AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

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Jin+Guice
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Jin+Guice »

@jacob: Interesting that you suggest that book. I have found the primary divide to be urban/ suburban/ rural. For me thar divide is even stronger than country, much less region. For me, after that, there are outliers in terms of really great cities and really lame cities. Only after that would I consider region the divider. I would rather live in my least favorite city than a suburb in my favorite region. I would rather live in a great city in my least favorite region than an ok city in my favorite. This is of course just my preference which suits my temperament.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by jacob »

@J&G - Agreed. I've often disparaged popular/populist travel by telling humans how they differ more by profession than by distance. IOW, an engineer from Pakistan, say, has more in common with a fellow engineer from Kansas than they do/have with their physical neighbor some 10-50ft away. Differences in the modern era are not by kilometer distance but by modes of thinking. Traveling is not longer a matter of physical distance as much as class-distance or cultural distance. The world is [currently] flat.

7Wannabe5
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Yup, thats why according to the Permaculture rule of three and something Taleb wrote and a Cosmo article from 1979, you should always be dating a Lumberjack, an Accountant, and an Artist.

Jin+Guice
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Jin+Guice »

@jacob: Yes, I remember you ruining travel for me somewhat by pointing that out. At the same time, you made my neighborhood much more lively!

@7w5: This is why I refer to WL6+ as fun and sexy, all of the sudden you start becoming the lumberjack, the accountant and the artist.

OutOfTheBlue
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by OutOfTheBlue »

jacob wrote:
Fri Mar 24, 2023 3:31 pm
@J&G - Agreed. I've often disparaged popular/populist travel by telling humans how they differ more by profession than by distance. IOW, an engineer from Pakistan, say, has more in common with a fellow engineer from Kansas than they do/have with their physical neighbor some 10-50ft away. Differences in the modern era are not by kilometer distance but by modes of thinking. Traveling is not longer a matter of physical distance as much as class-distance or cultural distance. The world is [currently] flat.
/Dystopic glasses on
True. The human earth is a lot flatter than I thought. Like our screens. Still, some lovely curves and unexpected twists here and there. But even the differences can feel like artificial flavors. Life is like a box of chocolate, they say. Well, you always know what you're gonna get. In some form or another, it'll be chocolate.
The Machine Stops, E.M. Forster wrote:Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Pekin when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Pekin? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.
Jin+Guice wrote:
Fri Mar 24, 2023 5:33 pm

@7w5: This is why I refer to WL6+ as fun and sexy, all of the sudden you start becoming the lumberjack, the accountant and the artist.
:lol:

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Thanks for the book suggestion. I got the audiobook from the library and have been listening to it. One thing growing up in the army did was give me a taste for how much the country does vary by region. While I have lived in the mountain west for most of my life, other states can be quite different. I was considering going on a long road trip to see most of the country before I pick anywhere final to live. I'm a student of history as well, so it's always great to see all the historical sites the national parks system has preserved.

I think the ultimate conclusion here is that I need to move much sooner rather than later. Going to make that my #1 priority now. This will involve a lot of work due to the fact I own my home and have a lot of consumer crap, but I do think I've maxed out opportunity from my current location anyway. I am glad I tried to find community for a solid year because I learned a lot about myself and other people from that experience. The social vibe can vary a ton depending on location and the activity you're doing, so I have a clearer idea of what I'm looking for now.

Jin+Guice
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by Jin+Guice »

I went on a long bus trip before I moved regions. I was good at predicting which cities I would like (i.e., the roadtrip element and the story of it was better than the actual information I got), the more helpful thing was actually meeting people in all of the perspective cities so that I knew people already when I moved.

I still think figuring out what type of area (rural, urban, suburban, etc...) is more important than the exact place or region, though perhaps region is the next thing to consider after that.

I am excited to see what you decide!

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Right now, I want to target urban areas or "small, educated college city"-type areas. Hence why I want to put NYC on the travel list and check it out soon.

