Elana,
First I would like to more properly introduce myself. I think it may provide you a better perspective on why I would take what may appear to be âextreme measures.â To do not just Elisheva, but your family what I believe to be a good turn.
Your family is not by any stretch the only family impacted by a situation like this one, however dire and unusual the trouble may appear. There are an estimated 11 million people in this country alone who have bipolar disorder, which for now seems a reasonable enough diagnosis of the underlying issue with your daughter. That of course means eleven million families, and 22 million parents at the very least.
Why am I saying this? Primarily because I know from personal experience what that exposure does to people, and how badly it can almost literally ruin a family. Outside even the context of she needs help immediately. Beyond the context of at least this time, she/we may need critical care. At least this time, âfor nowâ she âjustâ needs to be hospitalized.
That is NOT, in my estimation, both fair and warranted. It may be warranted â by any of several important factors to consider, but I donât think itâs also fair. Neither fair to the person who is arguably suffering the most (Elisheva) nor to the people who feel that suffering indirectly (considering that you and her father both very much do that.) In my view, the whole community suffers when a person as talented as she is cannot exercise their talents to the limits of their abilities, and even though I know being stable comes as a prerequisite to that, I know better than almost anyone you could otherwise consult with how to get that stability accomplished. I can âseeâ her capacities and for my part I wish for all the world that she be coached best how to utilize them to their furthest reasonable degree.
How? How can I say any of this with some sort of âauthorityâ on the matter?
Because not only do I have a degree in Nutrition from Cornell University but also a minor in exercise science, I was certified as a personal trainer by the American College of Sports Medicine, I practiced both personal training and nutrition counseling for many years, and (though certainly not lastly) Iâve been through this process for over twenty years. Iâve âfallen off the bikeâ of it many times, and Iâve seen what recovering from it actually means. What it sincerely entails. Itâs a long walk, but not specifically nor only a âcritical measure.â
Iâve seen this âbipolar against the worldâ struggle too many times to count. I spent over nine years in psychotherapy, and I learned how to listen to my psychologist. I learned quite a bit about how to keep myself balanced, and though at times it still does remain a daily struggle, I know what it requires and what will (in this case I believe more importantly) can prohibit that struggle from ultimately succeeding.
The above is a brief introduction, but I hope itâs understandably so. Since I am reaching out as best I can to you, my suggestion is that if you would like to know more about me, all you have to do is call. There are plenty of things I still donât have quite right, but the things I know about how to manage this sort of situation are far more numerous and varied, at least as I believe the most pertinent things may go. What matters, in my view, is what is the best situation and environment for her recovery to occur.
Speaking of which, among the first questions I would ask you to consider is this one:
Isnât it true that the first among the most important things in this situation is for Elisheva to be okay? In other words, to continue to be alive? Isnât it also and equivalently true that it isnât simply poor decision making which âcausesâ one to âfall off the tracksâ as she has (or might still) but also an environment in which far too many decisions appear possible for her to make?
Is the real solution to take all of them from her or to help her make a decision which is warranted, safe, and somehow conservative?
Isnât it true that the situation in which she currently finds herself in some way prohibits safe and effective decisions to be made, and isnât it also true that hospitalization as a solution is essentially just a provision made to ensure that a person and the people he or she impacts remain safe? Isnât it true that the âcostâ of such a choice is, at the end of the day, what amounts to the person in question surrendering his or her free will, and, also very importantly, because the people impacted in a larger sense by the person so âafflictedâ have wrested the choice from her rather than spoken to her effectively and using reasoning which is uniformly fair?
It wouldnât be fair to kill her spirit in that way, and it similarly wouldnât be fair to âkill the messengerâ which I surely am or at the very least may be.
God wonât even take free will from us, Elana. He (or She, in my view) wouldnât do that and I am not the better of God. I have my hopes, and among them I hope for the best outcome for all parties involved. I hope from the context of having a reasonably clear head about me, and though I am neither of her parents (and as such I cannot say the following with 100% assurance) I can gather that the decisions either/both of you make are almost certainly compromised by the stress that not only Elisheva is experiencing but that you, also, are experiencing. It wouldnât be fair not to recognize that such is the case. Urgency is among the first of the things we feel when situations appear âdesperate.â When it appears (to my eyes incorrectly) that there is only one solution.
There IS NOT only one good solution to this âpuzzle.â There are many ways that she can have a great future, and at least some of them do not involve the death of her spirit. That donât involve humiliating her or âbringing her back to earthâ within the confines of a hospital.
