New Ideas For When To Leave
May. 27th, 2021 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillilahOf course, when thinking about when to leave, we have come up with conditions that would be so unacceptable that we would have to leave right away. The Russian government was patting itself on its collective back not too long ago when they announced that they had everything set up so that they could disconnect from the worldwide internet and still have a functioning Russian internet (known as Runet). This would clearly be unacceptable for me. Of course, another obvious one would be if the US government told us it was time to go, if there were attacks in the streets, or if something else that was actively dangerous was happening. However, this is on the level of "your house is on fire", and I am more interested in knowing when there is smoke.
Yesterday, I realized that there are times that we will have to do things for immigration that will require more than a minimum amount of effort. Those times can be like checkpoints where we ask ourselves if it is worth the effort and cost to complete that immigration step. If we figure out how long it would take to pack up our stuff, for example, or how long it would take to have movers pack up our stuff, we could use those time periods to come up with concrete dates when we would have to either start preparing to leave or else accept that we were going to have to complete the immigration step. For example, say it would take us one month to pack all of our stuff and two days to have movers pack it for us. If we had to renew our residency on December 15, 2021 (I'm making up a date), then we would have to decide on November 15, 2021 if we wanted to start packing. If something terrible happened between November 15 and December 8, we could still pay someone to pack up our stuff and take it somewhere for us. If we weren't ready to spend that much money, then we had better get our residency renewed. Having checkpoints makes the wide open future suddenly much less wide open. Now, our time in Russia is divided into bite-sized chunks.
Later, I realized that how unacceptable the situation is can be made into a scale. Instead of saying, "If the US closes its embassy, we will leave," I can say that the US closing its embassy is a 10 on the scale, and not only does it mean that we should get out, but we should leave asap. The same is true of bombings (although, that may be "shelter in place", so at that point, we would just get ready to leave). However, turning off the connection to the internet wouldn't be actually life-threatening, so much as massively unpleasant. That could be like a level 9. We would leave, but if it took an extra day or two, we would be okay. Of course, I'd like to leave before it gets to the level of massively unpleasant. Does that mean we should leave when it is an 8? We'll have to think about that. However, we can come up with things that would change the level, decide on what the different rankings mean to us, and generally flesh out the scale.
If we combine the scale (I may call it the "intolerability index") with the checkpoints, we have a much more reasonable way of looking at the status of our situation. If we were already, for example, at a level 7 and if Russia was threatening to start another shooting war in Georgia three months before we would need to renew our residency (none of which are currently the case), we would be in a much better position to make the decision than without these tools. This technique would actually work in a variety of scenarios, like leaving a job or moving to a new house.
Yesterday, I realized that there are times that we will have to do things for immigration that will require more than a minimum amount of effort. Those times can be like checkpoints where we ask ourselves if it is worth the effort and cost to complete that immigration step. If we figure out how long it would take to pack up our stuff, for example, or how long it would take to have movers pack up our stuff, we could use those time periods to come up with concrete dates when we would have to either start preparing to leave or else accept that we were going to have to complete the immigration step. For example, say it would take us one month to pack all of our stuff and two days to have movers pack it for us. If we had to renew our residency on December 15, 2021 (I'm making up a date), then we would have to decide on November 15, 2021 if we wanted to start packing. If something terrible happened between November 15 and December 8, we could still pay someone to pack up our stuff and take it somewhere for us. If we weren't ready to spend that much money, then we had better get our residency renewed. Having checkpoints makes the wide open future suddenly much less wide open. Now, our time in Russia is divided into bite-sized chunks.
Later, I realized that how unacceptable the situation is can be made into a scale. Instead of saying, "If the US closes its embassy, we will leave," I can say that the US closing its embassy is a 10 on the scale, and not only does it mean that we should get out, but we should leave asap. The same is true of bombings (although, that may be "shelter in place", so at that point, we would just get ready to leave). However, turning off the connection to the internet wouldn't be actually life-threatening, so much as massively unpleasant. That could be like a level 9. We would leave, but if it took an extra day or two, we would be okay. Of course, I'd like to leave before it gets to the level of massively unpleasant. Does that mean we should leave when it is an 8? We'll have to think about that. However, we can come up with things that would change the level, decide on what the different rankings mean to us, and generally flesh out the scale.
If we combine the scale (I may call it the "intolerability index") with the checkpoints, we have a much more reasonable way of looking at the status of our situation. If we were already, for example, at a level 7 and if Russia was threatening to start another shooting war in Georgia three months before we would need to renew our residency (none of which are currently the case), we would be in a much better position to make the decision than without these tools. This technique would actually work in a variety of scenarios, like leaving a job or moving to a new house.
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