Dating over Skype

As many of you know, I find myself in the midst of a long distance relationship, hence the title of this blog.  I complained to my roommate today that sometimes dating over skype really just sucks, excuse my language there.  The video quality won' come in well and more often then not the call is dropped mid-sentence.  Today was especially bad it seemed like between Steffani and me over Skype.  We must have dropped 6 calls between us before she finally just called from her calling card on her cell phone.

There are advantages to living in today's society of course.  I mean, we have the technology to where it's good enough that I have the audacity to complain about not seeing my girlfriend whose 4 time zones away and on a different continent.  I can't imagine living in another era where I wouldn't have this type of access to stay in touch long distance.  It's hard enough as it is without the added difficulty of not being able to at least talk over the phone.

The benefit I think we get from this time is good communication.  We have to be open and honest even more so as we're unable to see each other's body language in person so we can't pick up on a pretty big part of communication.  I can read her face sometimes as she can mine but we have to depend on one another to be honest so we don't have to worry about the other one lying to one or the other.

She comes back to the states in early December and I can't hardly wait!  It will be so good to see her face to face, in person after almost 6 months apart.  That is a long time to wait if you love someone like I love Stef.  We were saying tonight in the midst of being cut off from one another that we really only have 2 full months and then a week in early December before I see her again.  Kind of puts things in perspective for those of you who may have a 2 hour commute or something, doesn't it?  I'm certainly not trying to be a martyr here or anything; but it would be nice if we were at least in the same time zone.

Merciful to my Mania

The last couple months I'e had several episodes of mania.  I can count at least three major episodes and several smaller ones within those major ones.  Thankfully, God's allowed me to keep it together for the most part in what I call a state of 'controlled mania' or so I like to try and tell myself.  The truth is I kinda neglected the old bank account for the past couple months after being really frugal and careful with the money I raised and was able to do way more with it than I originally had planned.  After I blessed the ministry with the leftover money I had raised for their tech needs and gone onto Kuala Lumpur, the spending spree started and didn' stop for about a month really looking back.  

When I did finally look at my bank account over the course of that past month or so, I found about an extra $1,000 I had spent over budget for the very last part of August and basically 2 weeks into September on stuff I didn't really need.  Now, this may be no big deal to most people, but if you know me at all you know I hold a certain amount of pride about my ability to not spend money compared to most people.  When I was employed with the school district I was saving roughly 40% of my take home pay each month.  Now, I've been without a consistent income since April and been doing fine.  However, I certainly didn't have an extra $1,000 to spend on top of the savings I had built up.

Well, I repented of the part that my greed and selfishness had played in the whole disaster.  Part of it was due to mania to be sure, but without the greed there certainly wouldn't have been nearly as much spending.  Then something strange started to happen.  The tablet that I had ordered never arrived.  So I opened a case against them on ebay today and within 2 minutes they had refunded the money I had unnecessarily spent on it.  Yesterday or the day before, I shipped a laptop that I wanted but didn't need back to the company and they're going to refund me my money for that.  Another tablet I bought I'm going to turn around and try to resell on ebay because the seller said he wouldn't refund it if nothing was wrong with it and hopefully make some money back there too.

Now, I won't get all my money back that I so frivolously spent over the past month or so; this is real life and not a fairy tale after all.  But I will get some of it back and to me that is simply God being merciful to my mania and my spending spree.  I was home when I added up all the extra spending I had done and I told my mom that I hadn't been on a spending spree like that since high school when I bought $100 worth of calendars which was a tremendous amount for what I was making at the time.  It made me realize how far I can go on spending sprees if I'm not careful when I'm manic.  Hopefully I'll be able to learn from this lesson as I move forward and inevitably have more manic episodes down the road.

Profits and healthcare

Today was an interesting day.  I slept in this morning, and woke up to my gf skyping me.  That's a pretty great way to wake up I must say.  Anyways, I've been sleeping too much lately, but then it occurred to me that I hadn't been on my thyroid medication since late June so that might have something to do with it.  I called my doctor's office and made an appointment to get my level checked  and it is October 14th.  Knowing there was simply no way I could make it till then if I was going to be sleeping as much as I am now without that medication, I begged the nurse to get a prescription written for me.  I got to pick that up today and can't wait to go back on my trusty off brand synthroid.