You *do* see in the current sense dire futures ahead for her if she cannot make better choices. You must, in some sense, realize that it is not merely the choices SHE makes but that she sees or believes others make around her. I hope you can at least see that trusting her â to some extent â and perhaps trusting me also might be a better solution.
I can and will speak of it in such dire terms, because I know quite a bit that through some combination of situation and perhaps foolish pride all those around you simply cannot know. I am not referring to your pride, nor her fatherâs specifically. I do know that with extremely capable people (such as all four of the people in question surely are) pride is an equally troublesome barrier. But it is still an obstacle we ought well to recognize is with us in the room. It is hard for me, certainly, because you donât really know a whole lot about me, and even though I know you absolutely do care about her and in some way want the best for her, I can guess it is a hard thing to imagine embracing the kind of support Iâm suggesting. It comes from such an âunusualâ direction, after all. Itâs hard to imagine simple coincidence could bring Elisheva and I together. It may seem better to trust an âexperiencedâ counselor than a person who has learned how to speak with her in the short time that weâve known one another. Keep in mind though, the time Iâve spent in the painful school of similar experience is far longer than the short time Iâve known her. It isnât pride that most counsels me on any of this. Itâs experience and the voice of reason. Passion, certainly, but not as the first of my considerations. Logos, ethos, pathos. In that order, if I had to guess.
How would the two of us even meet?
I wonât expound on that puzzle much right now, except insofar as to say I seriously doubt that the word âcoincidenceâ covers it completely. In my view and in my experience, people like Elisheva and I notice one another rather immediately. Behavioral patterns in people are generally hard to completely understand, but they certainly can and do resonate with one another on occasion. For the record, I am perfectly willing to consider it something other than âlove at first sight.â I am perfectly willing to believe that at some time or another, I just needed her and she just needed â perhaps she still needs â me. And there is nothing wrong with either of those things; such things arenât even subject for a debate among anyone other than she and I. In terms of our health â specifically our mental health â each of us has taken our turns as âcrutchâ for each other. She has helped me merely by being herself.
I am certainly a very capable person. I think you probably can tell that from even just the way I put my words together. But unfortunately, the pride thing again interferes. It is the thing which always makes us as individuals think we know what is best. It is the thing which makes ALL neurotypicals, in particular, believe all of this life is a grand âcompetitionâ of a sort. Which makes us all, to some degree, evaluate that our approach must be the one which will work. The only approach.
Unfortunately, that is your dopamine system working, in some sense. It is the chemical our brains always yearn for, the ârewardâ chemical. Which we more or less uniformly strive to determine a way to deliver to ourselves and for ourselves, using our own counsel, and with the ultimate goal of believing we have made our destiny and it is the one we would have chosen for ourselves. Perhaps for others, when we can, but not first within their interests. It is nothing more than an internal reward system which in some sense provides us the ability to believe we alone have âmade the difference.â It is not fair, not exactly, because all things which happen in life â both good and bad â happen because we stand on each otherâs shoulders. We seem always to stop short of recognizing all the things which contributed to situations going well or things going poorly, and we donât want to believe we had less of a part in the former or more of a part in the latter. Our egos wonât allow it.
The ego of a bipolar person is not something which is easily managed, and it should not be casually âpopped.â A person who is âflyingâ as high as Elisheva need not be an Icarus if sensible people either âbelowâ her in their contemplations can sensibly convince her to come down before she burns her metaphorical wings off and subsequently crashes to the ground. Either through hospitalization or even more directly to their death.
Dopamine and serotonin are the primary chemicals at play, and theyâre not generally or easily handled with words. They are also, in some way, the reason why confirmation bias convinces us to look for data which supports an assessment we have already previously come to rather than to change our minds. Changing our minds is among the very most difficult things we can do, and ironically it often comes after changing our behaviors. Just as surely as taking a long walk can calm us down after an argument. Just as surely as giving up the argument is sometimes the thing which allows our more rational brains to think better than we were before, while we were in an all-too-emotional reasoning process.
And this, ironically enough, is the reason why bipolar people have such an extremely difficult time of things: they tend to be willing to double down on any theory or interpretation they already in some way came to in their mind, and in a case such as Elisheva it is quite literally dangerous. It requires behavioral modification as the first course, and, incidentally, this is one of the primary reasons why hospitalization can sometimes work. Itâs very similar to the way some people seem willing to convince themselves they âcanât possibly dietâ but if you took the measure of putting them literally behind bars and feeding them only the diet in question, their hunger for food would ultimately change their mind.