How did you meet people in the cities before you moved there? My main tactic so far has been to go to meetup or local events, and while I've casually interacted with people at these things, I've struggle to make any lasting connections. Any tips here?

shaz
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by shaz »

I recommend trying out some mountain towns before you abandon Colorado entirely. The lifestyle and attitudes can be very different than in front range areas. The mountain towns I lived in (Colorado and Wyoming) were much more inclined to alternative/semi-retired/ERE-ish lifestyles.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@shaz - any good recommendations for mountain towns? My brother lives in Grand Junction, which seems like a good ERE area, and Durango is one town I'm stopping at on my way back from Tuscon. Are there others you suggest I see?

shaz
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by shaz »

My favorite is Steamboat Springs. I intended to be there for 2 years and stayed in the area for 9 years. It's pricey if you do it like a tourist but there are hacks to keep costs very low. (For example, it is in the middle of a lot of BLM and national forest land where you can dispersed camp for free.) They have a lovely library and the (free) botanic gardens are a must-visit. Some of the smaller towns outside Steamboat such as Oak Creek or Hahn's Peak are even quirkier and might qualify as hippie enclaves. If you are there just for spring - fall, even better.

Buena Vista/Salida are also pretty sweet. Can you tell I am partial to hot springs and towns with rivers running through them?

I haven't been to Ouray in years, but it was nice enough 25 years ago that I considered moving there.

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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by jacob »

There is a book in the same category as American Nations that does a factor analysis type personality test to see where one fits in best. A factor analysis may be somewhat more useful that going by a check list. In particular, you can add the vectors and look at probabilities. Regions will differ in their factors. Urban/suburan/rural will have different factors too so add those to the region. Then there's a neighborhood vector which goes on top. This becomes the starting point for one's personal efforts.

Life is generally easier when one has a tailwind. This location analysis is really no different than looking at vocations in terms of job opportunities/talent/interest and majoring in programming rather than creative writing.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@shaz - Thanks for the recommendations. Both Steamboat and Salida are on the route I'm taking, so I'll work some stops there into my schedule.

@jacob - That's also a good point, especially if one is looking for a climate change-resistant location in addition to other factors. I'll start looking into and compiling demographic data.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

Monthly Update

On Depression
I've been able to get (relatively) on top of the depression by going to bed earlier and exercising more. There is a night and day difference on days where I sleep/exercise and days where I don't. And because the depression is chronic/cumulative, I have to do these things every single day in order to crawl out of the hole. I also think the fact my job/environment is so under-stimulating right now is contributing a lot to the problem because there's nothing to distract me from my own thoughts/get me engaged by default. That is to say, everything I do is the result of me forcing myself to do it rather than a byproduct of other systems in life, which is causing me to over-rely on willpower.

My general paradigm on depression has changed a bit with research and lived experience. My current theory is that depression is a symptom of major collapse in the body's stress response. It's therefore not really a "chemical imbalance," but depression can very much be caused by unbalancing your body.

So basically, any stressors that you don't deal with accumulate over your lifetime and eventually turn into burnout/depression. This is obviously why trauma can cause depression, since that's also something that overwhelms the body's stress response, but this is hardly the only cause. Other stressors include poor diet, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, lack of social connection, stress from work, pollution, etc. Also, constantly small distractions and multitasking also lead to more stress. It's really not surprising depression is as common as it is given the Standard American Lifestyle manages to be nearly as unhealthy as humanly possible.

Which is why a treatment for it that involves overhauling your lifestyle is far more effective than psychotherapy or medication. In particular, exercise is shown to be 150% more effective than either.

When my depression spikes, it tends to be brought on by an accumulation of stressors (usually lack of sleep, which triggers less exercise and bad diet), which then causes me to ruminate on all my problems and decide that I'm Uniquely Flawed and Bad. But it's the depression causing that thought, and the thought itself is not true.

Which is not to say I shouldn't take how I feel seriously. I have worked through an enormousness amount of personal hangups and old trauma through a combination of journaling and Plotkin, but this stuff alone is not enough without fixing the lifestyle that's frequently triggering the breakdown in the body's stress response.

WL6
We've been reading the ERE book for the MMG I'm in, and it's been a great experience to review the basics. The last time I read this book, I was 22 and most of it went over my head. Now that I've had a decade more of life experience and reached basic FI, the book reads on a whole deeper level.

Chapter 5: Strategy, Tactics, and Guiding Principles feels like the exact answer I need to my current problem, and I wasn't ready for it before. In particular, this part really stuck out to me, and I've been thinking about it everyday for the past week:
ERE Book (edited for clarity) wrote:Since specific efforts create specific outcomes, all effects are goals, whether you want to achieve them or not.
This is mind-blowing and I've been going through everything in my life and applying this principle.