Some people are against all forms of modern day medication but I happen to be a big believer in it.  That being said, the whole reason I had to go on a thyroid medication was because I was on lithium once upon a time and my doc told me it would pretty much destroy my thyroid.  I'm here to tell you though that without lithium my life might have turned out very differently.  Utlimately, God made me well of course, but I can tell you for a fact that he used lithium at first and subsequent psych drugs since to make life much more manageable for me.

Some people who have bipolar disorder complain that the drugs take away all their personality but that thankfully hasn't been the case for me.  Those who know me know I still have a very strong personality in spite of the drugs.  I'm very grateful for them and hope that I can get accepted by insurance on  January 1st, what I'm terming the new Independence Day for people with preexisting conditions.  That way I'll be able to refill my prescriptions without too much hassle.  If my lovely state politicians have anything to say about it though, Obamacare will be defunded and I won't get insurance that I can afford.  Please remember that these laws do have effect on uninsured people who don't want to pay 6 times the going rate of regular insurance just because of a condition that they don't choose to have, thank you very much.  

As it stands now, the current system punishes the sick.  Don't believe me?  Well, I can tell you that I've been turned down by 8 out of 8 health insurance companies because of my preexisting condition. I take care of it of course, I see my doc regularly and always take my meds.  So why am I being punished by being denied coverage?  For one reason and one reason only.  It's because of money, more specifically the fact that we have health insurance as a for profit business model.  Having health care for profit makes about as much sense as having education for profit.

I was lured into applying for one health insurance by them saying they don't turn people down based on preexisting conditions.  Well, that turned out to be a bold-faced lie and one in which I'm not exactly sure how they got away with it.  The one I applied for was for $38/month or something insanely cheap like that.  After calling the state office, I found out the only one that would accept me was $291/month.  Let's see here, sir.  You're telling me you're unemployed for the time being, meaning you don't have an income.  Oh, I know how we can help you!  We can make your health insurance 6 times as expensive as it would be for someone who doesn't have a preexisting condition; surely that will help you get back on your feet, right?

I happen to be a big believer in the business model, for business.  There are some things that should not be profit driven, a couple that come to mind are education and health care.  I just heard a disgusting story of some investors who had met in order to learn how they could invest in some of these up and coming charter schools to make a profit.  Does anyone else see a problem here?  It's the same with healthcare.  I heard another story of a pharmaceutical company producing HIV stopping drugs and then selling them for a mere 5,000% mark up on the price of production.  So please, don't act like the privatization of everything is a way forward, it simply is not.

Long distance relationships

As some of you know, I’ve started dating a girl named Steffani.  She’s a great girl and more than I deserve.  I love her to pieces and actually hope and pray things work out.  Usually when I like a girl for more than a week or two I look for ways out of the relationship.  Not this time though as I’m hoping to get to go to Liberia in January mainly to be with her.  There’s also a great opportunity with her organization Samaritan’s Purse with an internship that I’m trying to get but the main reason as I had to remind her today is that she’s over there.  I could intern with SP theoretically anywhere, but the main reason I want to intern with them in Liberia is because I have one very beautiful reason to be there.

Earlier this year, I considered doing a World Race with Adventures in MIssions.  It’s a chance of a lifetime.  I would be going to 11 countries in 11 months after all; not something everyone gets an opportunity to do.  I’m giving it up though, in exchange for the opportunity to be with my girlfriend.  This led me to ask myself the basic question, “What is wrong with me??”  

