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Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

seattletimes.com

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Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#31

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

caymanjim wrote: post #24
mothsonasloth wrote: post #2

Great read. I have a "free spirit" in my family, a really gifted man who just couldn't settle. He's now in his 60s and does mosaics for people all around the UK. He doesn't own a house and is constantly staying with friends and family. He tried working in construction jobs and other things, settling with a family and buying a house. However after his divorce and other things he is most happy with his campervan conver…

I'm the "free spirit" in my family. I regularly take months or even years off between jobs, travel a lot, and I've never wanted to own a home. Usually, I'm fortunate to earn enough between travel stints to pay my own way, but I still end up camping out with family for a few months every few years, after relocating from another state or country. If I didn't have family to lean on once in a while, I'd be forced to stic…

same here. I had to run all my life (both literally doing marathons and several ultras every year as well as moving to a new country every 3-5 years ... probably rooted in having to move every 2 years on avg as a child).

I'm very sensitive to people on the edge. Mstly because I feel very much part of this edge. Reading Orwell's "Down and out in Paris and London" made me rethink homelessness. There is a lot of stigma around it and most people I know think this would never happen to them. All it takes is a couple of falls in their life, or events that are hard enough to upset what is a fragile balance. I think anyone (no matter the intelligence) could be sitting in the street without a roof, it has nothing to do with education, friends, or their intelligence, once life has just kicked them hard or long enough.

Where I live right now (a former war zone full of people with PTSD from the Yugoslav war horrors) there are many homeless and even more close to the edge of it. Thankfully we have the dream of a EU membership making everything better for the people here, but which unfortunately does nothing for this places (other than create a massive brain drain that makes the situation even more precarious for those off-grid or those not wanting to be part of the system).

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#32

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

jplayer01 wrote: post #5

She sounds like a great person and I hope things work out for her. It's hard to find the right context for her without painting her in a bad light. Some people are eager to call her (or people like her) lazy, conveniently ignoring the fact that nobody really wants to live this way. Society as it is designed now doesn't know what to do with people like her, so they're either ignored or just given shelters and... That'…

From reading the story, it sounds a lot like a mental health issue.

  - Started at UW at age 14 while competing. 
  - Had a programming job, quit to go back to cycling.  
  - She had a job, disappeared for 4 days, only to return, freak out and quit in fear of being fired. 
  - Had a support job, got fired, returned to Seattle and didn't even bother applying for another job.
  - Won't accept help from people who found out about her state.
“The point is not so much that I need help, it’s that there are a bunch of people who need help — 12,000 in this area, half a million in the country,” Twigg said. “Help should be provided for everybody, not just a few.”

She needs some sort of counselling and help with life skills. Her line of thinking isn't even, "If I sort myself out, then maybe I can help some of the people I know".

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#33

Post by pbhjpbhj »

doe88 wrote: post #15
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and of course I think it's even more difficult when you're a woman. // Would you mind explaining why? I'd imagine how difficult it is to move to the coaching/administration level was more a function of the particular sport? Are you thinking just about differences in the level of funding?

> Would you mind explaining why? Not at all. Simple. Always (until now at least) a prejudice against women when positions have limited numbers to fill. And of course, the whole area of sport is biaised against women, for instance, for her sport there is still no real tour de france for women in cyclism, in 2019.

[I'm not at all denying your hypothesis. Just wishing to probe the issue further.]

When women are choosing their coaches do they exhibit the same sort of choices, that you called prejudice? Maybe in general men are better at coaching? Are you assuming it is prejudice, or is that demonstrable?

I wonder if sportsmen perceive that more successful sportsmen make better coaches, so female sportsmen think that males are better because of the monetary bias?

The bias in sport seems to be primarily biological. Your second clause doesn't answer why it's harder for women already at the pinnacle of their sport to move in to "retirement" posts (coach, admin, advocacy): besides prejudice do you have any other hypotheses.

I imagine the travel involved is similar to being an itinerant salesman; if there are self-selective pressures that differ by the sexes then I could see similar proportions to that field.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#34

Post by blinkingled »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #2

Great read. I have a "free spirit" in my family, a really gifted man who just couldn't settle. He's now in his 60s and does mosaics for people all around the UK. He doesn't own a house and is constantly staying with friends and family. He tried working in construction jobs and other things, settling with a family and buying a house. However after his divorce and other things he is most happy with his campervan conver…

> constantly staying with friends and family

I wonder if truly free living is possible - looks like someone is always paying some price/ doing unfree things to make it happen.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#35

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #32
jplayer01 wrote: post #5

She sounds like a great person and I hope things work out for her. It's hard to find the right context for her without painting her in a bad light. Some people are eager to call her (or people like her) lazy, conveniently ignoring the fact that nobody really wants to live this way. Society as it is designed now doesn't know what to do with people like her, so they're either ignored or just given shelters and... That'…

From reading the story, it sounds a lot like a mental health issue. - Started at UW at age 14 while competing. - Had a programming job, quit to go back to cycling. - She had a job, disappeared for 4 days, only to return, freak out and quit in fear of being fired. - Had a support job, got fired, returned to Seattle and didn't even bother applying for another job. - Won't accept help from people who found out about her…

society medicalizing it via the lens of psychology is not always helpful. These people need help, but teaching them to be part of the system again (which they rejected or which rejected them) can give them even more the feeling of not being understood. Urban living presses us into a pattern not everyone is cut out for or will find worth living.

but what do I know. kids today are put on Ritalin like it was candy, and everyone has to march in lockstep. If you don't you're lazy, or a bum. To quote Pulp Fiction:

VINCENT: So if you’re quitting the life, what’ll you do?