Do I keep eating out because I'm bored and under-stimulated? Gaining weight is a goal. No, I don't want to gain weight. I want to lose weight, but this effect is the result of a specific effort (I drive to the fast food place and buy fried chicken), and so I should think about it as a goal.

Do I browse reddit while I'm at work because I view my work hours as time I'm wasting anyway? All the mental health problems caused by screen use are now my goal. No, I don't like this goal. I don't like feeling bad. But the effort is creating the outcome, and so this is the goal.

Stay up too late talking to internet friends and then get behind on sleep, causing a lifestyle spiral? That must be one of my goals.

This has been really helpful because it's forcing me to actual confront my actual behavior and not live in the eternal salaryman-mode of "I make too much money, my job is too easy, I'm going to do whatever I want because it doesn't matter." Because while it is true $10 on fast food is hardly a dent in my portfolio, it IS a dent in my health, and it's keeping me trapped where I don't want to be.

So I'm trying to apply this thinking to my depression and my lifestyle. If I have too much stress, too much boredom and isolation, and too much crappy food, then depression is my goal. My actions are creating this outcome, so to get a different outcome, I need to change my actions.

Realigning my strategy
I'm adjusting my goals as follows.

1. Health - This is really the backbone of anything I do, and I need to focus on this more than anything. This means diet, exercise, sleep, and low stress.

This is a funny area to some extent because I'm actually doing better than 90% of Americans. It's just that once you've ran a 10k, you start to realize the ceiling on athletic achievement is WAY higher than slug-you thought, so I want to challenge myself to be as much of a shredded fitness champion as possible.

My currently lifestyle is 2-3 days a week in the gym, 50/50 eating at home and eating out, 8 hours of sleep, and shitty stress management. Having already done some experiments, I've found that I'd like to get to this point:

1. Exercise daily, no need for the gym because I've mastered home exercises. Also know how to do this to avoid injury. Get outside and hike or ski.

2. 100% eating at home, cook plant-heavy meals. No sugar, alcohol, or caffeine. I already know how to cook so I just need to make this stick. I also don't drink alcohol and no caffeine outside of one cup of green tea. The no-sugar is hard, though.

3. Sleep - 9-10 hours of sleep makes me feel better. Need to wind down for at least an hour before bed to sleep well.

4. Stress management - Need to avoid screens mostly. Constant distractions and multi-tasking increase stress. Meditation and long walks help alleviate it.

Also need more social connection but that particular goal is somewhat of a moving target since I'm moving.

2. Moving
Already talked about this a bunch, so the tl;dr is:

1. Get rid of crap - The ERE principles are helpful here. I'm getting rid of a lot of stuff that I don't need based on this book. Weirdly, I'm getting a lot of pushback on this from people in my life (don't get rid of your old dishes, AE, just move them! Even though you have about 50 plates, you should keep them!) and I don't quite understand why.

2. Rent house - Giving this to a property management company for now so I don't have to deal with it. I will probably sell it once I know where I want to live, but I'm just renting it for now.

3. Travel and explore new areas - Current plan is to probably bring the dog and stay in cheap hotels while driving. This, however, is going to get expensive quickly so I need to think about how to manage that. I don't want to couch surf or house sit because I am working from home while doing this and want total control over my schedule and total reliability in not being subject to other people's random desires.

4. Pick somewhere and actually move there.

3. Writing
Going to keep this up as my main hobby because I think it's good for me and it's the main thing I want to do with my life right now. You do have to be careful with writing because it's a solitary activity, and so it's easy to get detached from your life if you get too involved with it. But given everything else I'm doing, I think I can find balance.

I'm writing cold war fiction, so that means my list of tasks here involves a lot of research.

1. Continue to go to new writing groups in areas I travel to

2. Write daily, obviously

3. Continue research (I have read like 10+ books on this topic and counting)

4. Continue to learn Russian

4. Money
My networth finally went up again. It was flat all last year despite my constant contributions from my paycheck. My NW is now $700k.

Current plan is to keep my job until I have a location to move to because the job can fund more convenient traveling. Also the current economy is still not great, so I'd like to keep working until it stabilizes.