As a friend lovingly reminded me the other day, “What if your very own self from about two years ago could see you now?”  I responded that I would probably punch myself in the mouth.  For those of you who don’t know, I was anti-relationship in general but in particular to my own life for about a decade.  I wanted nothing to do with a relationship.  For other people it may be fine, but not for me.  I was perfectly happy being single and free to travel on my own.  As a matter of fact, overall I prefer to travel alone as this has yet to be tested with traveling with Steffani.  Hopefully that will work out well and I’ll change my mind in regards to that.  I have the right attitude to travel alone though.  I’m outgoing enough that I rarely know a stranger and I have no problem with couchsurfing so in a sense I have a built in friend no matter where I may end up for the night.

Steffani is different though.  For starters, she has been by my side so to speak for the last 8 years.  We’ve been through a lot together and been by each other’s side as each of us struggled through different things over the past 8 years alone.  For my part I’ve gone through some major episodes of depression due to having bipolar disorder.  She has loved me through those episodes as a great friend who was always willing to listen to me whine, even if I went on for a while about just nonsense looking back on it.

You see, when someone stands by your side like that, it makes you take notice eventually.  One day you wake up and realize what a diamond in the rough you have in the other person and can’t believe you didn’t see it beforehand.  I’ve always loved Stef as a friend, but now I want more.  I was so turned off to the idea of a relationship for so long and now that I’ve changed course I’m all in I dare say.  I mean, what else would drive a man to give up a round the world mission trip in exchange for moving to Liberia of all places just to be with a woman??

Reentry and Jet Lag

I reentered the country known as the United States of America last Friday with an initial stopover in NYC.  I instantly knew I was in my home country when I was no longer the loudest person in the room.  This was a surprisingly refreshing experience for me.  In Yangon where I spent the summer, I was always the loudest person in the room by a long shot.  There were other Americans there to be sure, but I tend to be loud anyway, even for an American.  The Burmese are generally a quieter group of people overall.  In spite of this, I think even they grew to love my loudness.

American culture is different, one of the main things I’ve noticed is our reliance on meat for almost every meal.  One of the first things I did upon my return was to go to two different barbeques on Labor Day.  Granted, this was a holiday and as Jim Gaffigan put it so eloquently, “I don’t normally have a hot dog, a hamburger, and a steak, but it’s the 4^th of July.  It’s what the founding fathers would have wanted.”  Needless to say, there was a whole lot of meat at these get togethers.  Probably more than I had seen all summer as a matter of fact.  We had meat in Myanmar of course, just not to the extent that it is within the American diet.

In addition to cookouts, I have eaten more meat this past week than I have probably the entire summer.  I eat it when I go out to eat with friends or even when I go out to eat by myself.  Yes, I go out to eat by myself because I generally don’t like to cook all that much, at least when it’s just for me.  I find I end up eating the same thing for four or more meals in a row if I cook for myself because of all the leftovers.  All this meat consumption can’t be good for my health, at least according to some documentaries I saw before I left for the summer.  My loving girlfriend even got me a cookbook that goes along with one of the movies with a bunch of vegan recipes.  I have yet to open the book, hopefully this next week.

On Sunday morning, I informed my friends that I hadn’t missed at all their endless discussions about guns.  That seems to be a fairly prominent discussion on Sunday mornings before we all go in to the theaters to help set up for church later that day.  My friends seem to be obsessed with guns for some reason; I have yet to figure out why.  It is a common topic of discussion, one that I’m usually left out of due to my ‘liberal’ views on the matter.

I’ve been jet lagging pretty badly this past week too.  I find myself sleeping almost all the time it seems like.  I’ve always told people if you go east to west that jet lag isn’t as bad, but I’m finding it particularly difficult to adjust to this time around for some reason.  It started on Friday night in NYC when I slept for 12 straight hours.  I thought surely after that I’d be fine but as it turns out I’ve been catching up seemingly all week.  I’m finding it difficult not to stay up too late and sleep in the next day in particular.  Sometimes I even take 4 hour naps; which aren’t really naps at that point, are they?

Freedom, Choice and Taxes

There’s a book by Amartya Sen entitled Development as Freedom which I would love to read but haven’t had the opportunity to do so.  I have a ton of books that I already own that I want to read first before I buy any new ones, much to my girlfriend’s chagrin as she has some books she wants me to buy.  Anyways, I was talking to another friend named Ryan in Myanmar about it and he was saying how in that book the author mentions how true development leads to freedom of choice for the individual in a society.