Separating yourself from her is one option which will do both you and her quite a bit of good. It would do her father quite a bit of good, and it would, metaphorically speaking, remove the bull from the particular China shop in which she currently resides. Breaking things without really âknowingâ it. Hurting other people without an appreciable awareness of the fact that her choices (or lack thereof) are one primary reason it continues to happen.
And now I will go into why this is so dangerous.
A person who is sufficiently capable (and also, in some way, sufficiently either imaginative or delusional â which are merely two different perspectives on the same concept, variously described by either the imaginer or someone else) will continue to believe in things long after most if not all the people around them feel they are lost.
And this is, within some reasonable approximation, not merely where SHE is but where you also are (at least for the moment.) It is where you must be:
You DO see something wrong. You DO believe (which is to say you know but only in an indirect, involving trust sort of fashion) that she should be hospitalized. You have undoubtedly consulted the experts you can, and I am telling you what I believe to be a fact: I am a meta expert. I have seen this and studied it far more intensely than virtually any psychologist or psychiatrist you could probably name. I have spoken with countless numbers of both of those kinds of specialists, and more importantly, I have walked in the shoes of a person who has been ill AND a person who has recovered.
You can either imagine that you are correct in your assessments, i.e., trust those others you have consulted, OR you can trust me and, by extension, Elisheva. You cannot do both. The simple and logically obvious reason why you ought to trust me is that I still have not removed hospitalization from the table of options, but that those others youâve consulted have eliminated the course of both moderation AND the course of wresting from her something not even God would take away. Her free will.
I am asking for a course of moderation in teaching someone moderation. She cannot and will not learn moderation by being forced, in whatever way, to make a decision which still IS NOT her decision. It is almost absurd to think of, when phrased in that way:
The solution to fixing extreme behaviors is to force an extreme choice on a person whose ultimate problem is making choices which are too extreme and ill considered? Who, then, I ask you, has considered this situation more thoroughly? I have my doubts that anyone in California has considered it more thoroughly than have I, and I am right at the moment as well as for the indefinite future continuing to consider what the best approach may be, including ALL of the options that are I can with assurance know are on the table.
âFixingâ her decision making canât be done by taking her decisions away from her. You cannot possibly know why she is making (or failing to make) decisions which are âgoodâ for her, nor can you assure yourself that one decision (taking her decisions away, albeit temporarily) will ultimately âfixâ the underlying issue which must surely be there.
The reason is simple: You do not understand the reasons why she is doing the things she is doing, her father doesnât, and even though I myself do have some idea I still refuse to conclude I am simply ârightâ about âall of it.â I have merely given her what everyone calls the benefit of the doubt. Iâve attempted to understand what is wrong, stopped short of calling her actions âthe products of a delusional mind,â and Iâve tried to continue soliciting information from her and people she cares about which can point me in the direction of relieving the underlying stress as distinct from hospitalizing her which is not all that much different from applying a Band-Aid to a cut which will surely reopen in the future.
A hospital alone cannot and will not âcureâ her of this âillness.â It is wrong to think that it (in particular it and it alone) can or will.
Similarly, love alone will not âfixâ the situation, not applied by one or more people, and not applied in the form of yet another traumatic situation involving handcuffs and a mental hygiene arrest.
Think of it this way:
If the mere âthreatâ of humiliation is not enough, isnât a physically forced (or at least connivingly âforcedâ through a âtrickedâ signature on a health care proxy paper) going to be warranted anyway? Put another way, if she cannot be convinced that her current course will result in ultimate humiliation, or perhaps something far worse, how will deciding that humiliation (in the form of hospitalization) for her help matters *at all*?
It just WONâT. Even if we assume she is uniformly delusional (which I assure you, she is not) she will come out of that situation thinking it was both unnecessary and too extreme. She will recoil from ever thinking of it again as a possibility, and she will, the next time it happens, resist it even more than she does now. âWasnât MY choice,â sheâll say. âIf I had to do it over again, Iâd have chosen something, ANYTHING other than that.â
Which is, of course, the moderation I have long been suggesting. Someone to walk with her through the process. Who has developed what amounts to a fragile bit of trust with her, but not one which is strong enough to convince her to make better choices, at least not without her familyâs support. Should this really be a struggle between us, you and I? Doesnât she listen to me at least a little? Havenât I been coaching ALL of you to de-stress yourselves, and isnât STRESS, at the end of the day, the thing which brings us invariably to fight or flight?