I have finally accepted I have zero interest in salaryman nonsense any more and I'm finally ready to quit. No more hangup on my job being my identity and self-worth. Huge progress there in getting out of that block, but I still don't want to quit until I have my new lifestyle squared away first.

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mountainFrugal
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by mountainFrugal »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Thu Mar 30, 2023 10:46 am
This is a funny area to some extent because I'm actually doing better than 90% of Americans. It's just that once you've ran a 10k, you start to realize the ceiling on athletic achievement is WAY higher than slug-you thought, so I want to challenge myself to be as much of a shredded fitness champion as possible...
Hell yeah. Get after it!

ertyu
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by ertyu »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Thu Mar 30, 2023 10:46 am

I have finally accepted I have zero interest in salaryman nonsense any more and I'm finally ready to quit. No more hangup on my job being my identity and self-worth. Huge progress there in getting out of that block, but I still don't want to quit until I have my new lifestyle squared away first.
How did you overcome that psychological hurdle? Might be worthwhile writing about it bc from reading various journals, it's quite a common one people might benefit from hearing your process on. Also, while I don't share it, I'm curious when it comes to how people in general sort out their psychology.

... edit: just now writing this, i realized i maybe do share it, though a bit differently: I don't get identity and self-worth out of my job, but i do feel like a loser and a failure for having been fired twice. Which if you think about it is the same thing, just in degree: self-worth or lack thereof based on one's relative ability to succeed at the salaryman game.

AnalyticalEngine
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by AnalyticalEngine »

@mF - Once you start to get in shape, it's easy to get addicted in a positive way to seeing the gains. Exercise is definitely an area of life where work equals results you can see!

@ertyu - A lot of my issues stemmed from feeling broke/self-hatred/feeling like a loser too, it's just the cause and the manifestation for me may have shown in other ways. In my case, I had a lot of emotional issues tied to feeling like a failure for being a masculine woman which stemmed from my Mormon upbringing. There's also a real lack of LifeScripts or role models for childfree, single, tomboyish women, so I constantly felt like I was somehow failing adulthood. Because software engineering is a fairly prestigious and easy-for-me job, it was easy for me to fall into the trap of doing the least effort at something I disliked because I lacked the vision to see myself anywhere else, and the self-hatred made me constantly sell myself short or put up with things I shouldn't have.

I broke through this in two ways. The first was my depression getting so bad that I felt I had no real choice but to actually deal with my problems instead of sticking my head in the sand. I also think it's fairly common for people to hit 30, realize they aren't getting any younger, then get to work doing the things they want to in life. In my case, I think both of these applied.

It lead me to a lot of soul searching and a lot of journaling. I mean, a LOT of journaling. I wrote multiple pages a day everyday for nearly two years. This got all my thoughts and feelings out of my head and onto the paper, which had the benefit of removing them from my system and helping me look at them more critically.

What I fundamentally realized is that the salaryman identity is just a story I'm telling myself. Likewise, being a "failure" for being "too masculine" is also just a story I'm telling myself. The reality is that "masculine" and "salaryman" are terms that make no sense outside of a social context. These identities are therefore a kind of collective, social story that doesn't apply in all contexts. Understanding this required I put myself in a bunch of radically different social contexts so I could get the contrast and more clearly see myself. Things I did included: police academy, civics government class, writing group, board game club, LGBT events, DnD, this forum, running group, going to weird new age church, trying to learn Russian and make Slavic friends from a different culture, making friends with communists, making friends with social conservatives, etc. The social culture at these different groups were so dramatically different that it helped put my insecurities and identities in more perspective.

And what I realized by doing this is that no one...actually cares if I am "too masculine" or "not a software engineer." These identities are only issues in bad environments, such as Mormonism and Rich Corporate. The problem is not me but constantly being inside social environments that are not a good fit for me. And changing my social milieu is entirely within my control.

This then lead to me cutting a bunch of people out of my life who weren't good for me then also avoiding milieus that aren't good for me. Without the constant environmental pressures to be X thing, the fact I'm not X thing stopped being important. People inside of Mormonism throw a fit if you aren't a feminine woman, but no one at police academy cares.

It was important that I recognized the problem then ALSO change the environment that was causing the problem. Living in the present and recognizing the story you're telling yourself are important skills.