JULES: That’s what I’ve been sitting here contemplating. First, I’m gonna deliver this case to Marsellus. Then, basically, I’m gonna walk the earth.

VINCENT: What do you mean, walk the earth?

JULES: You know, like Caine in “KUNG FU.” Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures.

VINCENT: How long do you intend to walk the earth?

JULES: Until God puts me where he want me to be.

VINCENT: What if he never does?

JULES: If it takes forever, I’ll wait forever.

VINCENT: So you decided to be a bum?

JULES: I’ll just be Jules, Vincent – no more, no less.

EDIT: ofc medicalizing the problem is what people do because that way they become the problem of a therapist, and we can sleep better because we know that a professional will look after them (it's easier to deal with them by just looking at their disease instead of the human behind the disease - "and anyway how could we possibly help somebody that far gone and who obviously doesn't even want to be helped").

For anyone who doesn't know this yet: German prisons (probably not just in Germany but other places in Europe) are full of homeless people that are there for not paying the tram/bus fare (often intentional in order to survive the colder months of the year).

Also for all the people who wonder how can anyone let themselves go so low and lie in the street with pants full of shit, it helps with not getting raped (it doesn't help though with avoiding being doused with lighter fluid and set on fire unfortunately).

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#36

Post by acdha »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #11
doe88 wrote: post #3

I'm feeling for her. Finding the right work is never easy but it seems reconversion after pro-sport can be really tricky, especially for these sports where it's hard to earn enough to make a living. From all the examples I read through the years I got the impression that the least disrupting kind of reconversion in these cases is have the luck to find a way to somehow stay in your sport, trainer, or work in the feder…

>and of course I think it's even more difficult when you're a woman. // Would you mind explaining why? I'd imagine how difficult it is to move to the coaching/administration level was more a function of the particular sport? Are you thinking just about differences in the level of funding?

If nothing else, there’s a lot less money available and that’s around the level where there are a lot of threshold effects — not “do I buy a big house or a small one?” but “can I pay my rent?”. That makes it harder on the athletes and fewer opportunities to be a coach/trainer, and they all pay less.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#37

Post by will_brown »

fulafel wrote: post #26
jplayer01 wrote: post #5

She sounds like a great person and I hope things work out for her. It's hard to find the right context for her without painting her in a bad light. Some people are eager to call her (or people like her) lazy, conveniently ignoring the fact that nobody really wants to live this way. Society as it is designed now doesn't know what to do with people like her, so they're either ignored or just given shelters and... That'…

Lazy people of course deserve housing too.

You aren’t wrong. But I doubt the multi time world champion and multi time Olympic medalist is lazy.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#38

Post by hycaria »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #2

Great read. I have a "free spirit" in my family, a really gifted man who just couldn't settle. He's now in his 60s and does mosaics for people all around the UK. He doesn't own a house and is constantly staying with friends and family. He tried working in construction jobs and other things, settling with a family and buying a house. However after his divorce and other things he is most happy with his campervan conver…

I have nothing against free spirit and eternal roamers, but to me they usually don't really seem serene, unrelated to their living choices. Twiggs especially does not : she seems very anxious, her family wouldn't take her for a while. It screams mental health issues, as it often does in such cases.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#39

Post by nextlevelwizard »

blinkingled wrote: post #34
mothsonasloth wrote: post #2

Great read. I have a "free spirit" in my family, a really gifted man who just couldn't settle. He's now in his 60s and does mosaics for people all around the UK. He doesn't own a house and is constantly staying with friends and family. He tried working in construction jobs and other things, settling with a family and buying a house. However after his divorce and other things he is most happy with his campervan conver…

> constantly staying with friends and family I wonder if truly free living is possible - looks like someone is always paying some price/ doing unfree things to make it happen.

Brings to mind the story about CEO who doesn't have phone, but then uses employees and friends phones when "absolutely necessary". The article was about how cool and freeing it was to live without a phone...

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#40

Post by matt4077 »

fulafel wrote: post #26
jplayer01 wrote: post #5

She sounds like a great person and I hope things work out for her. It's hard to find the right context for her without painting her in a bad light. Some people are eager to call her (or people like her) lazy, conveniently ignoring the fact that nobody really wants to live this way. Society as it is designed now doesn't know what to do with people like her, so they're either ignored or just given shelters and... That'…

Lazy people of course deserve housing too.

The whole idea that somebody could be so lazy as to become homeless, without any other issues, is somewhat absurd. Being homeless is terribly uncomfortable. A truly lazy person would find it unbeatable.
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