On Reading, Cussing, Listening, And Other Diversions

Together with some thoughts on near-homelessness during the pandemic

Landing as it did in the runup to Labor Day, this stark and sobering Washington Post feature — about flight attendants going hungry, working themselves to death with “side hustles” that consume as much time as their “real” job, and sometimes even living rough — made me remember why I used to drink:

I didn’t have it quite this bad, mind you. Even given the awful timing of my career detour — I left my radio-host gig and graduated from a month of unpaid FA training late in February of 2020, just as lockdown rumblings grew unmissably noisy across the United States — I managed to avoid living out of my car, even in the tightest of months.

But I did give up “real” housing for a couple of months in 2021, living between some family property I was lucky enough to have access to and a flight-attendant crash pad. (Mine was nicer than the bug-infested barracks described in the article.)

I didn’t have much choice about it, either. Because we hadn’t been laid off entirely or even furloughed, my brand…