Summary & transcript: dirtbagrich.com/kelsey

Recorded in October 2024

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Summary

The article is a transcript of an interview with Kelsey Shipman, a writer and former teacher who has lived and worked abroad in various countries. She discusses her nomadic lifestyle, her struggles with feeling like an outsider in her own family and culture, and her eventual acceptance of her need for travel and creative expression. Kelsey shares details about her career journey, from teaching to ghostwriting, and the financial challenges she faced in Austin that led her and her husband to move to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She provides insights into the expat experience, the complexities of living in a foreign culture, and her efforts to avoid the pitfalls of being an insensitive American abroad. The interview covers topics such as her childhood, her relationships, her writing, her finances, and her reflections on the highs and lows of living in Mexico.

 Chapters

00:00:27 Kelsey’s Nomadic Lifestyle and Struggles with Belonging

Kelsey discusses her lifelong desire to travel and live abroad, which often made her feel like an outsider in her own family and culture. She talks about her first study abroad experience in West Africa at age 19 and how it was seen as strange by her Texas family. She explains her divergent upbringing, with a working-class mother and a more affluent father, which contributed to her feeling of not fitting in anywhere.

00:11:21 Kelsey’s Career Journey and Transition to Ghostwriting

Kelsey shares her background as a teacher for 15 years, during which she also pursued writing and earned a master’s degree in poetry. After having a child, she transitioned to ghostwriting, which allowed her to work remotely and have more flexibility. She discusses her experience ghostwriting memoirs, cookbooks, and other projects for various clients while maintaining her own creative writing pursuits.

00:27:23 Financial Challenges and the Move to Mexico

Kelsey and her husband faced financial struggles in Austin, with the high cost of living and childcare making it difficult to sustain their lifestyle on their combined incomes. Her husband was laid off from a corporate job, prompting them to consider moving abroad. They chose San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where their living expenses were cut in half, and they could afford high-quality childcare and a more relaxed lifestyle.

00:32:23 The Expat Experience and Cultural Complexities

Kelsey reflects on the complexities of being an expat, particularly in a place like San Miguel de Allende, where the influx of foreigners has significantly impacted the local culture and economy. She acknowledges the privileges and challenges of living abroad on a U.S. income and her efforts to avoid the insensitive behaviors of some expats. She shares both the highs and lows of her experience, from beautiful cultural moments to the practical difficulties of living in a foreign environment.

 

Transcript

 

Blake Boles 00:00

Kelsey Shipman, welcome to Dirtbag Rich.

 

Kelsey Shipman 00:03

Thank you, so excited to be here.

 

Blake Boles 00:06

You reached out to me online and you said, I keep thinking that I’m going to find one place to live, work, and settle down, but I always get bored and leave the country again. I’m starting to reluctantly admit that I’m one of those weirdos who needs to be free to travel and make art in order to be fulfilled in life. That hooked me. Tell me about that.

 

Kelsey Shipman 00:27

Yeah, I think, you know, I feel that I’ve had to explain myself to people a lot. When I was 19, I studied abroad in West Africa. And for some people who come from families who travel a lot or come from immigrant families, this would be no big deal.

 

Kelsey Shipman 00:43

I stayed in a dorm and a university, I had a scholarship to go, you know, I worked a summer job, saved up for a plane ticket, and I attended classes for six months. But for me, I come from a pretty old Texas family, my mom’s family is mostly from Fort Worth these days, but they were, my mother was from a very small town in West Texas.

 

Kelsey Shipman 01:04

And my family just didn’t travel very much. And the idea that their daughter, I was the oldest daughter, the oldest granddaughter, I was the first kid in the family that I wanted to go to West Africa for six months, freaked everybody out.

 

Kelsey Shipman 01:16

I mean, everybody thought I was crazy. I remember my mom driving me to the airport and she was crying. She was sending me through security because she literally thought I was never going to come home.

 

Kelsey Shipman 01:26

And I was just on a study abroad program. So from a young age, I always felt like I had to explain myself, why did I want to go to West Africa? Why did I want to, my first degree was in philosophy. My second degree is in poetry, just because I love books.

 

Kelsey Shipman 01:40

And my dad is like a software engineer. And he’s like, why are you studying old books, you know? And so there’s this sense where that I always felt like I was doing something wrong. And then I started traveling abroad and meeting other expats.

 

Kelsey Shipman 01:55

And when I say expats, I’m just going to be really clear. I’m talking about mostly white people from Europe, Australia, and the States who go and live in largely impoverished countries. Now that doesn’t cover the whole realm of expats, but that is what the word, the connotation of the word is.

 

Kelsey Shipman 02:11

And expats are weird people, man. They’re super, they’re weirdos. Like they’re, they, they, they love, um, there’s some kind of adrenaline hook, you know, I think similar to like rock climbers or people who walk tight ropes across skyscrapers.

 

Kelsey Shipman 02:27

There’s some degree of that when you live in another country. Um, so they’re kind of weird. So even though I was like, I really like living abroad and it was feeding me in a lot of ways, I didn’t want to identify with a lot of the people that I found myself around.

 

Kelsey Shipman 02:40

Um, so I kept resisting it. There was some deep part of me that was like, I’m doing something wrong because I keep wanting to live in different countries and I keep pursuing writing. And then there was this other part of me that was like, I’m around all these people who are doing what I’m doing, but I’m not like them.

 

Kelsey Shipman 02:55

I feel different from them. So I’m almost 40. I just turned 39 last week and it’s taken me since I started traveling at 19. So I’m 20 years of traveling. It’s taken me this long to be like, okay, this is who I am.

 

Kelsey Shipman 03:10

This is just who I am. But like, I can’t deny it. I can’t pretend I’m going to be happy living in the suburb of Austin somewhere or even the Pacific Northwest or even Brooklyn. Like I’m someone who I have to get out.

 

Kelsey Shipman 03:22

I just have this perpetual need to get out. And frankly, if I’m not writing, I’m miserable. Like I’m, there’s just, you know, I was a teacher for 15 years and I love teaching and I really got a lot from it, but I never felt satisfied because I didn’t have enough time to write.

 

Kelsey Shipman 03:38

And the way that I personally have been able to engineer time, largely unpaid time in my life to write is through living abroad.

 

Blake Boles 03:48

There’s so much I want to unpack here. Uh, first of all, I think you and I are similar in that if we’re not writing and we’re not moving around and experiencing different places, different geographies, we are pretty miserable.

