#Especially because I'm American so I can't afford to travel (lol)

[bizarrocloudy]

I think one of my students, a 78-year-old Korean woman, has been closeted her entire life. Just... some of the things she's said. We've known each other for a year, now, and I've heard lots of her stories. I love hearing her stories. I think she sees herself in me, and she's often told me that she views me as a daughter. Many of her stories are about her feeling different than other women, and noticing that I'm also different than other women.

I know the state of feminism in Korea today isn't uhhhh, isn't what I personally would be happy with. So I can't imagine what it would've been like growing up in Korea in the 50's, on a mountain with no electricity, the first time ever seeing a movie being when you went on a field trip in middle school. Probably pretty isolating.

I have a tendency to be protective over her when I think about her, like she's a child. But this is a grown woman with children of her own. And when I'm actually with her, I'm reminded she's just another human trying to figure shit out in whatever way she can.

Obviously I'm just speculating based on some of the things she's said to me, but, I guess the point of this story is that... There are old Korean women out there making friends with young American women (am I still young?), bridging generational and cultural differences, and finding commonality and genuinely finding connection and enjoying each others company.

Maybe me living my life so openly "different" is somewhat validating for her, even if she was never able to figure out quite why she felt so different in the first place.

[ryumako]

I remember seeing you document your travels across the country. If there's something I noticed about Americans is that they tend to move out a lot, and you're probably the one I've seen do it the most haha I can't imagine what state you're living in now. And now you have a job where you need to cross borders on the daily?! That's wild to me. I was just wondering what kind of job would require you to do that (you don't need to make this ask public if you don't want to!)

Btw I've seen you wonder if you have any Tumblr mutuals left but I'm still here! I'm glad to see you're doing fine with an adorable cat!

"Across the country" is generous for sure, but I have been moved states a lot! The timeline for residences (without years because I couldn't tell you for sure atp) has been Nebraska (birth state), Oklahoma, Colorado (small town), Indiana (consider this my home state bc I did most of my growing up there), Kansas, Indiana again, Colorado again (larger town), then Kansas again (current residence, larger town). I also spent a good deal of time in Ohio (grandparents & parents state of origin) and Kentucky (the area I lived in Indiana was dubbed "Kentuckiana" due to its 10 min proximity to the state). I've also visited every state in between because I'd only ever drove/been driven to my new homes. These are generally considered Midwestern states, so I definitely don't consider myself "traveled", lol (never been to a coast).

Basically every living situation after having grown up in Indiana has been some degree of unwilling on my part, especially the initial move to Kansas when I was 16 (I was most active on this blog at that time, so some might recall that and find it surprising that I'm back here. For all intents and purposes, I'm somewhat surprised too. But for the record the town I'm in now is much larger. Not that that means I have friends or anything, just that there are generally more amenities).

On my 18th birthday I moved back to my "home town" in Indiana, got a shitty food service job, met a guy there and followed him to Colorado in 2018. I knew we weren't to last forever or anything like that and since I hadn't had plans to go to college since I was 15, this wasn't 'ruining my life' or anything (I had already long lost faith in my career aptitude). I had fun though I maybe could've planned the end better. Mid 2019 when our relationship ended sooner than I'd anticipated, I moved back in with my dad in Kansas (could've gone back to Indiana again but it wasn't really in the cards and things hadn't been the same anyway). He had since moved to an even smaller town than the one I had graduated high school in (about 6k people, where, in contrast, the town in Colorado I had just come from was about 600k). This era was objectively the lowest in my life (not because the town was tiny, just Many Reasons). Eventually my dad lost his job and told me he wasn't sure he could afford our rental much longer and strongly implied I might be better off on my own. I rented a crappy apartment within walking distance to my hospital kitchen job, lived alone for the first time, and lived there for about a year and a half before I all but generally gave up and started flinging myself around on dating apps. One guy, who lived in a suburb of one of the state's largest towns, stuck, and we've been dating for almost two years, living together in said larger town for a year and half.

His mom got me my current job! Which I really like, actually. It's absolutely bizarre to enjoy the actual labor of it, not to mention finally getting treated like an adult by an employer (benefits?? no real dress code?? no micro-managing??). I'm what they call a hotshot courier (that's the actual title), where instead of moving many parcels locally in bulk, I take one or two high-priority parcels several hundred miles away, and that's a shift. In practice, I choose when I'm available and for what duration of road trip, I get called or I don't, I accept or I don't, and I take the box and a small company vehicle on a drive (the shortest trips are at least 4 hours round-trip, and the longest drive I've been sent on was 14 hours total, though they can be much longer). Most frequently, I go to Kansas City or Oklahoma City, but I also go to Omaha and Lincoln NE, St Louis MO, Dallas TX, sometimes places in Arkansas, and many smaller places in between. Last October I did something called an "on-board carry", where the shipping company pays one of us to accompany a parcel on a plane (to have a constant set of eyes on it) and got to visit Seattle! Though I only had time to stick to the vicinity of the airport lol. As someone who always secretly wanted to be a trucker but didn't want to get a CDL, it's a very cool gig.

ETA (because I didn't proofread): I'm glad ur still around as well! Even if my memory is poor! People rag on Tumblr but just as with any other socmed it's literally fine if u know how to curate ur shit. I have no other socmed though bc of the Advertising. And the little cat is insane btw. But endearing