Freedom of choice is another thing we have to take into account when we consider universal health care.  Will people be free to choose their own doctors?  Will they be free to choose to make their own careers by still having health care if they choose to leave their current job situations?  These are all things that must be considered.

Many Americans have this false dichotomy between freedom and taxes.  They think lower taxes equal more freedom when that is anything but the case.  Freedom is how much a society cares for the least of their members.  Freedom is how much a society cares for all its members for that matter.  Higher taxes aren’t always the answer to be sure.  There has to be reform in all sectors of government.  It should concern us when we pay more for the military than a bunch of other social programs combined though, right?

There is a growing movement towards simplifying the tax code and I highly applaud this.  As I’ve found through random facebook posts and just straight up asking people though, no one wants to lose their tax credits and/or deductions.  Loopholes are seen as other people’s tax credits and deductions, not their own.  Their own credits and deductions are highly justifiable of course.  It’s that other person we need to go after. 

We would save over a trillion dollars if we nixed all the credits and deductions.  Did you catch that right there?  That is over $1,000,000,000 in today’s dollars.  That’s a bunch of money that we could save.  If we did that we could lower the rate on corporations and individuals.  Not to mention corporations would actually have to pay their taxes instead of using all the credits and deductions to get out of paying one red cent like many of them do.

Universal health care is a good idea that we should at the very least consider.  How much money would you save if you didn’t have to pay a high premium every month?  Yes, you would have to pay higher taxes, but if everyone had to pay higher taxes it wouldn’t be that much.  Health care shouldn’t be a for-profit business, just like education shouldn’t be a for profit business. 

I happen to strongly support business and business creation.  There are just certain fields that business principles don’t apply to; no matter how red in the face a Republican may get over the argument.  I even agree for lower corporate tax rates as a great way to incentivize starting more businesses.  Just keep the profit making out of the health care industry.

Freedom to leave a job

I want to be crystal clear here in my argument.  I have had bipolar disorder since I was 17; which the math works out to 14 years of my life I’ve had this illness.  Bipolar disorder is a chronic illness; meaning I will never get over it, contrary to what some faith healers may believe.  In a couple weeks I get to teach at youth group on the passage in 2 Corinthians where it talks about the thorn in the side and how God’s strength is showed through our weaknesses.  Some people in the faith community don’t know how to treat chronic illness.  Much like Job’s friends in the Old Testament, they see it as a result of sinful living.

Anyway, any health insurance company that takes me on as a customer is necessarily going to lose money on me.  They simply have to with the way the current system is set up.  Drug companies charge way too much for drugs, even generics like I’m on; and so as a result someone has to pay.  Since I want to try some stuff on my own and want to get private insurance, it simply doesn’t make economical sense for a health insurance company to take me on as a patient.

I had lunch with a dear friend today and as we were discussing this I made the off-hand comment that I wondered how many people were in jobs they despised because of the health care that they were afforded.  I wonder how many people want to, even long to take a huge risk and start a business but simply can’t leave their current job because of health care.  If you have a family to provide for all the more reason to not take a risk, start a business and help the economy turn around.  It’s better to play it safe so your kids can be covered by your health insurance plan.

Again, we’re talking about freedom, true freedom here.  In our high ambition to pay as little taxes as possible, we have made it to where people stay in awful jobs just for the health care as opposed to branching out and trying something new.  This country was built on an entrepreneurial spirit and we are largely ignoring that impulse by requiring our healthcare to be wrapped up with our employment. 

It would have to be monitored for abuses, just like everything should be.  There would have to be independent companies who did audits to make sure money was being spent wisely.  There has to be a better way than what we have currently, no one can argue that.  It’s just a matter of how we go about doing so.

Universal healthcare

Some countries have free health care, also known as universal health care.  It sounds so nice and like a great deal more freedom than we have in this country.  Yes, of course their people pay higher taxes; they couldn’t afford free health care without it.  I would much rather have higher taxes and everyone able to have healthcare than our current system.