I am, I have, and I will continue to argue for something other than fight or flight (though admittedly, it does involve her actually taking a flight.) She cannot continue to fight with you or her father or sensible steps toward recovery if she decides to come here. She neednât consider it ârunning awayâ from her problems, and if you donât know that she is, to her very core, a fighter then Iâd say you really ought to reconsider what you think on the matter.
She will fight the hospital to her last breath while she is there, if I make my guess. She will continue to allocate ALL of her imagination and her thoughts to I am doing just fine while she remains in a situation she envisions to be âjust fineâ for her. And that is the tacit decision she has made for herself. Both that she is âjust fineâ and that she âcan handleâ the situation, the environment, in which she lives.
My view is that ONE of those decisions is wrong, but I donât see that BOTH of them must be. I think she might well continue to be fine if she gets out of there and gets out of there rather immediately, but I think youâre playing with fire if you continue to believe that Los Angeles of all places is the best place for her, as utterly overstimulating as it can be. I lasted two weeks in it, roughly. And that is despite having coping skills developed over *a lot* more time and contemplation than she has yet done.
The only alternatives I see to that, to the situation of Los Angeles, are as follows:
1. Elisheva being kidnapped, and perhaps being forced into sex trafficking or something of that sort.
2. Other serious bodily harm.
3. Her death, perhaps even by suicide.
These ARE NOT good alternatives. They are classically defined as the worst possible outcomes a person could have. Whatâs more they arenât even simply bad luck outcomes. They are outcomes forced upon a person by some combination of their genes, upbringing, situation, and perhaps most noticeably, failure to choose more sensible options.
These are also, not coincidentally, reasons why you well ought to be worried, though I will say Iâm very sorry you are. Even more so because Iâve seen my parents go through it, and I know there are millions of other parents going through it also. But I am not so sorry as to fail to offer a very painful piece of advice to you, phrased as a series of questions:
Why is it that all of the focus, in some sense, appears to be on what ELISHEVA and ELISHEVA ALONE must now do differently? Canât we decide that OUR OWN choices â choices of the past, certainly â are choices which brought this situation about in some way? Canât we similarly view this as not just âthe one puzzle we ourselves have to deal with and deal with right nowâ but rather a puzzle whose actual solution could benefit literally MILLIONS of people around the world?
If I am right â which of course I am convinced of, because this time I have finally decided to take the course of moderation versus hospitalization â then this time, this step, THIS particular situation could be the route out of this kind of misery for more than just one person afflicted by the condition in the future.
It COULD certainly be an approach to resolve bipolar disorder rather than merely resolve the issues of just this one patient.
And Iâm sure such a âgrandâ assertion may well sound like one provided in self-interest. Iâm sure an incomplete analysis of what Iâm saying might look just exactly like that. But if you did think that, think further to consider all the other things Iâve said here. Think about my caution that a hospital alone will not âfixâ the situation. Think about the assertion I made that a hospitalization is equivalent to a humiliation. That it is nothing more than a hot stove one touches when one âbelieves in herself too much.â
Do you sincerely want her to doubt herself in general or do you want her to place reasonable doubt on the things she thinks that the rest of us agree are MOST doubtful?
You donât chop off someoneâs arms because they reach too far. You offer them different things to reach for, at least as one solution. You talk with them, you listen to them, and you patiently coach them.
What do I stand to gain, really, from what Iâve proposed? Iâd certainly marry Elisheva if she would take me, but that is her decision, not mine. She knows to some extent what I think about the matter, and in particular I told her just yesterday that it really does make up something along the lines of 10% of my reflections. Only 10%. What would that look like? What would the alternative be for both me and for her independently? Either choice is very hard, and I say that in part because Iâve been married and I know itâs no picnic.
Bipolars really do NOT know moderation as a general rule. We shoot for the stars basically every time and with all that we do. We are governed by imagination and possibility, and this is the primary reason why, as soon as we âhave somethingâ we very quickly thereafter want more. Itâs a casually stated definition, but the underlying reason for it is because the highs we experience are higher by far than any the neurotypicals generally experience.
How do I know this?
Because Iâve felt as though I were standing on the center podium of the Olympics, with not just one but many gold medals around my neck. With hundreds of millions of people watching. And Iâve felt similar despair. Despair that I could put into words (that I have put into words) but despair such as you cannot even imagine.
I have wilted in hospitals before, and I am not at all a person who is destined to wilt with my time on this planet. My life â and hers â either together or independently means FAR more than that.