 

Blake Boles 03:59

And I’m wondering what the origin of that feeling of misery is for you. So what does it feel like when you feel stuck or when you feel like you don’t have a new horizon or a new culture to experience when you are in the proverbial suburb of Austin for too long?

 

Kelsey Shipman 04:17

Yeah, good, good question. Well, let’s get deep here. I, you know, in the 20 years I’ve been traveling, it’s also 20 years of doing therapy and investigating myself and answering these questions. And I know that for me, I had a really weird upbringing, I had a lot of people can understand people’s lives who come from two different cultures, their father’s from Senegal, their mother’s from Uruguay, or, you know, they have a mother from urban New York City and a father from the boonies in Western Pennsylvania. But even though my family were all white Texans, like eight generations of Texans, I grew up with a big class divide, I had a really divergent experience of class, which also kind of fell in line with politics.

 

Kelsey Shipman 05:03

So my mother was a nurse, for most of my childhood, she lived in a trailer in a tiny town in West Texas, and never had any money, was perpetually in debt. But, you know, loved Mexican music, Mexican folk music, loved, she took in all the stray animals that would show up at her door.

 

Kelsey Shipman 05:23

She had incredible gardens. I remember she had this mint garden that was like chocolate mint, orange mint, lemon mint. And as a, you know, a fifth, sixth grader just blew my mind. She, her partner had a fireworks stand on this one acre of land that they lived on, and they sold fireworks.

 

Kelsey Shipman 05:38

And I spent 10 years working in the fireworks stand helping them. And so she was working class, the very edge of working class and lower middle class. And she was a leftist, you know, she protested at city council meetings.

 

Kelsey Shipman 05:53

She, you know, had a lot of gay friends, unapologetically, which at the time, this was like 80s and 90s in Austin. Sorry, this is outside Dallas at this point. That was unusual, you know, and so my mother was a liberal in the middle of like, redneck country, well, at the time, we would have said Bush country.

 

Kelsey Shipman 06:12

That’s what I what I thought of it as now you might call it Trump country. So for me, I always associated, you know, people who wanted to help other people, I associated people who were interested in other cultures, and I associated leftists and liberals with working class people.

 

Kelsey Shipman 06:28

And then the other part of my life was with my dad. And my dad, he worked in corporations his whole life, or, you know, most of his life. He was a Republican, he worked live, we lived in a big house in the suburbs of Dallas, my dad liked money, he liked to spend money.

 

Kelsey Shipman 06:45

And he was not a generous, open minded, kind of loving person like my mom was, he was much more closed off, as I think a lot of men of his generation, to be fair, just not very emotional, couldn’t talk about feelings and just not very affectionate.

 

Kelsey Shipman 07:01

So even though as an adult, I’ve been able to unpack all those pieces. And I know that, you know, not all Republicans are mean people. And I know that not all working class people, you know, are leftist.

 

Kelsey Shipman 07:12

But I that is a really fundamental divide, just in my psyche that I grew up with. And so I always felt out of place in both worlds. When I’d work at the fireworks stand with my mom, you know, people would these are all working class people who’ve been saving up money for a long time to buy fireworks was last a couple hours, if you’re lucky.

 

Kelsey Shipman 07:33

And, you know, I would have a CD like a Walkman CD player, and I’d be listening to it when there wasn’t a lot of customers. And, you know, they would make comments about the rich girl from the suburbs, my own mother would call me spoiled because my dad had given me this Walkman.

 

Kelsey Shipman 07:48

There was just a lot of comments that I was out of place because I came from a rich place. And, and the same thing was true in reverse. But during most of the school year, I’d say in my dad’s house in these rich, largely white suburbs, and I would go to school and my friends had just spent, you know, spring break in Paris, or they were driving.

 

Kelsey Shipman 08:08

I mean, I saw some article a few years ago about some high school girl from my high school who drove a half a million dollar Lamborghini to school and parked it in the high school parking lot. And, you know, I wasn’t even I think when I graduated college, my best friend gave me her 1989 Buick century, and I paid her mom $1 for it to take it to college.

 

Kelsey Shipman 08:28

So I was like the poor girl in the rich suburb, and I was the rich girl in the poor country town. And I just grew up never feeling like I fit in anywhere. And I think part of that is what makes me feel comfortable in other countries where I’m not supposed to fit in.

 

Blake Boles 08:46

Okay, and what other countries have you lived in? Where have you been an expat?

 

Kelsey Shipman 08:51

Yeah, so I studied in West Africa in college and then I went back after college for six or eight months and I worked at a university there. So Ghana and West Africa is definitely a really important place to me.

 

Kelsey Shipman 09:03

I also studied abroad in Bolivia one semester and that’s where my Spanish, I really cemented my Spanish. And then in graduate school I did a writing program that was only three months in Czech Republic.

 

Kelsey Shipman 09:13

Then after that I lived in New York City for two and a half years which it’s the same country but it feels like a different country than rural Texas I have to say. So I kind of felt like an expat in Brooklyn, I’ll admit.

 

Kelsey Shipman 09:27

And then with my husband I went to Uzbekistan and we were international teachers in Tashkent for two years and then we moved to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico at the start of this year.

 

Blake Boles 09:41

Yeah, and we’re gonna circle back and talk about Mexico. First, tell me how you met your husband.

 

Kelsey Shipman 09:47

Well, you know, uh, like many millennials, we met online and, um, you know, everyone calls it online dating, but I really feel like it’s online meeting. You just find people you are interested in having a cup of coffee with.

 

Kelsey Shipman 09:58

And so we met in Austin at a Greek restaurant and, um, yeah, the rest was history. We were both in our early thirties. We had, we had each had long -term relationships previously, but no marriages and no kids.

 

Kelsey Shipman 10:11

And he’s like me. I mean, he lived in, um, he lived in France. He lived in Italy. He’s a kind of a Europhile. He really likes his grandparents were from Europe. Um, so he traveled all the time too. He was a teacher.

 

Kelsey Shipman 10:23

He was also a musician. So we just had a lot in common. And, um, but you know, what’s really funny about that is that when I met him, I met him at the beginning of a school year, like in, I think like August and the following school year, he was trying to go teach abroad and he was applying for all these different international schools.

 

Kelsey Shipman 10:42

And, you know, we were dating and we were hanging out more and more. I was starting to fall in love with him and he was asking me to edit his cover letters and edit his resumes. And after a couple months of this, I was like, what am I doing?

