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.
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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.
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.
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!
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