It sounds a prideful thing until you sincerely accept that both of us are FAR more capable than âthe average person.â Both of us are capable of countless things that perhaps few others in the world would even bother themselves to try. I myself have set three world records in two different fields.
I know you love her, and Iâve heard your frustrations â though Iâm sure not completely. I heard even the report that your health was becoming compromised, in some sense, by the unending stress Elisheva seems to bring to it. I know that she just doesnât hear the things youâre trying to say to her. But consider this:
Are you hearing the balance of the complaints that she has? Have you determined, to some extent if not very well what is really the source of her problems? How can you or anyone else expect her to listen if you listen not to her? Do you really know what the underlying problem is?
I canât answer that, but in my view the common denominator of ALL of this is too much stress. It is living in a world of far too many choices and far too many possibilities. Is the âsolutionâ to that mere hospitalization? To force her to âeat her prideâ and, in so doing, destroy one of the things that makes her most beautiful â her belief in her convictions?
Wouldnât it be better for all parties involved if the course of moderation were finally communicated to her? Wouldnât it possibly be better if a choice which almost certainly cannot involve her death, serious physical harm, or a life on the streets or prostitution be chosen as the better of the available options?
Could she really come to any of those ends if she came here for a week or perhaps two â to physically distance herself from essentially all of her current stressors, but not far from a good hospital if she ultimately proves she needs it? Can you give both of us the benefit of the doubt on the matter, or does it really feel to you like sheâs closer to accepting voluntary hospitalization than she is to imminent harm to herself and to both you and her father by continuing to be there?
I cannot and will not think myself such a âbad elementâ for her to be around. I have a comfortable home in the suburbs of a rural town. I have two bedrooms, an incredibly supportive family, an affectionate cat, and plenty of coffee. There are trees all around, grass, birds, and plenty of water â including Lake Ontario. There is fishing, safe biking, and plenty of low-key things to do. The weather is as perfect as weather can be. It is a wonderful place to rest, there isnât much âbusynessâ and hardly any noise.
But in Los Angeles? There are any number of troubles which might befall her. There is a man â Iâll not say any of the names â who frequents some sort of bazaar out there. He is an alcoholic and delusional. He has no phone and he âmakes his livingâ by buying products cheaply and subsequently selling them to pawn shops in what appears to be some sort of Ponzi scheme. He has some of Elishevaâs confidence, and (please donât mention it) exposed himself to her in her car. He is supposedly willing to pay her $25/hour or something, I believe to âtake picturesâ in some form. To me, this is just one example of her potentially gambling her entire future away. It certainly IS NOT what appears to be a rational choice, and I am on the other side of the country comparing her choices and wondering why, in particular, not only does she fail to âchoose meâ (i.e. the option I offered her) but why you and perhaps her father fail to support making better choices rather than making the choice you appear to want her to make, i.e. hospitalization. Can you not support this choice Iâm offering in kindness and understanding? Must we all believe in each other so little as that?
It doesnât look either fair or sensible to me, but then I cannot even now know that among your thoughts isnât the thought I might somehow be trying to take advantage of her. This is the limited way in which neurotypicals think, I am sorry for saying it. It is the inherently limited framework of minds that work in a linear fashion, that is, one âstepâ or one âargumentâ at a time. In aggregate, the arguments against her flying out here and staying for some period of time are irrational arguments. Put simply, they are arguments that include the following core concepts:
1. Elisheva is âstill okayâ â at least provided we get her to the hospital as fast as possible
2. This other person âBrianâ cannot possibly be trustworthy
3. The situation Elisheva finds herself is not part of the problem
And ALL THREE of those things are absolutely wrong in my view.
She IS NOT âokayâ right at the moment, except insofar as she is both still breathing and not critically injured. She is standing amidst what might as well be a fire, both of her own construction and the construction of others. City life is as much controlled chaos as the definition even allows. The number and variety of distractions, particularly for a person so capable and reasonably well-positioned (schooled, good family, etc.) are almost literally limitless and many of them are downright dangerous. AND her decision-making IS compromised.
Can we agree on at least these points now?
I would have to be setting a rather time-consuming and/or elaborate âtrapâ if I wished ill for her at this point, wouldnât I? Do my thoughts, particularly in writing and even more particularly in the speed at which I can craft them, since I very much did begin this piece earlier today and just when I told you I would, connote something other than an incredibly capable person who has spent innumerable hours thinking of not simply your daughter but similarly of the affliction she suffers?
