I have spent the equivalent of an entire day the last week either on hold or yelling for a representative.

I am presently on hold – minute seventeen waiting for a Verizon one.

I never trust they will call you back if you ask them to. So, I stay online until a human voice is heard.  The longest I have ever waited was four hours at which point they dropped the call.

 This week alone I have been on hold with Hulu three times. Optimum Cable, Medicare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Jet Blue, a random insurance company that I had to convince we had bought insurance to cover a trip we were canceling. Miele dishwasher repair. Progressive Insurance Car Department, and God knows who else.

Entire days seem to vanish into Password retrieval. Attempting to cancel subscriptions, when they refuse to let you do it online. Not to mention looking up phone numbers that often lead to nowhere in hopes of getting a representative.

I start to get worked up the second I realize I must go through one of these endless tasks. Wasting my precious final quarter of life listening to what is hours of music that makes elevator music sound like Mozart.

I know America is officially now the Third World, but a lot of this stuff works in the third world.  And it’s often the third world that ends up eventually helping you through the labyrinth of forgotten passwords, lost codes and mixed up answers to stupid questions.

At the moment I am merely trying to get through to Verizon who refuses to acknowledge that the answer to my “special question” to get me to the PW that I know is right and they swear is wrong, so I can log onto my account to change the banking information because our checking account was hacked this week when someone took the first check I have mailed in over a year out of the  public post box, washed it wrote in their name and cashed it.

The account had to be closed.  Now I am stuck with the task of changing the auto pay information on all our accounts.

The check was sent because Con Ed took our electricity bill from one hundred and eighty dollars a month to nine hundred when we haven’t done anything differently  since we moved into this apartment.

I refuse to pay it without a forensic report on why they claim we used that much electricity. Problem is it’s attached to the maintenance for our apartment, and they only use Click Pay. And Click Pay won’t let you alter the amount you click and pay.

I was not paying for that extra electricity without knowing what every kilowatt went for.

I have spent a serous amount of time this week talking to the bank, managing new debit and credit cards attached to the old account. And then the exhausting task of changing over all the auto pays.

I have to say I just ended my talk with Verizon and I had a wonderful girl named Tiffany, shout out to Tiffany at Verizon. We retrieved my password and reset my special question.

I felt badly as she was trying to help me save a few bucks while she would also make a few herself.  Life is hard now and Tiffany deserves extra bucks.  She had a great deal.

If I connected our Hulu which we stream everything through and our Max, Tiffany could bundle them for ten dollars a month. This seemed like a gift and worth waiting thirty minutes for.

The whole thing fell apart when I told her we had premium Hulu, with five devices and our Max attached to it   Though I I have to call Netflix at least three times a month and remind them we have the premium with  five devices program. Suddenly the two for ten was pretty much the larger sum I was already paying.

She was sweet and I was sorry I couldn’t give her that extra boost by buying her program. I was also kind of bummed I couldn’t get MAX and Netflix for ten dollars a month.

 She then tried to get me to go with them for a lower cell phone program.

But I pay for both girl’s phones despite the fact they are married. Does everyone pay for their adult kid’s phones? As far as I know yes. Family plan means you pay even if they have their own families.

No way we could leave our numbers and AT&T behind. Plus, I had recently gotten AT&T to get my bill way down in what was a two-to-three-hour endeavor.

Spending much of each day managing every part of our life online is driving me out of my mind.

I have Trump to drive me totally out of my mind I don’t need this.

When I’m not longing for democracy I ‘m longing for a time when once a month I sat down with a checkbook and paid my bills. When one could mail a check and it was not stolen, washed or computer generated.  I long for a time when everything did not have a password, a passkey, a code that comes through your phone, a question that is often hard to answer and even if it isn’t they don’t accept your answer.

Yesterday I started flipping out about Social Security for all the obvious reasons.

I also mis-read my Medicare Card.  I convinced myself I did not have Medicare A, which is hospital. And I had to go to the ER this week when a large piece of dry chicken ended up horizontal in my esophagus. Don’t ask.

I KNOW THIS IS KIND OF BAIT AND SWITCH BUT TO FINISH THIS HEAD OVER TO MY SUBSTACK

I’m trying really hard to build up that platform. I am not charging.

And I won’t charge for long form writing ever.

Once I get my footing I will charge for podcasts and longer videos

You guys are my crew….but I need to try and move into the next phase.

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