Another factor was consciously adopting a new metanarrative/paradigm for myself. I was trying to operate without one for a long time but it was causing me to be directionless and without a concrete value system. In this case, I just adopted anticonsumerism again because it's a paradigm I largely agree with. And while like any paradigm, it's not perfect, finding meaning and direction through anticonsumerism is better than being directionless and succumbing to base desires and meaningless distractions.

So while I still have problems to solve now, like a lack of a tribe/role model as well as more mundane things like diet, exercise, moving, etc, I can just view them as simple problems to solve rather than insurmountable existential crises. And because software engineering does not fit into my web of goals because I find it boring and unfulfilling, it's easy to simply cut out when I no longer need it for practical, monetary reasons.

dustBowl
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by dustBowl »

Wooooooo, this is an exciting update!
AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Thu Mar 30, 2023 10:46 am
Chapter 5: Strategy, Tactics, and Guiding Principles feels like the exact answer I need to my current problem, and I wasn't ready for it before. In particular, this part really stuck out to me, and I've been thinking about it everyday for the past week:

ERE Book (edited for clarity) wrote:
Since specific efforts create specific outcomes, all effects are goals, whether you want to achieve them or not.

This is mind-blowing and I've been going through everything in my life and applying this principle.

...

Do I browse reddit while I'm at work because I view my work hours as time I'm wasting anyway? All the mental health problems caused by screen use are now my goal. No, I don't like this goal. I don't like feeling bad. But the effort is creating the outcome, and so this is the goal.
I had the same reaction when I read this part of the book. When you honestly start looking at the effects of all your choices as goals, it can cause some pretty stark realizations. For me, it was like "I guess my goals are to be stressed, unhealthy, to sleep poorly, to have a limited attention span, to have a life full of shallow relationships to be disconnected from any sense of purpose or my values." Yikes! Good motivation for change at least :lol:

I think this is a sneakily super powerful framing device.

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Thu Mar 30, 2023 10:46 am
1. Exercise daily, no need for the gym because I've mastered home exercises. Also know how to do this to avoid injury. Get outside and hike or ski.
When I was trying to develop a bodyweight workout routine, I used a book called You are Your Own Gym that I actually heard about on this forum. It gave me a good foundation of lots of different exercises for each major muscle group. Might be worth a look.

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grundomatic
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by grundomatic »

I almost recommended the American Nations book because I loved it, but then decided it didn’t really describe where I live, so I skipped it. No surprise that others here are looking at many more perspectives than myself. So I guess more accurately, it doesn’t entirely describe where I live.

I worked at a dude ranch north of Steamboat Springs after college. If you want nature, that place is amazing. Hiking and mountain biking galore, as well as wilderness where bikes and motors aren’t even allowed. The ranch was part of some land trust where all the land owners got together to keep the whole valley from being developed into condos. You have to decide whether a small mountain town can provide the social life you desire.

As far as picking based on climate change goes, I think anywhere in the West/Southwest you are choosing to be the “tip of the spear”. Tucson has been banking their Colorado River water in the aquifer for over a decade now, so I guess while some communities are living 100% on water income, we at least have some savings banked. Given, it’s kind of like savings tucked away in a retirement account that we aren’t quite sure how to access, but it’s something. Also, there is a well known permaculture guy that lives here in town and his ideas about water harvesting have been filtering down to the mainstream, so there is change (slowly) happening here, and it’s exciting to me to be a part of that movement, too. It’s a really nice place to live right now, at the very least. I’ve considered a snowbird arrangement as a hedge.

I’ve also been enjoying rereading Early Retirement Extreme. There really is so much that I I wasn’t ready to understand. That’s likely still the case.

ertyu
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Re: AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

Post by ertyu »

AnalyticalEngine wrote:
Sat Apr 01, 2023 2:02 pm
Thank you for this write-up, AE. It really helped with a change of perspective. Usually, career advice is given in terms of either, "well what are your strengths? what inspires you??' or a more pragmatic, "what are your goals and which line of work will help you get there in the most efficient fashion?" Recognizing that "weakness" is situational (one can only "fail" against some set of criteria; change the criteria and the same behavior or outcome might not be a "failure" at all) was very helpful because it got me to ask myself, Where will your "weaknesses" not be an issue?

Once I asked the question that way, the answer was fairly evident: community college prof/university lecturer. This answer "vibes" right. I've since taken steps to apply to some such jobs. Whether I will be hired remains to be seen, but I have hope.

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