I once heard Bill O’Reilly talk about how if we got ‘free healthcare’ than it would really cost us a lot.  This is only partly true.  We spend more as a nation than any other rich country by quite a bit as I understand it.  I have to believe part of that is because we have a system where health care is a for-profit business.  What sense does that make?  I understand people need jobs and I’m not saying we should do away with jobs at all.  I’m simply saying it doesn’t make sense to profit off of someone else’s health and well-being.  I used to tell people I would gladly pay half of my income in taxes if it meant everyone had free health care.  This was a point of view not shared by many to say the least.  It seems like a lot of Christians especially don’t want to give up any of their income if it means that it will actually help someone else.  If it will support the military, then by all means take taxes out of their paychecks.  Health care as a reason for taxation, on the other hand, is seen as utterly disdainful. 

There are downsides to universal health care.  People actually go to the doctor before it’s bad enough to where they have to go to the emergency room to get care.  There would be more of an emphasis placed on preventative medicine as opposed to reactive care.  There would be a greater incentive to not run down the gauntlet of tests for every time something goes wrong. 

People could still get specialized services like Botox and other plastic surgery things that are nonessential but those would have to be a for profit business like in Hollywood or somewhere else where people care too much about their looks.  Sometimes there’s a need for plastic surgery like when there are bad burn victims or car accidents where people’s faces are mangled so that would have to be covered.  I’m more referring to people who want a face lift to look younger or things of that nature.

In all seriousness, I know there are true downsides to universal health care.  Some would abuse the system to be sure.  We’ve all heard of the classic Canadian problem where people go in for a tummy ache and things of that nature.  At least they have the option of going in though, right?  If you’re in the states you have to wait until it’s an emergency if you don’t have health care to where you can be admitted to the emergency room.

Freedom and healthcare

Allow me to lay some background as to where I’m coming from on this argument.  I have a mental illness called bipolar disorder.  As such, I’ve been denied health coverage by 7 out of 7 health insurance carriers over the past month.  I just applied for another insurance company who made me fill out an application for 40 or 45 minutes and to which I’ll probably end up denied anyway.  I understand completely some people’s problem with Obamacare.  However, there are some parts that I don’t think we should completely abandon.

The main part of Obamacare that I’d like to see kept is the idea behind an insurance carrier not being able to turn you down on account of a preexisting condition.  This idea hits home for me in light of what I already mentioned, again, 7 out of 7; some might say I’m batting a thousand, right?  Why should I be denied coverage on a preexisting condition?  Doesn’t that mean I actually need healthcare in the first place?  Why would a perfectly healthy person need healthcare outside of catastrophes? 

This brings up some other issues, doesn’t it?  In my view, healthcare shouldn’t be a system based on profit.  My lovely Senator Rubio argues for market based reforms but neglects to go into how those would work exactly.  Here’s a crazy idea, people with chronic illness will NOT work with the market!  The health insurance company has to lose money on us!  Do you know how much it costs for me to get my monthly medication?!  It costs me roughly $600 for 3 psychiatric medications without insurance.  $600!!!  How in the world is my health insurance company supposed to make money off that?  It is simply impossible without a $1,000 a month premium on a single person.

Why should people make a profit off of people’s health and well-being?  It simply doesn’t make sense.  It doesn’t reek of that grand old American ideal of freedom to me.  It costs around $5,000 to even have a baby in this country, according to a couple friends and a news reporter who I saw on TV once who did a special on it.  That’s with insurance!!!  $5,000 to just have a baby, are you kidding me?!

We don’t want universal health care though, right?  We’d rather spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a military that doesn’t know what to do with itself so they fight and fight unwinnable wars that never end.  Now we want to go into Syria.  Does anyone see a problem with this fiasco waiting to happen?  It sure sounds an awful lot like Iraq.  I have supported Obama on several of his key issues, but I simply can’t support him in this measure.  I pray it’s voted down in the House and Senate.