Life, In Bold Italics

Breaking Up Really IS Hard to Do

2007-09-30T20:18:00.000-05:00

December 20, 2005. That's when I left Bulgaria. Not a day goes by that I'm not reminded of my experiences there. This is partially due to the fact that I speak to at least one person I 'served' with everyday. I walked away with some truly great friends, no doubt there. But, it's really more than that. I left early. I 'quit,' as they like to say. I remember it being a very clear decision. One that seemed so logical. It was... and it wasn't.

Professionally, for the first time ever, I really felt like a failure. Sure I transferred some skills and did some good in my town, but the markers of success seemed to keep moving and I felt like I consistently missed them. I felt like I'd done a week's worth of work in about a year and a half. Even if it wasn't true, it's what it felt like. I didn't have the resources (support, interest... you name it) to do what so clearly needed to be done. It was so fucking exhausting.

Adding to that, I had spent a lot of my time dealing with some demons. Maybe even too much time. I had developed a huge, and obvious, crush on a guy - a crush following my tendency to find comfort in unrequited... er, infatuation. In concert with other life events, it ended this pattern, but that didn't make it feel any better in the moment. There was a lot of self-doubt and confusion and discomfort - not great additions to living abroad. I had good friends who were kind and understanding enough to know when to push and when to let things go, but I'm sure the thrashing of the demons made me look - and act - like a giant ass to a fair amount of people. Sorry.

The demons weren't just about men (dear god, I'm not that fucking lame). They were really connected with everything. Limiting myself. Not pursuing what I really wanted. Anger. Bitterness. Sadness. Loss. Emptiness. Not knowing whether I was over- or underwhelmed in my life. ...Shit, basically. I'd just start crying for no reason at all. You know what? It was so fucking liberating. I wish I cried more now.

All the weight aside, I didn't leave Peace Corps for it. It was as factor, sure, but I clearly remember leaving for quite the opposite reason. I felt like I was getting better - stronger, more focused, less... weighted, but that I felt like I couldn't really BE those things where I was. Too much stagnation in my town. Too many friends with substance and reality issues. Too many people flaking out on me when I felt better just distancing myself from them all together. I needed space and time - room to grow. I'd used up all I had there.

Then I came back. The American Hamster Wheel. Three months of loneliness and feeling more lost then ever. Months of walking into other people's crutches and self-inflicted burdens. I'd left because I felt like I was finally ready to leave the abyss and I thought I had a good idea where the surface was, but then I arrived back in the grand ole US of A only to realize it was the same, only with rent and bills. Adding to all of this, it was only last week that I finally found a job - nearly 2 yrs later. All of those things I'd worked so hard to shed came back twofold. I was no longer strong and focused - I was sad and aimless. Exhausted once more.

Now, employed, I get to finally try to reclaim the gains I made abroad. Not all those gains were lost, but I feel I still have some repairing to do. I drifted from certain people - some of the drifting was very intentional, but other drifting was not. The loss of two friendships in particular has kept me up many more nights than I wish to admit. Two people who I once communicated with sometimes several times a day and considered very good friends. Two friendships lost, at least in part, due to my waywardness. Two faces that randomly appear in my dreams, as if to remind me of the sorrow, in case I had forgotten.

So here I am, 21 months later, still thinking about the Peace Corps. What I did and did not do. Wish I had done, and wish I had not. Things I am glad to never do again, and things my heart aches for. Both mistakes and advances made. A heart mended and broken several times over.

I don't miss the girl I was in Bulgaria, or even the girl I've been since I returned. The girl I miss is the one in those 2 weeks or so between deciding to leave and leaving. I miss the girl on the plane with nothing but potential ahead of her. She's been broken and reassembled many times in this lifetime, only to be better each time. Here's hoping this time is no different.

Now, damn it. I really need to stop writing in this blog and go somewhere else.

Post 116

2006-07-21T19:38:00.000-05:00

This is it. The bittersweet end. I just created my new blog, First Drafts and will begin the process of stepping away from here - my first online home and the renewal of my writing after far too many silent years. I still have some feelings and insights to the whole Peace Corps experience, but as I move on I'd rather not dedicate the time to doing it just yet. Time, Young Jedi... time.

I've made a few friends with this thing and, I'm sure, turned many people off by it. I don't see the point of personal journals - the process of documenting your secrets so then you have the added stress of worrying about people finding the documentation. Instead, I've gone with the 'here it is if you want to read it approach' and some have, many haven't. If it's possible to both put all your cards on the table while also keeping them close to your chest, I think I've done just that. My heart, mind and experiences have been released, even if readers don't fully know the specifics. I think there's something to writing that makes it general enough that people relate to it, even if they don't relate to the details themselves. As humans, we share basic responses to life's events and it's so easy to get lost in particulars and highlight the differences. We've been programmed in many ways to see in the us-vs-them paradigm and 'them' only seems to get larger and larger.

I'd like to take a brief moment to thank the many people who've remained loyal readers and served as feedback givers. You've made this so easy to do, and so rewarding. I hope you continue to follow my random life events in the new blog. As my life starts to feel more and more like my own again, the need to write grows as well. Hopefully you think this is a good thing.