 

Kelsey Shipman 10:54

I’m falling in love with you and I’m helping you leave me. I’m not helping you with your cover letters anymore.

 

Blake Boles 11:00

Nice try, buddy. How about we go to Uzbekistan instead?

 

Kelsey Shipman 11:03

I know and then that’s true and then like a year or two later we ended up going abroad together as a couple.

 

Blake Boles 11:10

So tell me about your work and your career. You said you’ve been an educator. You’ve also done writing and kind of get us up to speed to where you are right now.

 

Kelsey Shipman 11:21

Yeah, so that’s pretty much how I think of myself as a writer and educator. I was a teacher for 15 years, and I’ve taught in public schools, private schools, international schools, colleges, universities, and I taught in the county jail outside of Austin for five years.

 

Kelsey Shipman 11:37

And that being a teacher really fed me in a lot of ways, I feel like it healed a lot of childhood wounds, because not to toot my own horn, but I was a very beloved teacher. And both my husband and I have one teacher of the year multiple times.

 

Kelsey Shipman 11:51

And so being loved by 100 kids a year, it, it, I don’t know if it inflates your self worth, or it sort of, you know, it helped me heal some wounds that I was still working on from childhood, I think.

 

Kelsey Shipman 12:05

So it really served me. But like I said, I, I was never fully satisfied, because I, we did not get paid very much as public school teachers. So I always I had to work every summer. And I so I also during that period of time, I also was doing some freelance writing, I earned a master’s in poetry, and I, I started publishing a lot of my poems, I also was a spoken word artist, so I was performing my poems,

 

Kelsey Shipman 12:31

why I was also publishing them. Yeah, and so a lot of what I’ve taught has been related to writing creative writing, or, you know, intro to college writing, stuff like that. And then I had a baby. God, she’s almost three at the end of this year is really crazy.

 

Kelsey Shipman 12:48

But I had a baby. And I was like, Okay, I don’t have any more bandwidth for other people’s children, because my child is taking up a lot of my time and energy, and I just didn’t really want to go back into the classroom.

 

Kelsey Shipman 13:01

So I started figuring out what am I what am I going to do? Like, how am I going to make enough money? How am I going to work on just like 20 hours a week, sometimes less. And it was a real kind of research project to figure out my skills, my interests, the stress level, what I want to do.

 

Kelsey Shipman 13:17

And I landed on ghostwriting. And so for the last almost three years, I’ve been pursuing ghostwriting.

 

Blake Boles 13:24

And for those who don’t know what ghostwriting is, can you just quickly tell everyone?

 

Kelsey Shipman 13:29

Yeah. So ghostwriting is when you pay a writer to write something for you. It could be a book, it could be LinkedIn posts, it could be blog articles. But as the writer, my name is not on the piece of writing, it’s the author’s name, but I get paid for my time.

 

Kelsey Shipman 13:46

So there’s lots of famous ghostwritten books. I mean, there’s lots of academic discussion about Ulysses Grant’s memoirs being written or heavily edited by Mark Twain. You know, JFK’s book that won a Pulitzer Prize was ghostwritten, largely ghostwritten by one of his former speechwriters.

 

Kelsey Shipman 14:08

Just virtually any politician or celebrity who has a book out, that was a ghostwritten book where you don’t see the writer’s name anywhere, but the writer got paid for their time and their expertise to write the book.

 

Blake Boles 14:20

So who have you ghost written for? You probably can’t name names, but what kind of people?

 

Kelsey Shipman 14:26

Great question. Yeah, a big thing that comes along with ghost writing are NDAs, non -disclosure agreements, because a lot of people don’t necessarily want others to know that they hired a writer to write their book.

 

Kelsey Shipman 14:37

But so I’ve done lots of different projects. I would say I’ve mostly focused on memoirs and cookbooks. Those are kind of the two types of books I really like to write. So I’ve written a memoir for a guy who served in the military.

 

Kelsey Shipman 14:53

He was a career military officer employee. And he was also kind of a computer genius. And he came up with these kind of revolutionary procedures, technical procedures to do things in the Air Force. And I read his memoir, and that was really fun.

 

Kelsey Shipman 15:10

I worked on a book for a Microsoft executive. I worked on a book for a radio host. And I’ve worked on a number of book proposals for cookbooks. And I’m in the middle of one right now for two sake industry experts in California and New York.

 

Kelsey Shipman 15:27

And yeah, I really love memoir. And cookbooks more and more are vehicles of memoir. Yes, they have recipes, and there’s this technical element. But people are always telling their stories through food.

 

Blake Boles 15:40

Yeah, it’s so incredibly niche that you are writing not necessarily books, but book proposals for sake industry experts in the United States just shows what a world we live in.

 

Kelsey Shipman 15:54

Well, you know, it’s it’s because I like other cultures. I feel more comfortable in intercultural environments. And so when I have an opportunity to work on a book that, you know, explicates or elevates or innovates on a particular culture’s food or cuisine or drink, I just jump at the chance because I really enjoy it.

 

Blake Boles 16:12

Yeah. How much do you work per week on average these days?

 

Kelsey Shipman 16:17

Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, I have a two year old who’s almost three and that I have to and want to be available for her. So that takes up a chunk of my time. And then because a lot of my work is project based, it kind of ebbs and flows.

 

Kelsey Shipman 16:32

So I would say on average, it’s probably 20 hours a week, maybe 15. But there are some weeks when I work 30 hours and there are some weeks when I work two hours, you know.

 

Blake Boles 16:41

Hmm. I love the magic number 15 hours a week. I feel like that’s what we should all aim for. What about your husband? Does he have a similarly flexible work schedule like you?

 

Kelsey Shipman 16:56

Yeah, so he’s he’s a teacher, but he’s always taught engineering and computer science and graphic design. So when we moved to Mexico, he got a remote position doing 20 hours a week for a startup in Austin and just doing some of their tech work.

 

Kelsey Shipman 17:12

And then he also does some teaching. But, you know, for him, like. Teaching is not just a job, you know, teaching is something that feeds him, like how writing feeds me. And so he works more now. He works closer to 30 hours a week now, sometimes a little more.

 

Kelsey Shipman 17:28

But the teaching piece of that, it what he gets from it is more than money. I don’t know if that makes sense. So, you know, it’s like he has an hourly job with this 20 hours a week with a startup. And he likes the people he really enjoys, the people he works with there.

