional 25 hours (including Saturdays and Sundays every week, except holidays) at Walmart. I kept this schedule up through November, December, and January -- which basically meant that, except for the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's breaks, I worked 7 days a week for three months.
At the end of January, 2022, I stopped working Saturdays at Walmart, though I was still working two six-hour days on the weekdays and six hours on Sunday. I kept up my six day a week pace of work through the end of April, if I remember correctly, when I finally cut Saturday out of my working schedule at Walmart. And finally, in June of 2022, I stopped working at Walmart altogether.
During this time, my life revolved almost entirely around work. But it also revolved around my family. I lived with my mom, my three adopted sisters, and my nephew, who lived with my mom from October of 2021 through April of 2022 (he left my mom's house and went back to live with my biological sister not long after I left my mom's house in late March of 2022).
I started paying off my debts as quickly as I could. But it wasn't quick enough. And, in fact, by January of 2022, my bank account, which had been open since 1999, got closed because I had been so unable to keep out of being at a consistently negative balance.
Also, in November of 2021, I lost my cellphone account, which I'd had opened since 2003, when I was out doing Americorps work with the National Parks Service. And, finally, in February of 2022, I lost my main credit card, which I'd had open since 1998, when I first moved out to New York City.
So -- it was like everything that had happened to me in 2021 (some stuff my fault, some stuff not my fault) had wiped out over 20 years of my financial life. I'd been in risky financial situations over the years. But I had never experienced anything like what happened to me in 2021.
As soon as I got work, I started contributing to my mom's household expenses -- buying groceries, paying for the internet, etc. But in January of 2022, I also started paying the rent for my mom's place. Due to my mom's living situation, this wasn't something either she or I had a choice about.
But I was happy to pay my mom's rent. And I started to think that maybe, once I got back on my feet, I could simply find a place where my mom, my little sisters, and I could live -- with the hope being that my nephew would be able to get into a place of his own. This idea, however, kind of stalled, as I felt like it wasn't something, ultimately, that my family, but especially my oldest little sister, really wanted.
I had, by that point, been living as if I were going to have my whole life revolve around my mom and little sisters from then on. But, after that point, I think I realized that my mom and sisters really liked having their own life. And so I started to do some things on my own again. This mainly involved getting out of the house, by walking, visiting the library or cafe by myself, and taking time to read books.
I think this transition is reflected in my Twitter threads during this time frame. At first, they're all about the stuff I did (mostly movies I watched) with my family. Then they start to include things like movies I watched by myself and books I read.
Also, as you'll see below, my pace of writing Twitter threads slowed down a lot. In fact, in October of 2021, I thought I would never write any Twitter threads again. (During that first week of October, I hate to say, my entire life was in question.)
By the end of October, once I started receiving paychecks, I would visit my local coffee shop, about once a week, by myself. I would generally take this time at the cafe to write a Twitter thread.
Once I started writing Twitter threads again, I thought I would eventually start writing them as frequently as I'd written in 2020 and early 2021. But that hasn't happened -- not even now (January of 2023) that I'm living by myself and working only my day job.
I came to the conclusion at some point that I would get back to the basics -- writing my Twitter threads like journal entries. I only write a Twitter thread once a week, or maybe even once every two weeks. My threads are about everything I've experienced over that time frame. So I don't write heavy analysis anymore. I don't necessarily regret having given up this aspect of my threads.
I might as well mention this now -- from 2018 through 2021, my Twitter threads, and, in fact, a lot of my artistic and political life, was geared toward examining queer sexuality, youth sexuality, and sex work. I've explained why this happened. But, to be honest with you, it eventually became an obsession, and maybe even an addiction, to me -- trying to learn the history of all this stuff in order to weave it in to a lot of the political disaster we've been seeing ramp up a lot here in America since 2015.
As I've lightened up my approach to how I write on Twitter, I've also lightened up that aspect of my life. I'm still really concerned about all of that stuff. I wouldn't have gotten so involved in learning about it if I hadn't been so concerned. But -- for whatever reason, it's too much of a load for me to carry, especially all by myself. So I've had to let it go. And I've had to get back to the basics with my Twitter of just treating my threads like a light and easy journal of my life.
You might not see a lot of this in the threads from December of 2021 and January of 2022. But you will see that trend increase in the threads I wrote throughout 2022.
The only other thing I'd like to mention right now is that -- I'm sure I'll speak cursorily about my day job in future posts. And I'll talk about my work at Walmart in more detail. But I would like to talk about my work at Walmart right now, just a little briefly.
First of all -- folks who work at places like Walmart deserve at least $15 per hour. At least.
Second -- my first official jobs were at places like McDonald's, King Sooper's, etc. My wages there, from the time I was 14 to the time I was 23, were, oh... between $4.25 and $7.50 per hour. When I was 23 and I started my first temp job in an office, where I got between $15 and $17 per hour, it was a total change in my life. So, in October of 2021, when I came back to the world of working in a grocery store, and I was getting $15 per hour, it was a totally different thing from what it felt like when I was working for between $4.25 and $7.50.
So -- largely due to that level of pay -- my job at Walmart, for a while at least, didn't feel like a chore. In fact, it felt really nice. I'd been a consultant, working from home, since 2016. Walmart was the first place in years that I would leave home to work at. I was social, out in the world, four days a week. In some ways, this did a lot to heal my mind.
What also healed my mind, really, was the work itself. I worked the cash registers. So I was ringing up groceries, bagging groceries, and talking with customers, as well as cleaning up my lane, etc. Doing actual physical work -- actually moving things, bagging things, lifting things, cleaning things, etc. -- all of this stuff was really therapeutic to me.
There's a lot to be said about the mental, physical, and emotional benefits of doing physical labor. Unfortunately, people who do physical labor are the most likely to be exploited. And so physical labor is often associated with feelings of being overworked, underappreciated, underpaid, and undervalued. If greedy people didn't exploit physical laborers, physical labor would be an awesome thing to do.
That said, though -- I can honestly say that, for the first few months, anyway, of my time at Walmart, I looked forward to going to work, and I liked going to work, pretty much every day. The only reason I stopped working there, eventually, was that I could see how much mental energy and focus my day job needed, and how my work at Walmart was sort of impeding my ability to do my day job to the best of my abilities.
So, like I said, I first cut my work time at Walmart down at the end of January, which is the end of the time frame of the Twitter threads I've posted links to below.
Thank you, as always, for reading. I hope you enjoy.
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