For any PCV or future PCV that finds this: feel free to contact me if you have questions. I'm not the biggest PC advocate, but I wouldn't take back the experience. I'd happily give you my honest assessment, which might contrast with all the "oh my god! it was so amazing!" reactions people seem to have. I think it was amazing... but, it is my experience and my opinion that with great joy comes great sorrow and with good thoughts comes great responsibility. I witnessed a lot of sorrow and not so much responsibility. But... I think that's not much different than most places I've been, so take it with a grain of salt.

On to my Chicago life...

Mortgages and margaritas, coffee and confusion

2006-07-03T16:04:00.000-05:00

Fourth of July, a day when most Americans feel more American and more connected to their fellow countrymen. A Wal-Mart co-opted definition of pride and freedom fills the yards and streets, each person creative in their conformity. Beyond doing it to obey my rule of avoiding idiots with sticks of fire, I stay in on the Fourth because it's just another reminder that I'm not one.

Wedding season and summer vacations mean the city is overrun with tourists and brides... and wanna-be brides. In my generation, at least way back in the day, the worst you could do was to be a wanna-be or, god forbid, a poser. But here we are. Country girls in their discount dresses and nude hose and strappy sandals gawking at the buildings, carrying shopping bags of things available in most strip malls across the land. Suburban dads in their wife-purchased outfits, kids in tow, smiling at me in an overly intimate way. Everyone contemplating life on the other side, trial runs, free samples. A belief that the better life, meaning almost always the more 'fun' one or the easier one, is just a decision away. A one-step solution.

The fascination with this magical, all-solving step and it's belief to be the almighty one makes it seem all the more dangerous - alluring to ponder, but daunting to really consider. Like men who describe women as exotic, it's a flirtation around the idea of something being attractive because it isn't understood. When it becomes understood it's... flawed, not attractive.

Alters and thresholds provide the same myths and legends. Happily ever after, riding off into the sunset. One decision into another, better - and in this case - safer life. Find someone to provide. Be provided for. Marriage isn't trite or necessarily flawed, but most people seem to plan to be brides and grooms more than husbands and wives. Perfect linens and flowers and ribbons, music and processional, standard toasts and poses. A perfect day for the perfect beginning. Thousands of dollars for the proper send off into Perfectville.

I've been to a few parties recently where new 30-somethings (meaning 30 year olds) stand around with their wedding bands or wedding plans taking about their condos, drinking from plastic cups and telling band camp stories. It's the Quarter Life Purgatory between starting the career and starting the family - jumping from one well traveled track to the next. These gatherings are like college parties, those thrown in the time of your life when you feel you are biding time until the Next Big Thing happens to you.

Outside of these Purgatory Parties, the rest of us huddle over small coffeehouse tables, in hushed but impassioned conversations about meanings and journeys and confusion. Those of us unwilling to jump on the same train, running on the same old track, duck into the dank and dirty train station cafe and question not just the destination, but the best mode to get wherever we want 'there' to be.

The gulf within

2006-06-11T20:16:00.000-05:00

When you graduate high school there's the excitement - one stemming from everyone going to the next phase in their own way. All, or most , are going to college, but one that fits them somehow. Plans are made to get together over winter break to reconnect and swap stories.

College graduation is a little different. People finish at different times, find jobs at different rates, go off to even more schooling. There's an immediate definition of success - those who land the quickest and the safest. Investment bankers. Law school students. People merging effortlessly into the well paved paths of security. Those left behind or taking risks with something less traditional can't quite keep up with the parties and other lifestyle choices. It becomes clear that their roads are diverging from their more focused friends. And then there's a gulf - one left for both parties to attempt to overcome.

It is when these roads separate, rather than when they are together, that proves the meaning and value of the friendships. A shared experience does not a friendship make. Differing experiences and a commitment to be a part of both shows that it's more than padding or a diversion. Constantly reeling in, and being reeled in. Not allowing distance or careers or significant others or money or rate of progress to dictate what is or is not there.

When I think of my friendships and what holds them together I get two things: laughter and respect. That includes being able to laugh at oneself and having self-respect. Some of those things are in jeopardy. Others, sadly, I think have faded. Sometimes I feel too present in my life, as if my heart is in thousands of pieces and being housed outside of myself. When attachments become loses, that piece of me goes too.

Investing though completely spent

2006-06-05T21:22:00.000-05:00

There were lots of discussions. When I was in Peace Corps and spent countless hours online chatting with friends there were points, even months, where we earnestly asked ourselves and each other why we stayed. No one was quite sure. After many drinks one night at our Midservice Training I vaguely remember a friend and I working in concert to explain to a trainee why we were still there. I remember it being eloquent and insightful... but the liquor was talking for us so I don't remember much of the details. It was basically about the few people we touched and who touched us back, and our dedication to those connections. Generally though, without the social lubricant of alcohol the answer could be much more stark. The answer most often given was "what do we go back to?" The interesting aspect of it all was that people left with a good deal of bravery were likely to stay out of cowardice.

