I don’t even know what being American means anymore

I finally spit out an article I’d wanted to write on LinkedIn today, after 8 discarded drafts. Do you ever get that feeling that you really wanted to write about something, but everything you wrote made you sound crazy? Or you kept writing yourself in a corner?

My husband is moving back to America to get his MBA this fall. In the beginning, OF COURSE I was going to move back with him. I straight up NEED some quality Mexican food, stat. Seriously, though, I really hate the weather in Shenzhen (unbearably humid and hot) and it was giving me terrible migraines and other weird health problems.

But then it came time to start winding down, and I didn’t. I wound UP in a cool job at a university, a job so sweet I’d be dumb to jump ship after four months. Everything started coming in around then: sweet private teaching gigs, writing things, new friends.

And I remembered moving back to America after Japan. It sucked! Getting a good job in America is hard. Understatement of the year, right? There are jobs that pay $14 an hour for people who speak Mandarin. As if learning Mandarin Chinese was the same as getting a commercial drivers license.

You see the news coming out of the States and it is hard to read. For instance, the rash of stories about people getting arrested for letting their kids outside of a 5-foot radius of them. You think, ‘is this a thing? What else do they arrest people for now? Am I going to go to America and get arrested!?’

The last time I was in America, last year, they passed some stupid law that put all drivers licenses into a national registry. I went to renew my license in Minnesota and they flagged me for being in a minor fender bender in Louisiana ten year before. I had to spend a half hour on hold, fax an affidavit, pay a fee, and wait two weeks to get it cleared.

I think about the hassle it will be to get insurance and see a doctor if I go back. It is so easy here, and I have gotten so used to that. It really makes you think, how much sheer time and energy is wasted by Americans now, even those with pretty good healthcare. All those hours filling out forms, calling people, dealing with pharmacies. Let’s be honest, I’m afraid of getting really sick or being in an accident in America.

Anyway, that’s my stream of consciousness on the subject.