 

Kelsey Shipman 17:42

But the work itself is not particularly fulfilling. And then he does teaching on top of that and it feeds him. I mean, he can be on and it’s all online because, of course, he’s teaching in the US and we’re in Mexico.

 

Kelsey Shipman 17:54

But he’ll after being on Zoom for four hours, he’ll come downstairs and he’ll be like giddy. And I’m like, what is wrong with you? You’ve been sitting in a chair like dealing with middle schoolers in Georgia for four hours.

 

Kelsey Shipman 18:06

And he’s like, I don’t know. It’s just really fun. I just like it.

 

Blake Boles 18:10

Okay, so he clearly derives some purpose from the teaching and then doing the 20 hours a week for the tech startup is more to pay the bills, it seems.

 

Kelsey Shipman 18:21

Yeah, I would say so. And it’s, you know, he’s learning a lot, gaining more skills, but you know, it’s, yeah, I think that’s a job and teaching is more than that for him.

 

Blake Boles 18:31

And it sounds like you are doing pretty well on the purpose or meaning metric also because you seem to really enjoy ghostwriting memoirs and cookbooks, but you also still have some time to do your own writing.

 

Blake Boles 18:44

Can you just talk about your own writing, your personal writing, and what you take away from that?

 

Kelsey Shipman 18:51

Yeah. So, you know, I think all writers are in this, you know, are answering this perpetual question. Maybe you are too. You should tell me is, you know, how do I, how do I get what I need from writing?

 

Kelsey Shipman 19:04

Because publishing is a tough industry, whether you’re publishing with traditional publishers or you’re self -publishing, there’s a lot of work you have to do that is not writing the book. And, you know, for me, I use a lot of my writing skills through with the ghost writing, but I also really love that too.

 

Kelsey Shipman 19:23

But so sometimes at the end of the day, it’s like, I have to be selective about my own writing and what I do. So I’ve done a lot of freelancing this last year or two where I’ve tried out food writing.

 

Kelsey Shipman 19:34

And I’ve written articles about chocolate producers in Mexico or the benefits of sake and how particularly it’s a good drink for parents to when parents want to relax and have a drink at the end of the night or the week, you know, the things that you get from sake and why sake is the good choice.

 

Kelsey Shipman 19:49

I’ve written about the publishing industry. I’ve written about being a ghostwriter. I just turned in an article for a really cool magazine in London called The Backstory. And they’re releasing their issue in January where I interviewed seven different people in publishing specifically related to ghostwriting.

 

Kelsey Shipman 20:09

So seven different ghostwriters, agents or editors of ghostwriters. And that was a really fun article to write. So I’ve done a lot of freelancing, and I recently started a sub stack really to be able to write more freely and creatively.

 

Kelsey Shipman 20:24

And that’s kind of a satirical, it’s pretty new. I only have a few posts up and I’m still working on it as I can, but that’s me kind of combining all of my interests. So I’m writing satirical posts about race and class and specifically whiteness in America.

 

Kelsey Shipman 20:42

And I write a lot of satirical recipes, which is really fun.

 

Blake Boles 20:46

Cool you really get to express your sense of humor in your writing both paid and at the moment unpaid

 

Kelsey Shipman 20:53

Yeah, because ghostwriting is capturing someone else’s voice, you know, it’s hours of interviews. And, and, you know, I, I work with really busy people, so I’m really flexible. So sometimes they answer my questions in a Zoom interview, sometimes they answer my questions over an email, sometimes they’ll leave me a WhatsApp memo.

 

Kelsey Shipman 21:11

And I’m just like, you know, putting together all these different sources of their vision and their voice. And it’s a, it’s a lot of work. It’s really fun. And I really enjoy it, but it’s not me. And I have to always remember this is someone else’s book that I’m just the writer on.

 

Kelsey Shipman 21:25

And, you know, I think as a writer, it’s like I have to find ways to express myself. And because I have this very specific and kind of niche way of using my skills as a writer, I wanted my sub stack to be as creative and out there as possible.

 

Kelsey Shipman 21:39

So I was like, what would be fun for me at the end of the day to write? What is something I know about? What is something I listen to podcasts about and I read articles about and I read books about, you know, and for me, that’s, as we’ve kind of talked about, it’s culture and race and class and who I am in this vast and diverse world.

 

Kelsey Shipman 21:59

And I wanted made it, I wanted to be fun. I wanted to be enjoyable for me and the reader. And so that’s why I kind of chose the satirical tone.

 

Blake Boles 22:07

So I did the math and it sounds like you and your husband work about 50 hours a week combined on average, and that’s probably what one busy partner would be doing, uh, back in the U S in order to pay the bills.

 

Blake Boles 22:22

Uh, so it sounds like you do have some nice flexibility, uh, built into your lives. What does the, what does your income look like? Uh, are you able to, maybe you can just answer that, that broadly first, like, are you able to live comfortably, uh, where you are in Mexico and still be able to like go back to the U S or save money for the future?

 

Blake Boles 22:44

And, um, and how does it compare to what you were earning, uh, when you both had your, your other jobs based in the U S or when you were living abroad.

 

Kelsey Shipman 22:54

Yeah, so I’m really happy to just talk like real hard numbers because I feel like yeah, I just feel like when we make money shameful and secret, it’s like capitalism wins and nobody advances and we’re all just stuck in our own shame spiral.

 

Kelsey Shipman 23:08

So, um, as a, as a public school teacher with some experience in the U S I think he was making about 50,000 a year and I was making like 47 or 48 a year. I also worked every summer to supplement that income.

 

Kelsey Shipman 23:21

Um, and this was before a kid, like just, you know, cause kids are a whole other, you know, can of worms, can of wiggly toddler worms. Um, so yeah, before a kid, it was like he, we were combined making over a hundred thousand dollars a year living in Austin, which at that time, this is like six, seven years ago, we were very comfortable.

 

Kelsey Shipman 23:40

We, we did not live in this cool neighborhoods of the city, but we lived within driving distance. We each had a car. I lived in a two, one duplex before we got together, but it was on a Creek and there was incredible view and I could hike off leash with my dog every day and you know, we were comfortable.

 

Kelsey Shipman 23:56

And then when we went to, but at time there were tight months. I mean, we couldn’t really travel. It was hard to travel internationally at that point, unless we were doing it on a very tight budget. Um, so there was, we were wanting more out of our life in Austin and we were just kind of making it.