One day, after a few intense days of internal battles discussed with close friends, I rather abruptly decided that the answers for staying were not good enough and I, with eyes wide closed, pressed 'send' on my resignation email - thus leaping into the great unknown. I knew it was the right decision for me and I still hold that same opinion, though as lovely as spring is along the lake, I have found myself thinking of tying red and white bracelets to flowering trees to celebrate spring, of the discussions I had with my host family and my counterparts, of my weekend hikes into the mountains, of my walk to work and of various other wondrous little details - details that, occasionally, will take my breath away with their absence.

I feel like I've lived a few lifetimes since sending that resignation email. Friendships have forever changed. My family has grown to one that is damn near functional, if only because the disfunction ate itself. I've moved and moved again... and moved again. I'm currently living on the 3rd floor of a house I'm housesitting. It's enormous - so enormous it's a little daunting. Even the bathtub is strangely gigantic. As the owners sell the house I'm living here for free - attending the gardens, battling the dust bunnies. The thing that puts a smile on my face is that it's my life in Velingrad, only this time in the North Shore. Still adapting to the culture. Still balancing trying to be invisible and yet open and receptive. Still wondering what comes next. Still wondering what the hell I'm doing.

A PCV's blog said that there's a confidence people have when they are a PCV - that they can adapt to anything and go anywhere. It's so true, even here at home. It's amazing how nervous and shaken people can get over small things. Part of that confidence is having been through much more - and worse. Part though, I think, is having taken the time to, if not find your center, then to get much closer to it. Just being away from media and TV and social pressures means that you have to take the time to figure out more of what you want and like without all the external influences. Finding something you like there makes you all the more confident.

I'm spending my days looking for a job - a landing pad for the next phase of my life. I'm being careful not to take whatever I get. Not to fall into old dead-end patterns. Once you've found that person - that center - and you like it, it's hard but terribly important to keep it. Even if the safe landing is poorly chosen, at least there's the safety net of knowing I was real throughout. Of knowing I was true to myself and knowing I did not compromise me. Unfortunately, not compromising is terribly draining, making the days of government stipends and capitol city jaunts seem rosy. It's times like this when I understand why people settle and focus their energies on what the perfect coffee table might look like or what to wear. At least then you have something to show for your time.

I prefer to think of myself as short and interesting

2006-05-30T21:02:00.000-05:00

I spend many of my waking hours online these days. Unlike my Bulgarian days, it's not to converse with friends or explore my interests - it's solely to find a job. My list of unreplyed to emails grows longer and longer. Part of that is due to the complete lack of separation from my work and home (having neither, they blend seamlessly). Part is due to the fact that explaining you are in between phases and parts of your life is tiring. Not sure where I am or where I'm going, I don't wish to blow the dust of my confusion and internal conflicts in order to present them to someone else. If it's not broke, don't fix it. But what about when it's broken, then what? I search for a job with the triad of good pay, interesting and... there's a new addition: some place where having a personality isn't a liability. It's striking how well people convey the exact type of person they want in an ad. When we posted in my last 'real' job we did it too - adding words like 'quirky' and 'sassy' to attract people who'd fit in. Reading job ads requires more savvy than the NYC real estate ads. Too much use of "must" means there's a predefined way to do the job and you'll be judged by that mold. "Preferred" qualifications mean they'll only hire people who have them, though they don't intend to pay the appropriate salary for that level of work. If a job description is so long and boring you want to skim it, it doesn't bode well for the actual position. There's a right way to say everything - it's all corporate-speak, carefully phrased to appease the HR director, lawyers and hiring manager. I've never been a fan of governing by committee. In the end it all seems like a long pointless paragraph describing a job that reflects its description. And I'm left to wonder: why am I doing this? What do I want from it? What would something better look like? Where would I fit in?

Out-of-the-Boxed In

2006-05-25T09:37:00.000-05:00

I was asked in an interview not long ago how I spent my days. I said that I felt that looking for employment was a full-time job and I was doing just that. Luckily, the interviewer didn't press the issue too much. While I do indeed spend my days and some evenings looking for work, it not as fruitful as you might think for a city the size of Chicago. Instead of finding tons of listings to apply to, I find that most are nothing I would want to do, even for the short term. Jobs seem to have become very nuts-and-bolts somewhere along the way. Manage collections, data, IT, HR, marketing. The job descriptions are long and detailed, having long since been defined to fit a niche in the organization (yet few having anything to do with the actual product the company sells). It's clear from these descriptions and the requirements attached to them (MBA, 10 years experience doing the exact same thing in the exact same field, further certifications in that field just in case there's any doubt left) that they want someone to peacefully come in and fill the slot so that it can be included on the next quarterly report as a handled issue and then everyone can go about business as usual.

The exception to this is work in the non-profit world where they actually go as far as to state "must be familiar with local leadership" - meaning you must have connections. They too often want advanced degrees and multiple years experience all so you can earn $25k/year. Those without local connections seem to be relegated to the more junior positions, none of which come with opportunities to actually make those connections and are instead operations and office work... desk jobs.