Neurotypicals â that is people who cannot possibly understand the inner workings of bipolar minds â cannot and should not be the prime decision makers in their lives. Good mothering, good fathering, and even good friending does NOT allow such things as that. We can only encourage her to make choices which are good for her, and though it may well be taken as an insult, I will say this: I think you are lying to yourself if you believe she can recover her health out there. I donât myself even know what that would look like, though Iâm sure in some views it would involve BOTH a hospitalization AND a long recovery besides.
The only thing Iâm arguing, really, is what order those things happen in. Which might mean, that is, if recovery is successful, forestalling the hospitalization or with some luck and a lot of work eliminating that ârequirementâ completely.
Have you considered what Iâm saying as an option, or are you adamantly convinced hospitalization must happen?
The reason I ask is just this:
As soon as she realizes that it is something FORCED upon her and not something of her own volition, all might as well be lost. Because at that point, she will resist it with every fiber of her being, and what you think is unimaginable right now may well become an extremely unpleasant reality.
She has had people she cannot even name spike her drinks. She has (I think) been raped. She had the car accident before she was ten, her legs are different lengths, her posture is screwed up, her back bothers her intensely, and she walks with a hardly perceptible limp. Her wrists are screwed up from a fall she took. Her apartment was never settled, her landlord AND landlady behaved atrociously to her, even going so far as to suggest her being there was some sort of âmortalâ threat. The dogs scared her, she couldnât rest appropriately, her eating habits are clearly not very good, and her car is giving her problems as well.
In every way that I can reasonably imagine, life in Los Angeles is not currently appropriate for her.
Does that mean life in a Los Angeles hospital is a good solution? Despite that sheâll just come right back out of it and into the fire again, rendered â at least for a while â a less capable person and one who believes in herself even less?
I donât think so. But I know that less than $300 buys her a one-way plane ticket and that she can get another one back whenever she (or perhaps better all of us) feels ready to return. No one owes her that, certainly, but I told her Iâd even buy the ticket. Iâd buy her a real chance to clear her mind of everything there. To get distance from some of her stressors and to give distance to the people she stresses out. Including you and her father.
Iâm not wealthy, and to be truthful about it I care almost nothing about wealth. A person can live similarly content regardless of how complex their life looks in terms of material things or an âimportantâ job. The people who sweep and mop the floors and those who drive buses are not less important than the teachers, doctors, or scientists.
It is ten pages, and what I believe to be more than enough. I will conclude here with just some information about flights, and about possible job prospects I may myself have in the future.
There is a 7-hour 22-minute flight leaving from LAX to Buffalo on June 17th, American flight 2532 departing at 12:49pm and arriving in Buffalo at 11:11pm. 1 hour 9-minute layover in Washington, at Ronald Reagan Airport. There are others, most with longer flight times or layovers and various prices, but that one is just $318. Six hours eleven minutes flight time total.
There is also a 9-hour flight leaving similarly from LAX at 7:00am on June 16th, Wednesday, Delta flight 1339, which has a significantly shorter flight time but a longer delay, 3 hours 23 minutes in Detroit. It is just $261. Five hours 37 minutes total flight time and broken up quite a bit better.
I have two Teslas, but only one of them is currently working. She could certainly decide to get rid of the current car she is driving, and if sheâd like to take one of my cars and use it sheâs welcome to do so. Iâve already considered that and also spoken to her about it. I am currently working on some negotiations which could result in a job with that company, and I specified to them that I would be happy to work in Buffalo, Austin, Los Angeles, or some combination of those three, provided I have a reasonable amount of vacation time and that I am not required to work more than about 50 hours per week. I am competent at housekeeping, quite good in the kitchen, and even though I donât specifically need to work I choose what I need to choose which is consistent with the rest of the life I have here. Most of the time I work in electric vehicle advocacy, and though the pay has never been good itâs quite a different sort of stress that a person lives under when they actually follow the counsel of doing what they love as a first order of business and only thereafter figuring out how to pay for it.
I would welcome a call from you about any or all of this, and I thank you for your time either way.
I would ask that you please not share this email with Elisheva in its entirety, perhaps at least to do so at a later date than the present. I do communicate with her quite regularly, but that has been a bit of a challenge considering the complexity of the situation.
Brian
I did only read this through once, with a single edit pass. Please forgive what may be overstatements as best you can, but consider that it might be the case that I have overstated nothing at all. It certainly is a critical matter, and one which I think is best viewed with all the cards on the table.
Brian Kent
Twitter: @NegativeCarbon
The Negative Carbon Roadtrip
âŚdriving the world to a cleaner future.