 

Kelsey Shipman 24:12

And then that’s part of why we decided to go ahead and travel abroad and go study abroad. So study abroad, teach abroad. Um, and then when we were in Uzbekistan, we were basically making the same salaries that we were making in the U S but it’s the cost of living there is half or even less.

 

Kelsey Shipman 24:28

So when we went to Uzbekistan, he was still making around 40 or 42 a year. And I just worked part time because I was working on my novel. I was working on a young adult novel at the time. So I was, I guess I was making 20 ish a year.

 

Kelsey Shipman 24:41

I was teaching one class online for a university. So maybe I was making like 25 or 28 a year. And we were very comfortable in Uzbekistan. Now at the same time, the pandemic happened and we were stuck in Uzbekistan.

 

Kelsey Shipman 24:54

There was no flights in or out for like nine months or 10 months. Um, so there was other challenges of living there. And we also didn’t speak Russian or Uzbek, which are the two main languages there.

 

Kelsey Shipman 25:05

So there wasn’t really a lot for us to do. So it was easy to save money a lot of the time. Um, so that was our life in Uzbekistan. Then I got pregnant and we were, you know, surprised, happy, happy, surprised, but I did not want to have the baby in Uzbekistan because between the two of us, we had had a number of bad experiences with medical care.

 

Kelsey Shipman 25:24

Um, I think most Uzbeks would admit that they struggle with the medical system there too. So we came back to have the baby. Um, and my husband had, uh, invested in a house with his brother and it was just, it was the house Tim and I had been living in before we went to Uzbekistan, they just had a renter.

 

Kelsey Shipman 25:41

But then we came back and the, the, the, um, housing bubble or whatever, like exploded. And after the pandemic, everybody was trying to buy a house. David sold his share of the house. And so that gave us this chunk of money that we paid for a wedding.

 

Kelsey Shipman 25:57

Basically the two of us for ourselves. We paid for a home birth for our child and we paid for a lot of doulas and midwives and support with that. And then, um, we bought another house after that. So we, he’s out of that house and then him and I own a house together in Austin.

 

Kelsey Shipman 26:13

Um, and you know, things seemed okay. Like I was kind of working part time. Um, I was taking care of my, you know, the first year I took care of my baby most of the time I had, I had sitters come good, mostly good friends come a couple mornings a week to help, but I was doing most of the childcare and, you know, teaching a few classes online and doing a little bit of writing.

 

Kelsey Shipman 26:34

But, um, once it was time to put her in daycare, like we found this lovely little Spanish immersion Montessori preschool that was $1,300 a month. And that was a cheaper school in Austin. I mean, And it’s only those hours.

 

Kelsey Shipman 26:49

I mean, I think we dropped her off it. I think drop off was between eight or nine in the morning and you pick up by three. So it’s not even a full day of work. Like most people worked till five or six.

 

Kelsey Shipman 26:58

So I had to continue working part time to be available for my child. And my husband was feeling the pressure of like, okay, like he was teaching at a Walder school. He loved it. He was doing some IT work for them, but it wasn’t enough.

 

Kelsey Shipman 27:10

And I think at that time he was making, I don’t know, 65, $70 ,000 a year. I was probably making in similarly 28, something around maybe 30. And we were, but we owned a house and we were just getting pinched more and more.

 

Kelsey Shipman 27:23

And we were starting to kind of buy into this mentality that we’ve resisted our whole lives, which is like, we can’t leave. Like we just have to make more money. We just have to make more money. So he left this job that he loved with people that he loved, you know, a deep sense of fulfillment.

 

Kelsey Shipman 27:39

He left to go get a corporate job doing tech in the tech industry. And he did that for a year. And at first, I wouldn’t say he was miserable at first. I would say he was okay. He wasn’t happy, but he was, he was okay.

 

Kelsey Shipman 27:52

And then the company’s culture changed and he got miserable. And after a year they laid him off. And as I mentioned before, in our careers as teachers, we were like teacher of the year, teacher of the month, we were being featured.

 

Kelsey Shipman 28:04

I mean, we were, we were beloved and very well respected. Yes. So the fact that he was laid off for the first time in his life, it was devastating. And, and I think he, I think it was really a struggle.

 

Kelsey Shipman 28:17

And we were so pinched at the time that once he was laid off, we knew we only had a few months to figure out what we were going to do. Cause we didn’t really have that much savings. And that’s how we decided to move to Mexico.

 

Blake Boles 28:30

How old was your daughter at that point?

 

Kelsey Shipman 28:33

So she turned two in December. My husband went in January and I went in February. So she was just, she just turned two. Okay.

 

Blake Boles 28:40

So you’re about one year into this living abroad experiment.

 

Kelsey Shipman 28:44

Yeah, right.

 

Blake Boles 28:45

Yeah. And okay. So we’re going to talk about Mexico and your decision to live there. Uh, I’m really happy that you shared all those financials. Um, just give me the short answer. When you moved to Mexico, did everything get better?

 

Kelsey Shipman 29:01

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

 

Blake Boles 29:05

Financially, how did things change?

 

Kelsey Shipman 29:08

Well, our living expenses went down by about half. And, you know, so in Austin, we, my husband’s big into numbers. So he would, we would do these monthly spreadsheets. It was this whole thing. So in Austin, we were spending about $10 ,000 a month and we had a two, one house, sorry, a three, two house, two bathrooms, three bedroom house at the very edge of Austin.

 

Kelsey Shipman 29:33

When I say the edge, I mean, the house behind me was no longer in the city of Austin. They didn’t have trash service. They were technically only in the county. So like, we literally could not have been pushed farther out of Austin and still be in Austin.

 

Kelsey Shipman 29:47

So we were spending about $10 ,000 a month and, and on childcare and, you know, groceries and he had to have a car because he was going all the way into downtown every day to work. And I had a car because I had a baby I had to take care of all the time.

 

Kelsey Shipman 30:01

And, you know, I, it was just, it was a lot and we would look at our friends and we would be like, how are you people doing this? Like we were used to living on half that in Austin five, six years ago.

 

Kelsey Shipman 30:13

And so, but when we got to Mexico, all that went down. I mean, we were, we’re between five and $6 ,000 a month. And, you know, we have two dogs, a toddler and the boat, both of us work, both of us work, not full time, obviously.