Being on the tail-end of the Gen Xers, I was raised to think that one reason to go to school and work hard was so that you could do something you loved. Spending the bulk of your conscious hours at work means, on some level, you are what you do and you wanted that person (and thus that job) to be a great as possible. The more passive Gen Y generation, barely remembering the 80s at all, were raised with college educations and white collar jobs being more of the norm and something you just accepted would happen. You play by the rules, you meet the success markers and you are rewarded for it. Who you are and what you do can be outside of that. They were a generation raised to think of Nirvana as cool, though a wee retro and on mainstream radio. There's something we Gen Xers got from the 80s duality of the Alex P. Keatons and the Joey Ramones that they seem to be missing. There's something we got out of having non-Gap flannel. Something goes awry when 'alternative' and 'indie' lose their edge and become mass marketed for the part-timers stopping in after the office. What's left, in the Colbert-coined term, is truthiness.

The interesting thing about the masses being able to afford college (on some level, a great myth), is that we've taken the Me Generation, American Psycho love for labels and embraced it in education. It's not that you went to school, but where that matters. A top-tier school in the East Coast gets you into the club, but in the Midwest, where local schools and Greek memberships still carry weight, it just means you aren't a PLU ('people like us,' an actual term used). To carry that further, there are advanced degrees and certifications that 'earn' you a place at the table. I know a guy who went from doing all non-profit work to being a consultant to executives as a result of getting his MBA. This is not to say the guy isn't bright (he is) or can't do the work (he can), but I don't really know that the MBA is what made him able to do that work. I've spoken to other friends with MBAs and while they say that they learned the 'proper' vernacular to use when talking about things, they didn't really alter their strengths - that people go in with a zeal for ideas and innovation or they don't. Given my, er, lack of subtlety I asked if they thought an MBA was a $100,000 finishing school. A pregnant pause later... "that's exactly what it is". The problem is that it's the MBAs that are doing hiring and if they paid to be in the club, why shouldn't you?

In the pursuit of work, I've been networking with people near and far who can offer advice and/or assistance. In one of my discussions I asked someone the honest question: companies complain about not having 'out-of-the-box' thinkers, yet they actively recruit people with straight and narrow experiences - how do they expect to get those thinkers with that strategy? I immediately withdrew the question, apologizing for its confrontational nature. But... I really don't understand it. I don't understand how people are expected to be innovative when they spend years being forcefed ideas and systems. I don't understand how people are surprised by the sheep mentality we have when everything is set up to encourage just that.

My resume has been making its rounds in Chicago for about two months now and the results are pretty consistent - great resume, we just don't know what to do with it. It seems like I just don't fit into a lot of pre-set expectations. On some level, I'm glad for that... but it doesn't solve the unemployment issue any faster. I'm a Gen Xer - I'll leave my orange Pumas at home to go to the office, but... on the inside, the mentality I have and the skills that I offer are those of a girl with orange Pumas. It's the mentality of a girl who, years ago, wrote on her Chucks "ask why". I suppose I still am.

The good new days

2006-05-02T21:11:00.000-05:00

I've never much minded aging, unlike most of my contemporaries. Sure, my relationship with Gravity becomes strained as he stubbornly pushes things down and out, but my body does nothing less than show the growing pains and battle scars of a life I learned a lot from. I see myself, not less than I used to be, but more than (thanks for that, Gravity and Pastries). I grew up with parents who had me at a young age and 'missed out' on the late teen and 20s experience, leaving them to always ponder what could have been and to wax nostalgic about the glory days. All of this could have inspired me to really relish the years they missed, but instead I saw it with some sadness - the sadness that comes from thinking the best days and years are behind you. I vowed at a young age to never be guilty of that, and to see my life - and my best days - as always being ahead of me.

I turned 30 a week ago - without much fanfare, something I wanted to skip. I didn't feel the horrible weight on me that I'm now old or past my prime. Instead I felt some relief. See, while many people remember their twenties as being a grand time and full of parties and chaos and general hedonism, I viewed my twenties as sheer torture. In addition to not having the 'typical' experience, I just found it to be a lot of pretending and fakeness. I found it to be trite. The twenties were, in my opinion, the least earnest decade - though, of course, I haven't had that many to choose from. The experience was all about acting like you knew who you were and what you wanted while you were always looking over your shoulder to see if it was working. The twenties were about proving you could be the first, the best, the biggest, the something. Somewhere though, in the late twenties you finally realize your train jumped the status and preprogrammed track and you, rather hectically, must actually choose the track that fits. Something in my mind, always said that 30 was the age when you knew (or at least better knew) what parts of 'having it all' were for you, and which parts you viewed as not at all appealing... and, more importantly, you were comfortable with your acceptances and rejections.

When asked the question "don't you wish we were [insert a younger age] and could do it over again?" my answer is a resounding not just 'no,' but 'hell no.' I can't think of any lessons I'd want to relearn or relive, even if it meant not making the mistakes that lead to my twisted path. There was an episode of Star Trek (um, I don't really watch that show - honest to god) where Spock wished that he knew what he knew now in the beginning, and in some sci-fi suspension-of-some-serious-disbelief way that happened. The end result? He turned out to be half the man he was, with the moral being: we need to make mistakes, possibly even great ones, to become all that we can be. My life and choices haven't been perfect, but I don't look in the mirror and wish that I'd turned out differently. So, even when I think of the wretched parts of my life that I'd have rather not had, I do not look back with regret - only with wonder at just how much it shaped me.

