Deep roots, an attached heart and a wandering soul

I know a lot of people who've had birthdays in the last month: five people close to me and several others. I've decided to start calling friends and family in the States for their birthdays (this is a NEW policy, so don't bitch me out...and if you want to call me instead, I won't complain). In any case, this means I've talked to two of my best friends on the phone in the last 2 weeks. In addition to asking how I am doing, what I am doing and what life is like here, they both asked what I wanted to do afterwards. Here's my standard answer: "I don't know....[20 minutes of wavering]... I think I want to be a columnist or maybe work with international women's issues" "What does that mean? Where do you want to go?" they ask. I don't know...but this phone call makes me want to jump right back home [though I don't know my definition of that either].

I've been lucky with friends (Rebecca would argue that there's no luck or unequal distribution of friendship in the world: you get what you give). I have a network of friends back in the States who completely get me and love me with all my flaws - people who would do anything for me, and I would do anything for them. My roots are with them - they've seen me through so much and I want to bring them with me everywhere. Figuratively, I do. I know they are thinking of me and emailing me and supporting me...but I miss those long conversations where you just pour it all out -- where the only thing in front of you are familar, sympathetic eyes; where you throw out all your pieces to someone and they know just what to do with them. I need to sit sideways on my couch [sold] like I like to do and have those old exchanges.

But, I packed everything and came here. To this, whatever this is. I wasn't happy and had no idea how to make myself happy. I came here hoping to figure it out, and I still don't know. I want a lot from this world - from myself and my experiences and the people in my life. Sometimes I think I want too much. I don't settle. I want quality - I give it (or strive to) and want it in return. I've found it with several people - and that number has grown since coming here - and at various times and various places, but no combination has ever fully clicked. I get attached to people and even places and things and it's hard as hell to leave them, but I know staying will be a slow death so I take the elctroshock and move, still finding it hard to move on.

I feel like there's more out there - that I haven't found my place or my mark yet. To be true to myself and not lead that life of quiet desperation Thoreau warned us about, I have to continue the search. I fear that I may never find my place or mark and that all these great things - these quality things that I've found - will have been needlessly overlooked and underestimated. Not a rock or an island, I don't see myself in twenty years with a backpack in the desert or in the jungle...or, really, any further than a mile from an iced mocha, a Whole Foods (or something like it) and some great friends. Beyond that...no clue. I struggle with this every damn day. Do I want too much? Are my risks in vain? Am I living it right?

Tableturner

I struggle here. A lot. One of the things I struggle the most with is that one of my greatest skills, perhaps my greatest professional one, is shaking things up. I don't go around and see what everyone thinks or politely agree to mildly interesting concepts. I go into meetings and people's offices and tell them what's wrong and often lay out no uncertain terms about how it will be solved. It's a brash style and a pretty ballsy one, but I do it with great thought and accuracy and have received lots of respect, praise and appreciation for it in the past. I'm not a table-setter, I'm a tableturner.

I struggle with this here because seven months later I still don't know how to use this skill, or if I even can. I can see problems and understand the textbook solutions, but I never specialized in giving those solutions - I don't actually think anyone should. I specialize in knowing those solutions, understanding the local situation enough to know what to adopt and adapt and then making it work. This is what I do. I do it well and I like to do it.

It's not clear to me how to make this work here. What to do about it. How to make people think about it. I can write and help write all the project proposals in the world, but real change - sustainable change - comes from people and the system, not from grant winning. Proposal writing feels so close to table-setting and setting the table time and again makes me feel like a muted version of myself (on top of it, muting my strengths is currently helping my weaknesses seem monstrous). I can do it, I just don't really get any satisfaction from it. I need to find something satisfying.

It may very well be that I can't do what I am good at here. That blows and I have no idea how to deal with it. I need to find and tap into other strengths. First step: explore what they are. Tableturning is just so natural to me. Strategy and problem-solving are fun even. I regret that now may be time to turn over my own table though. Damn it!

Housecleaning or Zoloft?

I'm not sure if women carry more emotional weight around because we create it for ourselves or because we just naturally do. It's always concerned me. Growing up in a working class family I saw women deal with the weight in a number of ways: drinking, yelling, obsessively cleaning, focusing their energy on various knick-knack collections. Once I moved to New York I got to see how the other half lives. Wealthy women often carry their weight with the help of an agreeable doctor, a lot of prescriptions, beauty preservation and an overbooked social calendar. I think that over time working class women tend to deaden, just check-out and think there is nothing left for them to do. Upper class women, it seems, unravel.

This is clearly not universal, but it does bring up a question of how best to deal with one's emotional weight. I've erred on the side of facing it. Though not always completely successful, it's helped me feel like I own my emotions and know them. Recently I've begun to realize that this tactic has its own grave flaws, namely spending too much time in one's own head. Sometimes no amount of thinking and fretting gives clarity. Hours later and it's all still a big, nasty mess. Emotions aren't linear and sometimes just make no sense at all. They just are.

What does one do with this?! Do you say "oh well!" and gloss over it - move on and convince yourself of your own happiness (or that it doesn't matter) only to have the unhappiness manifest into strange habits and preoccupations? Do you sit in it? For how long? I want to honor both what I am feeling and what I am capable of, but one urges me to sit and the other to just keep running. Will something catch up to me or will I be left behind? Where should it all go? Where will it?