 

Kelsey Shipman 30:27

But the biggest thing that changed was childcare, you know, to get high quality childcare in Austin, it was about $25 an hour for a babysitter. And then I told you, like our preschool was $1 ,300 a month and it didn’t even last the full day.

 

Kelsey Shipman 30:40

And then we came to Mexico and we have this incredible babysitter. I mean, babysitter is just like not even the word for this woman. It was like caring, loving, brilliant artist, creative part of our family.

 

Kelsey Shipman 30:52

You know, I mean, she has a degree and she’s this incredible talented artist herself. She comes for afternoons a week. So my kid goes to preschool in the morning. That’s, I think we pay 250 or $300 a month for that.

 

Kelsey Shipman 31:04

And it’s kind of like an international school, but it’s small. It’s in a woman’s house, in our neighborhood. We get to walk to school every day, which is like magical. And so every morning she’s at her little preschool, she comes home, we put her down for a nap here.

 

Kelsey Shipman 31:18

And then our lovely Nineta comes and most afternoons and they make art together and they go on walks. I mean, I came home yesterday or was it yesterday or two days ago and the babysitter and my daughter had made flower crowns.

 

Kelsey Shipman 31:30

They had gone to some park or empty lot in our neighborhood, picked a bunch of flowers, brought them home and woven them into these beautiful flower crowns. And I’m just like, I just can’t pay for that stuff. I don’t know. It just seems so intangibly special.

 

Blake Boles 31:45

Hmm. Okay. It sounds like everything is definitely better in Mexico. Tell me, as someone who’s lived abroad quite a bit and in lower income countries, what’s your relationship to moving someplace where the cost of living is lower and bringing your US income there? What feelings come up for you around this?

 

Kelsey Shipman 32:09

Yeah, that’s a really important question that I hope a lot of people ask themselves. And I’ll say, I’m just going to shout out to an author and a teacher who has really, her book has shaped a lot of my thinking around this.

 

Kelsey Shipman 32:23

It just came out recently, Airplane Mode and Irreverent History of Travel by Shana Habib. Her book, I just think for anybody who wants to travel to any degree, you should read it because it puts the history of colonization in context of expat travel, which I just haven’t read something so easily digestible that does that.

 

Kelsey Shipman 32:46

So it’s complicated. I mean, it’s a really complicated experience. And I think a lot of Americans don’t really acknowledge or talk about that aspect of living abroad. You know, I just wrote an article for this kind of like a travel guide that’s coming out specifically for women who want to move to Mexico.

 

Kelsey Shipman 33:04

And I really liked the editor and I liked the author. I think she can appreciate and understand these nuanced views. But I think a lot of the other contributors, a lot of the essays are like, everything’s so cheap.

 

Kelsey Shipman 33:16

Move here, move here now. Everything’s great and cheap. And it’s just not that simple because, okay, for example, I live in a central Mexican mountain town called San Miguel de Allende. It’s probably one of the most famous expat destinations in all of Mexico.

 

Blake Boles 33:31

Mm -hmm.

 

Kelsey Shipman 33:32

You know, it’s like 70 degrees in the shade every single day. It’s everything is so verdant. It’s so beautiful. You know, it’s a colonial town. So which a lot of people like that description and in the sense that the Spanish built the cobblestone roads and a lot of the way that the buildings look are the same when they looked during the Spanish colonization.

 

Kelsey Shipman 33:52

But a lot of like Mexicans or indigenous communities in Mexico wouldn’t describe a town that they love going to as colonial because that’s not really a slave, a favorable description. So I’m in this beautiful place.

 

Kelsey Shipman 34:08

I meet and my husband are able to work remotely. So we bring U .S. dollars to Mexico. And sure, most of my money is spent in Mexico. But because so many expats have moved to San Miguel, a town that was sleepy and quiet that was really based on agriculture and mining for a long time is now almost entirely based on tourism.

 

Kelsey Shipman 34:30

And a lot of people will say, like, that’s great. Oh, like we’re bringing all these jobs and we’re supporting all these people. And a piece of that is true. But a larger piece that’s harder to see is that the culture of this town is fundamentally changed.

 

Kelsey Shipman 34:43

And instead of people, you know, growing up on family farms, intergenerational, you know, processes, you know, like sustainable food ways and learning about indigenous techniques. It’s like now they’re all opening restaurants catered to Americans or they’re starting tours.

 

Kelsey Shipman 35:01

It’s just like there there’s a piece of the culture that’s lost because we’re here.

 

Blake Boles 35:07

Most, most tourists are not that interested in indigenous techniques, but they’re very interested in avocado toast that costs one third what it would back home. And that’s, yeah, that’s reality.

 

Kelsey Shipman 35:21

Yeah. And I’m not, I’m not separate from that. I can’t put myself on a pedestal and say I’m different because I came here in a financial crisis. My husband was laid off. We were seriously considering moving into the attic, my, my in -laws attic with a toddler and two dogs.

 

Kelsey Shipman 35:36

So I wouldn’t have moved to Belgium, for example, in that situation, you know? Um, but at the same time, like I, I struggle with that. I do. I struggle with that. And, you know, we have, we have a housekeeper here.

 

Kelsey Shipman 35:52

I, in the States, I can’t even imagine having a housekeeper. Like I, I mean, I was a teacher my whole life, so we are always middle -class, but it’s, it’s incredible because when I have help with my daughter and help maintaining my household, I can work. And when I mean work, I don’t just mean earn money. I mean, do my life’s work, the work that feeds me as, as a person. And I know I can do that because I have the help of these two women who I see almost every day. So I value that, you know?

 

Blake Boles 36:18

When we spoke previously, you told me that by living in Mexico, not only can you speak the Spanish that you already know how to speak, but your daughter can learn how to speak Spanish. You can escape the heat of the Texas summers, which is just way too much.

 

Blake Boles 36:33

That there’s a nice integrated expat community where you can actually make friends and that the Texas that you know was going in a direction politically that you were not interested in anymore. Aside from just the basic, uh, getting priced out of Austin.

 

Blake Boles 36:50

So it sounds like you really have found a Mecca and a subculture that enables you not just to be, uh, a better parent and a more relaxed partner, uh, and to do your life’s work, but also have friends and just feel less stressed.

 

Blake Boles 37:06

Like why not recommend this to other people who might feel like they’re in a similar challenging situation to you.