The turning point of 30 has made me listen differently and think differently. Think about how this decade will be greater and better than the last, what I want from it and what regrets I don't want to have. The difference in listening... well, I realize just how many people gather round to tell band camp stories or other stories of the past. I realize how often, if at all, people talk about the future... and if they link it to present situations. I turned 30 with good laughs and good friends - not with tales of the good old days, which weren't so good and are so very old.

Avoidance

2006-04-26T09:16:00.000-05:00

When I neared the end of my New York tenure, I envisioned a life of politics and policy, a DC apartment and jogging along with all the others. Something about all the navy and beige suits, standard haircuts and general homogeneity - not to mention the workaholic I-am-what-I-do mentality - filtered into signing up for Peace Corps and bypassing the need to decide right away. When all else fails, just avoid.

Yesterday I stopped avoiding and after nearly three hours of phone interviews, I was whisked off to DC to wow the office in person. The treatment was first class - great hotel room, free air fare and meals, cars to and from the airports. Even the people were kind and lovely. I wow'ed as best as I could and kept the energy level as high as I could muster, but something wasn't fitting. From the moment I stepped off the plane I was just reminded how... plastic it all is. Inhabited primarily by people passing through as leisurely tourists on vacation or professional tourists building a career, the streets and buildings lack any real character or charm. A gritless city. Places that come close to being interesting or unique give off the distinct feeling that they are a product of a focus group or a copy of a copy of a great idea. Day or night, the District appeared to be populated with people in suits and ties or their slackerdly cousin, the polo and khakis ensemble - something that seemed so glaring coming from a town where people can be seen going to work in ballcaps and flipflops.

Coming from a city where everyone seems to take themselves with a grain of salt, where serving on a community board or volunteering is quite common and where every apartment seems to be in a neighborhood that's within walking distance of something great, the seriousness of people's self-interest in 'serving' national causes from their suburban dwellings was not particularly alluring, bordering on non-human.

While the specifics are interesting (including a wardrobe malfunction leaving my breasts exposed all over Constitution Ave), you know I tend to get something more general from experiences and this is no exception. There are two major things connecting people who join Peace Corps - the interest in becoming a part of something greater and the interest in leaving something. The rhetoric that is spewed emphasizes the former but not the latter. On a personal level, remembering the latter is all too important.

When we return it's all too easy to walk back into old places, to see old faces and to pick up where we left off with only a momentary lapse - like a needle on a record that skips but keeps playing the same recognizable song. We left in many ways to let ourselves grow and expand and to step back far enough to realize why what we had wasn't enough. I assume there are a few who find that is was enough and just learn to gain appreciation for it - but I think those cases are few and far between. It's important to keep this goal in mind - the goal of a fresh start - because returning is its own bewildering journey and it's so easy to just find comfort in the old haunts, the old habits... the old rut. Without taking the time to figure out what one wants, where and all the other assorted details its so easy to pick up the default choices and return to a non-jarring, non-growing, non-threatening life. In the period of one's life where they most want and need safety, the challenge is, well, to avoid it.

Toward a life owned

2006-04-23T17:17:00.000-05:00

Several inquires have arrived in the last month or so - people interested in what I'm doing and how I am, if and when there will be a new blog. I am, for the record, fine. Searching for work that is meaningful and fulfilling without, I hope, completely emptying my bank account in the pursuit. I am loving Chicago and feeling more connected to it each day. Cities, like people, have a tempo and vibe - they feed off certain things and offer others. Certain cities, I think, feel like home and others - regardless of how much time you spend there - will always seem foreign. Chicago, for me, is like that near-rib-cracking hug that you get when an old and dear friend sees you after a long separation - like you'd be more excited if you didn't feel so damn peaceful. Some of my blog sabbatical has involved such distractions as reentering the world of theater-going, long and cleansing walks along the lake and just meeting that mix that Chicago offers - the hearty down-to-earthness mixed with curiosity and a genuine sense of community. After living in a world where people desired to work at city hall forever, it's damn near breathtaking to meet "my" people... people like architects who play the banjo in bluegrass bands... people who want to endlessly learn and grow and become richer and fuller in a sense that goes beyond consumption and stale definitions of success.

Part of my distraction from this site, or the next, is that I'm figuring out what I want from my life and what I'm doing with it. In the job hunt it's all too easy to lose focus on the fact that you are both the seller and the buyer - that you are there as much to see if the fit is for you and you are to convince the interviewer that you are a fit for them. It's easy to forget what it is you're looking for when the first step is being wanted. It's easy to just devolve into wanting to be wanted... something that describes a great many of the life searches I know. After a few months of mental and emotional rest - or something resembling that - I entered the job market and have been in it for about a month. Things are moving forward - frankly, for the time I've been at it, it's going quite nicely. Serious interviews and interests are starting to role in, I'm even expecting an offer from a place that is not 'the one' - or even close to it. I've faced a lot of self-doubt and large questions about whether I should, assuming the offer comes, take it. Advice from friends has been split, often based on their own bias and way of living - it's hard to endorse risk-taking when your own life is security-seeking. What do I want from my life? What do I have, and want, to offer? Where do I want to be in 20 years and how - oh how - will I get there? If I turn down a very good salary and a 'stable' job will I regret it? Would I regret taking it more?

