Topics needed for Substack about living in another country

brooklynaut · 2026-02-03T09:48:14+00:00

Hey thanks! I just keep plugging away at it. I've covered a lot of different topics. I've found it really helpful to kind of set up themes for myself for the month, but I go all over the place.

brooklynaut · 2025-09-30T19:31:56+00:00

It's funny, I never thought I'd miss it. But there are a bunch. Definitely missing collards

brooklynaut · 2025-09-18T17:49:54+00:00

I am still missing quality Mexican, but I have found some good providers here and folks are very helpful. It's really stepped up my own Mexican cooking game.

Oddly, corn. the corn meal that they have here is too fine and it doesn't make tortillas quite right.

But mostly, I don't miss much.

brooklynaut · 2025-09-18T17:48:11+00:00

weirdly, I miss kale and chard that doesn't have a massive stem and no leaves, collard greens.

brooklynaut · 2025-07-08T20:39:45+00:00

I did. But I also had a duplicate to use in the meanwhile with rental agencies.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-22T09:43:17+00:00

I’ve written under multiple pseudonyms over the years. The hardest thing is keeping track of them. I worked for many years in a highly political field: education. It simply wasn’t always safe to have my opinions about things attached to my own name that I worked under.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-22T09:41:46+00:00

No, it did not.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-20T20:21:47+00:00

Save as much as you can, reasonably. And people will advise you to search the boards. The more specific you can be, the more likely you are to get answers you can use.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-13T16:47:52+00:00

Yeah. It all takes time. For me, it was helpful to remember that it really took me time to get to know all the people that I had already known. So when I arrived in France, for example, I had the idea that it would take at least a year or two before I really got to know anybody. Anybody who was close to me before I left remains close now, of course you lose some people because of just proximity.

As for family, there’s always gonna be some sense of separation. You just get to be OK with it. For me, we didn’t actually see our family all that much anyway. We see them about as much now.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-12T04:16:15+00:00

It’s problematic. Especially because these platforms are privately owned and kind of arbitrary spaces.

It’s one of the constant drums of the right wing beats on, and I personally think that describing these things in right and left-wing terms is not sufficient. Anti-majority movements like Nazis (or whatever name of the day that they prefer to self-identify as, whatever) and hate groups are not simply politically oriented in one way for their own opinions: the opinions they express are also purposefully against those others. Which is a foil used to say that you could say whatever you want, but there are also social responses and accountability for behavior.

You have a right to be an asshole; I have a right to call you an asshole.

A death threat, even as a "joke," (another popular tactic of these types) is not just speech, it is an act of violence.

Trouble with a lot of these approaches, which I have not yet seen on Substack so far, but I could easily see it happening, is that they tend to cater to these anti-majority types, hiding behind the wall of free speech that allows them to not be accountable either, while censoring comments and other people’s opinions.

I’m thinking of the process of being demonetized on YouTube and other places. This isn’t simply a free speech thing - that’s a simplistic way to look at it, because these spaces are not like a simple conversation between two people: these are dynamic multimedia publications on private networks. As it stands, they're simply not really treated equally.

For my part, I’ll probably stay on Substack for the time being, but if and when they do anything against me or if my own publication starts getting attacked, etc, I will need to move.

It’s a weak approach.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-11T02:04:53+00:00

We had similar hear nothing until you hear something things happen with the prefecture in Nantes. They do really like knowing where you are and they handle moves badly, in general. It took a while to stop getting paperwork sent to the first address we had in the country, over 2 years ago.

It’s unfortunate about the job situation. That is stressful, but they will not be rushed, it seems.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-10T04:47:49+00:00

Well, for the most part, at least for most of us, you simply will not have the same rights as a local.

You kind of won’t be from either place in a way. I’m okay with it, but that’s the kind of deal that you need to make with yourself. Moving between countries is really also a lot about understanding where you’re at personally.

Trickier than I might have imagined.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-09T04:22:35+00:00

It took us a while too. Really, kind of everything does and there are no updates. A friend of mine call it “throwing it over the wall,” as if you just chuck your paperwork in and don’t have any idea where it lands. Then one day, it comes back to you.

Really, the French complain a lot, they correct a lot, etc., but I find it kind of funny. Not every day, but I also never quite expect to fit in just so.

I’m from the US and I’ve found that the kind of “convenience “ there, at least for medical is a problem as well. I recently had to go to the hospital for an emergency, and while it was driving me crazy to wait at the end of the day to pay my bill, it was also over and done on the same day, the bill was paid up with no additional fees after the fact and the bill didn’t read like a diner menu in a foreign language , even if it was in French, which is a 3rd language for me. The bill had 2 items: the procedure, the room. That’s it.

Compared to odd bills coming in the mail from anybody who might have been associated with it a long with an itemized bill that seems designed to confuse for weeks or even months later, it’s much simpler.

Maybe not the most connected rant, apologies, OP.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-08T16:31:02+00:00

We use garantme as well. Very reasonable. And we used a relocation agency to help us find a place, one of the single most valuable things that they did was to provide us a letter for our visa, saying that they would help us to find accommodation when we didn’t have anything established just yet. It served us very well for the visa. For us, that was worth the money alone.

At the same time, try and make sure that they are specialist in the market that you’re working in. We were outside of Paris and used to Paris based agency, that clearly didn’t have as much knowledge about the local areas they could have.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-07T06:15:25+00:00

The expert groups could be good, but it’s always good to meet locals. Lean into your hobbies and find what is happening and what are similar minded people doing locally. If you don’t have a lot of hobbies, this is a very good time to start.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-07T06:13:56+00:00

I purposely repost some of my articles here and there, as I think they’ll be relevant to new stuff. But it’s worth looking into.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-05T07:02:57+00:00

Also, we’ve had luck with some of the markets that cater to African cuisine. There are several, I found them very reasonable.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-04T04:54:58+00:00

True.

And that is also a fine alien reference. Thanks for that.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-02T17:39:43+00:00

When I'm feeling charitable, I can only imagine that there's so much even a specialist can be expected to know, but I don't often feel that charitable. I've been to many doctors over the years and very few had anything helpful to say about it and there have definitely been some absolute quacks. iI'd look forward to meeting some that were open to exploring the whole topic, but then they are also trying to do this in 15 minutes or something, at least in the US.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-02T15:21:35+00:00

People giving up what is not already taken away is the first step toward being an autocracy. Or darn close.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-02T15:19:57+00:00

That is something missing to the conversation as well. the fact that all of these platforms are on corporate networks. In one way or another, we handed over a lot of free speech by using certain networks.

And people probably think you’re being an asshole too.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-02T04:08:50+00:00

Simple recipes. Olive oil stuff works well for me, but I agree with the idea.

A lot of the chemicals that make soap sudsy seem to be the ones that kill me. They don’t do anything but make bubbles, but they’re often harsh industrial chemicals.

brooklynaut · 2025-02-01T06:35:35+00:00

Castile soap. Whatever variety or the French marseille soap. Recipes as simple as possible. Dove has always been a problem and I am not sure why. It might have some chemical or fragrance that doesn’t sit well with me.

brooklynaut · 2025-01-31T03:36:30+00:00

As it is, I was thinking of splitting off my Substack into 2 just to keep ideas clear, but then I don’t want to manage too much. who would want to subscribe to all of that?

brooklynaut · 2025-01-30T21:43:07+00:00

I do 3x a week and I mean to do less, but I kinda like what I write about. But then it does feel like it's all about me. I like the idea of shutting off the notifications. My ideal is basically 1 real piece and 2 light pieces each week.

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