 

Kelsey Shipman 37:15

Oh, what a great question. God, I mean, there’s an entire industry built up around convincing Americans to move to Mexico. I mean, all you have to do is Google, like, expat guides in Mexico. And there’s just tons of YouTube channels and newsletters and relocation services.

 

Kelsey Shipman 37:31

And I think it makes me uncomfortable because it’s a kind of exploitation, you know? And I say this because this is how I felt in Austin. I was born in Austin. My husband lived his entire life as Austin.

 

Kelsey Shipman 37:47

I had lived in Austin for almost 20 years with a few breaks here and there. And to me, it was this small kind of funky, hippy, artist town, relatively liberal, still had lots of cultural problems, racism and segregation.

 

Kelsey Shipman 38:02

That stuff doesn’t go away, but I felt I could see myself in this place. I could be a teacher and I could afford to live there. And then when we came back after the pandemic and there was this huge amount of Californians who frankly were fleeing out of control housing prices on the West Coast, moving to Texas.

 

Kelsey Shipman 38:19

And suddenly I couldn’t afford to live in Texas anymore. I couldn’t, you know, live on a teacher’s salary. I couldn’t raise it. I mean, I had been taking care of other people’s kids for 20 years and I suddenly couldn’t afford to be in that same place where I’d been helping raise other people’s kids and get the help to raise my own kid.

 

Kelsey Shipman 38:37

So I felt like the culture of my town that I love was changing fundamentally in a way that I could no longer recognize it. And I was being priced out of this place I had lived for such a long time. And Americans and expats moving to a place like San Miguel, the same, it’s doing the same thing here.

 

Kelsey Shipman 38:56

It’s like, you know, the culture has, Americans have been coming here since the fifties. There was this, the veteran who started an art school here and convinced a lot of Americans to come here, right?

 

Kelsey Shipman 39:06

So there has been an American presence here and a general expat presence here for a long time. But the culture here has fundamentally changed. It’s moved to relying on tourism. And so even though I can’t feel the way it has changed and I don’t feel the same kind of sadness that I know Mexican families who have lived here for a hundred years feel, I know what that felt like in Austin.

 

Kelsey Shipman 39:30

And, you know, at the same time, it’s like a lot of people, a lot of Mexicans whose families have lived here for a long time also are struggling to afford to stay here just like I couldn’t stay in Austin.

 

Kelsey Shipman 39:40

So I guess I just feel torn. I mean, I made this imperfect kind of impossible decision where it was like, where can I go to give my daughter a beautiful childhood? Where can I go where I can still go home and for her to see her grandparents on a regular basis?

 

Kelsey Shipman 39:58

Where can I go to a culture that I, you know, I appreciate, I feel welcomed in, but I also respect. Where can I go where I speak the language? Because living in Uzbekistan was tough. And I don’t really, I’m tired.

 

Kelsey Shipman 40:10

I have a three-year-old. I haven’t slept in three and a half years. So like, I don’t, I’m not really in the space to like deal with a deep language barrier right now. So I just feel conflicted. I mean, I don’t have the answer.

 

Kelsey Shipman 40:21

I just feel like this is a beautiful place. I do love my life here. It has solved for now a lot of problems, but I can’t deny that a lot of the people who live here don’t necessarily appreciate and respect Americans’ role in this part of Mexico.

 

Blake Boles 40:41

It seems like you’ve identified at least one absolutely true thing, Kelsey, which is that we can blame the Californians all starts there. I’m part of the problem.

 

Kelsey Shipman 40:55

So I understand them too, man.

 

Blake Boles 40:59

You have a lot of positive things to say about living in Mexico and San Miguel. What feels like it’s still up in the air or unsustainable or might be the thing that pushes you elsewhere?

 

Kelsey Shipman 41:13

Yeah, I was thinking I was thinking about that question in particular. Well, I mean, you probably experienced this living abroad. I’m sure a lot of people have. There is a level of difficulty living abroad that you sort of it’s sort of the price of the living abroad is like high highs and low lows.

 

Kelsey Shipman 41:31

So when I definitely in Mexico, I mean, even just this morning, I took my daughter to Placita, this this weekly market that happens. And, you know, we were like, she’s three. So I’m always like, are you going to pee your pants?

 

Kelsey Shipman 41:45

Like at what point do I have to like squat on the side of the road and make you pee? So I’m a little bit nervous about like, if I push her too far, are you getting tired? And we’re like winding through all these little stalls and pianitas.

 

Kelsey Shipman 41:57

And, you know, there’s like these huge stacks of chicharron, like pig skins, fried pig skins, just stacked super high. And we’re walking by grills that are covered by these gigantic agave leaves and they like barbecue meat on top of it.

 

Kelsey Shipman 42:11

I’m like winding my way through and I’m trying to find this drink called Polke, which is it’s been drunk here for millennia. I mean, it’s a pre colonization, indigenous creation, a fermented drink out of the agave plant.

 

Kelsey Shipman 42:23

And somebody brought it to my birthday last week and I thought, oh, I’ll get some while I’m here, but I have no idea where to get it. And so I’m asking all these vendors, do I get it here? I’m carrying my 35 pound three year old.

 

Kelsey Shipman 42:33

And I’m like, you know, it’s like sweaty and I’m like, I don’t know where to go. I can’t find it. And I finally get to the Polke stand. I’m talking to the woman and this old man walks up and, you know, squats down next to my daughter and puts down this basket, just full of marigolds, which they grow here and put all around the city for Dia de los Muertos.

 

Kelsey Shipman 42:54

And this is huge basket of marigolds. And he tells her in Spanish, pick one, pick one. And she looks at me kind of nervously and I said, it’s OK, go ahead. So she picked out one marigold and he starts talking to her and saying, how old are you?

 

Kelsey Shipman 43:05

What’s your name? And she’s speaking to him in perfect Spanish. And, you know, it’s this moment of like, despite the stress of being in the market and the stress of having a toddler and, you know, I’m tired, I haven’t been sleeping a lot because she hasn’t been sleeping a lot.

 

Kelsey Shipman 43:17

It was just this like beautiful moment where I was like, my kid was speaking Spanish, there’s beautiful flowers. I have this drink you can really only drink in Central Mexico. And I and I just that’s one of those high highs, you know.

 

Kelsey Shipman 43:31

And so I think I sometimes two days ago, we were changing the sheet in my bedroom and there was a frickin scorpion in the middle of my sheet. I’m like, the desert will kill you, you know? And so this is what I’m saying.