In the process of making all these major, life-changing decisions it falls into place that it would be appropriate to question the relationships and people in one's life as well. And so, I have. Major events in my life have left me to question how people lead their lives and how those choices affect my own. I've been in many friendships where people are hell-bent on destroying themselves. People in that mentality will gladly take the whole team with them. Before it tears you up inside though, you get to live a dichotomous life of choosing to be the silent indirect condoner or the nagging battleaxe. One thing I've learned about myself, and life in general, this last year or so is that you have the relationships you want - or at least those you allow to happen. It is your choice. You can care about people and want great things for them, but if they don't want it for themselves then... well, you just enable them in some way. I don't have to agree with every person's every decision, but I do think I need to feel confident in some way that they are making decisions that are, for them, wise and healthy - ones where they are continuing to grow and learn and not just learn the same damn lessons over and over. Don't just keep broken things around the house under the illusion that you'll fix them - be prepared to make it a project or move on. I'm happy to share my journey with others and to take part in theirs as well, but I'm not prepared to be the only one struggling to move forward. Returning has made me realize what amazing people I have in my life, new and old. Time, like all resources, is limited and if the choice is blood, sweat and tears with those owning their lives and fighting the real fight or having a good time with one of the 'fun' people, well... I think we all know my choice.

And that, dear readers, is what has taken my time away from here: making lots of choices. And so, I'll choose to be better at this.

I am keeping this blog until I feel like I've moved on from Peace Corps. I'd certainly like that to be sooner rather than later, but... well, as I continue to question what the 'new' life will be and what all of this has taught me it seems appropriate to keep the discussion - or what I can muster - here.

Prepare to qualify

2006-03-13T22:29:00.000-06:00

The date's been set. As of Saturday I'll be in Illinois on my way to Chicago. Though the road trip could be done in a day, nine hours of driving is a bit much. Plus, sadly, I'm looking forward to my night alone in a roadside hotel. I just want some time to be alone for a bit and just enjoy the progress I've made.

I'll arrive in Chicago on Sunday, exactly three months after leaving my sentence with the Peace Corps. I miss friends, but... not the experience. It's hard to believe it's been three months. It's hard to believe I've lived with my mom that long and haven't been committed. I've gone through quite a bit since leaving. Most of it has been mental and emotional processing. Like with all moves, you need to spend the time sorting what comes along and what gets ditched. I've inherited a new father, or learned that my 'real' one is not who I thought; become an aunt for the fourth time; learned that I'll be one for the fifth time in the fall; waded through the mounds of paperwork that American life produces (still having more to do); caught up with a few friends... It's hard to think that it took three months. My family has a knack for making emergencies, or at least urgencies. It seems like I've been in one since I arrived. Everything must be done right away, although at the end of the day I'm never sure what's been done. My family is the Black Hole of Time.

I'm leaving here soon, as much because it's just time to move on as because I need to once again break from the cycle of victimization that people here live in and because... I'm restless. I need a new challenges and new people and new explorations and room to grow. Things that aren't here. I'm feeling both calm and frayed by my choice of moves. I know Chicago is the right lifestyle city for me, but I keep coming up with blanks about jobs... I feel like a career is still out of reach. I keep getting signs large and small that DC would be a more 'rational' choice. Connections... schooling... experience. I just can't picture a life there among the cube dwellers longing for a U-shaped desk and a door. Among the people who think they were destined to rule with theories and Blackberries from a distance. Among people who think they are RIGHT. When I see DC in my head, I see all the is wrong with America. Perhaps I just have a problem with authority.

One thing I wanted to do before I left KC, both to close this blog and to give closure to my experience with Peace Corps, was to write a final commentary on it all. I still have yet to do that, and I need to. There's so much there - so much that I think and feel about the whole experience. The writer and humanist in me has tons to say, but the consultant/policy wonk in me has just as much. It's all tangled. I have pages of notes that I need some peace to sort through. Perhaps it'll be my Holiday Inn fun. Perhaps I should stay more than one night. I could use it. Just to be calm and alone. Is it lame to vacation in a rural interstate hotel? Maybe I could move in and manage it... probably not qualified though.

Safety first!

2006-03-01T14:17:00.000-06:00

I resubmitted my resume to the online job banks today, lowering some numbers a bit and changing some wording. Oddly, I'm now getting responses that refer to me as an 'executive' when before I seemed to be destined to sell insurance. The whole thing makes me laugh a bit - how driven by efficiency we Americans are that we actually tend to bypass quality. The responses are clearly based on searches for a phrase that I magically managed to include. Now recruiters, having found my resume in one database, want me to add my name to theirs. But... haven't they already found my resume? Entering my information into databases could take months if I let it, but I just won't. Doesn't anyone actually look at things any more? Actually read them? I'm beginning to think not.

