All roads lead to Rome
Or, at least out of here
I just came from lunch with my friend S. We were excited about the place — an Afghan restaurant with 4.9 stars.
I don’t know what we were thinking. Maybe to people who don’t cook or eat at nice places ever or have a mom or grandma or aunt who cooks, it was good food. To anyone else, no, it was decidedly not. It wasn’t horrible; just not good. It lacked freshness, delicacy, excitement, originality. It lacked care.
But that’s not what got me at lunch. What got me was our conversation. S., a nurse at Kaiser Permanente, confirmed my suspicion that the healthcare system is in serious decline, that the powers that be take active steps to withhold care or make it as difficult as possible to access, and that medical care in general is increasingly hostile, labyrinthine, and degraded.
I’d like to say it got me thinking about leaving for Spain ASAP, but that wouldn’t be true because, well, I’ve thought about that very thing every day since returning from Buenos Aires a week ago last Wednesday. I went to Buenos Aires in large part to assess whether I could semi-retire there, or live cheaply enough that I could afford to shift to a freelance model of work rather than find a Job-job (a “real,” full-time, permanent job with benefits) again.
