Working in a newsroom in Tampa, Florida for 1 year really drove home how much horrific awfulness you learn to accept as normal life after a while. Just another week at the office.

Here are a few stories I wrote that really encapsulated Florida's utter insanity. 🧵 1/ There were a LOT of shootings. High profile mass murders, domestic violence cases, road rage with guns, and a ton of arguments or personal beefs that turned violent. Teens fired at each other in public. It really was like the wild west out there!

wtsp.com/article/news/c…

After 37 years as a solid American, I've left the U.S. My wife and I have been living in her home town of Melbourne, Australia since January, shortly before our baby was born.

We'd always talked about doing it someday, but something happened last year that forced our hand. 1/ 🧵 We lived in Tampa, FL where I worked for local news. My wife got pregnant. We had insurance through my job, so we thought we were golden.

We weren't. We still faced high copays for OB visits and meds for my wife, who had a brutal pregnancy. But that wasn't what drove us out. 2/