I took a day off from being unemployed (much less glam than it sounds and largely involving, um, databases) and went to a bookstore, for Mediterranean food and for coffee at my favorite coffeehouse anywhere (it was such an escape when I was a wee grrrl and always takes me back there). In any case, in my browsing I went to the business section and, again, was amazed by the lack of actual reality people produce. The books were largely based on marketing or managing... either a product or yourself as a product. It was dumbfounding. It may be possible that I am no longer fit for Western society. I want to start asking people what they do, but pressuring them until I get a real answer. I'm assuming this is not the best way to make friends and isn't included in the networking strategy books.

A family member was let go from her job - the only one she's ever had, and one that someone else got for her to boot. She's paranoid about it and what losses it might mean - primarily a loss of security. Perhaps I'm just so used to being knocked off track that it doesn't phase me any longer. I just remember entering each unexpected turn with fear in my eye, but coming out of it with a deep sigh of relief. It's frustrating to embrace change in a world constantly asking what effect my decisions (staying unemployed for a couple months, leaving Peace Corps, etc) will have in the long term. It just seems like they were decisions that needed to be made without knowing the absolute outcome... without controlling it and playing it safe. Safe enough to bore one to tears.

I remember first getting to Bulgaria and thinking about all the lack of rails and safety precautions - it was rather horrifying. Now, I look at all the American attempts to keep fear and danger and the unexpected at bay and am horrified. People protecting their children from any harm or real life experience whatsoever. 'My child won't struggle.' 'I don't want to have to worry about what will happen if I do/don't..." It seems like we are a nation paralyzed with fear. We distribute and market and criticize and drive ourselves mad with the pursuit of perfection, but miss the overall quality factor every time. Ever the eavesdropper, I heard two women having a fierce debate about the perfect... mascara. There are times I am glad a ballbat isn't nearby. I'd soon be writing this about prison life. But, well, at least that'd be better than selling insurance.

Certifiably Certificationless

2006-02-25T15:39:00.000-06:00

My general perception of the Peace Corps is that it was an experience of make-believe. To deal with the local pressures, lack of comfort, homesickness, wanderlust, confusion, anger, sadness, and generally just not knowing if you are over- or underwhelmed, you create a reality that you can deal with and live there for awhile. Some people are better at doing this than others. Actually, I almost think that people who do it too well should be taken directly off the plane and institutionalized. They've got some serious issues with reality. Still they tell you to stay and reinforce the idea of your 'commitment'. Good/successful/smart worthy people did it... you can too.

I left my New York life, which could have gone anywhere I wanted it to go, because I felt there was too much pretending. In New York, you can be as mental as you want to be as long as it's in some trendy, narcissistic, neurotic way... and you should preferably be really cute when you do it. You have brunch with people who can discuss world politics, art, literature; just don't mention any personal crisis or non-medicated emotion. It's bigger, better, faster, more... as Ani D says, the suits now own New York. Everyone claimed to be such an individual and open-minded - all the while wearing labels (Prada, Marxist) that gave them rank and file. Subscribe and belong. Judge and be judged. Good/successful/smart/worthy people do it... who are you to not?

Labels make me laugh. I wear Sears with Ann Taylor, Tiffany's with street jewelry. I'm a feminist who disagrees with a lot of what both feminists and women in general do, I'm a free-marketer who thinks that the biggest test to the theory is poverty... and that the theory doesn't always do so well. I'm the kind of joiner that inside people don't much care for. I'll embrace the parts of the status quo that work, but the rest... well, they need to go - or I do. I'll stretch an organization as much as it allows me to stretch it, but if administration and maintenance is what you are looking for, well, I am not your girl.

Anti-label, pro-individual, pro-mess, pro-growth, anti-stagnation. With these I look to join... I need a job. It took me some time to get out my resume and submit myself to the employment dating game. I need to follow the rules and to impress people I don't know and don't necessarily care about what they think of me. Good/successful/smart/worthy people do it... who am I to not?

I read job descriptions and am amazed by the requirements. People - ah, those MBAs! - have created measurement tools to try to assure people that they know what they are getting. The minimal requirements are several years in one particular and very tiny area (how far does this go? one ad looking for a barista required 'at least one year of microfoam experience'). Quantity... ah, those MBAs. I wonder though... if someone's only worked in one sector for all that time, how much creativity or flexibility can they have? How much ability to 'see the big picture' to make changes to actually create? Others require significant certifications. Acquire the signals that one is 'trained' and 'follows' a line of thought. Good/successful/smart/worthy people do it... monkeys do it too.

When I was a student, I never ran into problems with the material - regardless of the subject. My problem was generally that I'd get to the point where I knew what I wanted or was supposed to know... and then I just didn't feel the need to prove it to someone who proved it to someone who proved it to someone else. Disestablishmentarianism. I suppose it's something I've never quite gotten over - it's like a terminal professional illness.