 

Kelsey Shipman 43:44

It’s like, sometimes I feel like it can be too hard. You know, there’s street dogs that are limping out my door and there’s a freaking scorpion in my bed and the plumber’s three hours late and my empliada, the woman who helps us in her house, she didn’t understand what I told her.

 

Kelsey Shipman 44:01

And I just, I feel like, oh my God, it’s too hard. I can’t do it. But then I have these beautiful experiences with the culture here, with people here, with food here, where I’m like, God, this is so special.

 

Kelsey Shipman 44:11

This is so cool that I get to be here and experience this.

 

Blake Boles 44:14

Hmm. I want to circle back to where we started talking about expats and how you, early in living abroad, you didn’t feel like you identified with other expats. You didn’t share the same values, didn’t really understand them, didn’t really want to hang out with them.

 

Blake Boles 44:32

How do you avoid becoming one of those people yourself? What are you trying to keep in mind in order to not go full circle?

 

Kelsey Shipman 44:43

Oh, man. Yeah, you know, God, the biggest thing is that I have to admit that I am one of them. Like, I’m not better than other Americans who are here, you know, like, I, I have to admit that I’m one of the weirdos I do.

 

Kelsey Shipman 44:59

And, but I do think there’s, I think it’s important to learn about Mexico in this example, from Mexicans, you know, and I’m not saying you can’t you can only come here if you’re fluent in Spanish, I would never tell somebody from Mexico that could only come to the States if they were fluent in English.

 

Kelsey Shipman 45:20

It’s not really about that. There’s plenty of people here who are interested in talking to foreigners and have a lot to say and who speak English or good enough English or whatever. So I just think it’s important to like be humble, to be quiet.

 

Kelsey Shipman 45:34

Oh my God, trying to get an American expat to be quiet. It’s just like feels like an impossible task. Like if you can just sit at a cafe or sit at a restaurant or sit at a bar on a stool in the market and be fucking quiet and be noisy.

 

Kelsey Shipman 45:50

Yeah, not, not tell everybody what you like, but just sit there and observe and listen, you know, or not tell everybody what it’s what your state is like or your city, but listen to them talk about theirs.

 

Kelsey Shipman 46:02

I just feel like you have to come here and admit your ignorance and admit your, your smallness, you know, because in the States we’ve been told our whole lives that we’re from the best country in the world.

 

Kelsey Shipman 46:13

And, you know, we’re, we’re the biggest and the baddest and the smartest and the richest. And, you know, it’s just not true. So there’s so many things we get wrong and so many things, other places and other people get right.

 

Kelsey Shipman 46:26

But if we can be quiet and listen and allow the place you’re in to change you and get into your heart and get into your soul and get into your work, it makes the world better.

 

Blake Boles 46:39

And how do you remind yourself to do this in your day -to -day life? Is there any specific moments you can think of where you had maybe an impulse to act a certain way that might’ve led you in the direction of the loud, self -centered expat or tourist, and you took the other way?

 

Kelsey Shipman 47:02

You know, I think that maybe this is obvious, but I do I feel that I complain about Americans doing this and I feel the urge to do it all the time. There is the stuff about money, the stuff about prices, you know, I a lot of Americans, especially when they first get here, talk a lot about how cheap it is here.

 

Kelsey Shipman 47:22

And I told you, I came here to find a personal financial crisis and this living here. And San Miguel is a pretty expensive city within Mexico. I still cut my living expenses in half. And, you know, there are times when I’m, we’re out somewhere with my, yesterday, we were in a store, some of our pans have been ruined, we just moved houses and we were going to get some new pans.

 

Kelsey Shipman 47:45

And he was saying really loudly in the store how cheap the pans were. And I found myself shushing him. And I was like, David, I get it. I know, I know. And I just, I feel that there’s, there are times that I’m so grateful that it’s cheaper for me here.

 

Kelsey Shipman 48:00

I’m so grateful that I can afford childcare without being stressed, you know, like, and, and I know that’s a function of, you know, working remotely earning US dollars. I know that’s a function of colonization.

 

Kelsey Shipman 48:14

I know that’s a function of political happenings and mechanisms between these two countries. Some of that stuff is way bigger than me. And some of it is, you know, I’m involved with it in ways I don’t even know.

 

Kelsey Shipman 48:25

But I really think if, if there’s like one big things I could tell other Americans, it’s like, stop talking about how cheap everything is in front of Mexicans, because it’s not cheap for Mexicans, especially in this city, you know, it’s, it, it’s everything is expensive here for locals or people who are from here.

 

Kelsey Shipman 48:45

And then for us, it’s cheap. And so I just, I’m not saying you can’t have those conversations or those thoughts. I just feel like that’s a private conversation with other expats. That’s not something you want to flaunt in front of people who are struggling to make it in the place that they’re from.

 

Blake Boles 49:00

Um, yeah, I completely agree. Kelsey, if anyone wants to follow your writing online, especially your, your new sub stack, where can they find you?

 

Kelsey Shipman 49:12

Yeah, so my website has all the things. That’s just my name, kelseyshipman .com. It has information about ghost writing. It has a lot of my freelancing articles. It has links to my Instagram, which I update regularly.

 

Kelsey Shipman 49:24

And my Substack, it’s called White People School.

 

Blake Boles 49:29

Wow, that’s direct.

 

Kelsey Shipman 49:31

I mean, after an hour of talking to me, is it surprising? Yeah, so it’s called White People’s School. And I’m still, once a week, I try to get something up. So it’s pretty small right now, but I’m going to keep building it.

 

Kelsey Shipman 49:41

But I would love for people to check it out and leave me comments and tell me what they like and what they hate. I can take it all.

 

Blake Boles 49:48

And if someone wants to find out more specifically about your experience living abroad with a young child, a lot of the stuff we’ve been discussing in this interview, can they also find that through your website?

 

Kelsey Shipman 50:00

Yeah, I think Instagram is probably the best place for that because I post a lot about what it’s like to be a mom, to be an American mom living in Mexico. I post links to all my articles. So I would say my Instagram, which is my name at kelseyerinshipman .com.

 

Kelsey Shipman 50:13

That’s a good hub for everything.

 

Blake Boles 50:17

Awesome. Kelsey, thanks so much for being on the podcast.

 

Kelsey Shipman 50:21

Thank you blake, thanks for listening and let me just rant and rant and rant, see I’m so american!