Life is like high school in many ways - there's always another person playing teacher asking you to raise your hand, sit in the front, accept what it taught and get the proverbial 'A'. There's also the chance to sit in the back, raise your eyebrow and question authority and their 'truth'. I've done a bit of both and I can tell you I found a lot of successful people in the front. But the good, smart and worthy folks... well, I've met far more of them in the back. Plus, it's a lot more fun back there. Doesn't really solve the employment problem though, eh?

Hobbling forward

2006-02-17T22:04:00.000-06:00

Reentering American society is a long, quiet and private war. I'm often asked what I do with my days and I'm routinely unsure how to answer. Some days I reach epiphanies that clearly steer my decisions, other days I do a lot of thinking with absolutely no conclusions drawn. I've been unemployed for nearly two months now. People keep asking if I've submitted my resume or found any good job listings... if I'm moving in the direction of honoring the Protestant Work Ethic like all 'good' people do. I confess, I think there is goodness in a hard day's work and I hope to return to it soon. It's just that... returning is exactly what I'm avoiding.

There's a trap we returnees are faced with: return to the comfort of what you knew or suck up more of the unknown, and possibly hardship, and do something different. The first of these options is easy to do. In addition to the experiences of the past, we have now served as 'good' people in a 'good' cause and, gosh darn people want to like us for it... and what's so wrong with being liked? The problem is that people don't flee a rewarding life to live in poverty for two years, no matter how open-hearted they are. Something's missing or, perhaps, too much is there and so departure - however temporary - seems like a good solution. Of course, this is until it's time to return when you know you've done little more than fight strange diseases in the name of procrastination.

As I tiptoe into my 30s with intense moisturizer in hand, I look around and see a lot of desperate romances. Of course these include actual intimate relationships, but it also includes attachments people have to other crutches in their lives... 'solutions.' There's a yearning to have The Answer and to look to someone or something else to give it. (I've had a draft of a long entry on addictions for some time... I need to finish it, because it really fits here.) Again, it's about ease - about being able to blame outside of oneself when things go awry, and they will. We all need to live our own truths - we can't depend upon others to provide those, or distract from their omnipresence.

I mention these desperate romances because, I don't want to fall into that trap. The trap of being something I'm not just because it's easy or because people like me for it. I didn't leave hoping for someone else to provide solutions for me and I do not return (I hope) wanting them either. I read my resume, on it's 274th draft, and think that I can and have done all those things. Then I think "do I want to?" ...and the resume sits there. I'm not sure that I do and not sure what to do next to provide for myself while I build something more real and closer to my personal truth. Love. Truth. Courage... hard to live up to.

I've been looking through employment listings like a desperate single woman with the Sunday Styles section (it's wedding listings, for those not in love with NYT.... and that's New York Times). I read about a prestigious consultancy firm with a large Chicago office that does a lot of international work. Like a lot of woman (and, dear lord, far too many gay men), I started to plan the future and to become seduced by the strongest venom of all: potential (as opposed to, oh, reality). I could picture a financially secure life where I went to work with talented and smart people, I traveled for work and for play and I live comfortably ever after. Comfort... not something I realistically ever really like. When thinking more about the position and attempting to deconstruct the fantasy I'd quickly created, I thought of my 10 year high school reunion. I missed part of the reunion and asked a friend about a former classmate of ours that I'd missed. She described the classmate as controlled and clipped... too polished to be real. Do I want to become that?

If asked how I see myself, I'd first attempt to wiggle out of a straight answer and then submit to the following: an observer and analyzer of human nature and interactions. That, unfortunately, is still all too vague. Should I "lead and coordinate cross-functional teams" until I realize what that specifically means to me... or bank on skills related to my drive and see where it goes? I struggle with wondering how to start what I love without nestling into the comforts of old patterns... how to lean on those old talents for support without reintroducing the crutch of yesteryear's answers into my life.

Apparently the plight of aid workers is universal

2006-02-11T11:39:00.000-06:00

...and we all entered having no idea who the enemies were and where the struggles would be. More on that later. Until then, read this.

PS - I promise to not become one of those blogs that just links to other articles. Because that takes SO much talent. Um, yeah.

Eh...

2006-02-02T22:11:00.000-06:00

Not much to say, but I've been posting daily, so I wanted to add a bit. All I'll add today is this:

this weekend, if you are near an English bookstore and haven't had the pleasure yet, pick up Persepolis, your favorite cup of coffee and prepare for a short but fantastic read. Spunk, smarts, originality. Good stuff.

And on a personal note: just feels fucking great to have access to books again. America, I love you. I love you so hard. Well...kinda.

What it feels like for a girl

2006-02-01T21:59:00.000-06:00

This past week a semi-hero of mine died. Wendy Wasserstein - playwright, feminist, humorist - is no longer with us. Her fan base was quite dedicated even if the critics weren't always impressed. Personally, I loved her themes and her characters even if I thought she stopped short of delving deeper, delivering a slap where a hook was needed. Still, she showed that women writing about women needn't be resigned to a life serving on fringe festival panels and doing community theater, that there was a universal truth to the female human story and that one doesn't need to subscribe to the life of SUVs and marriage and child rearing in order to be fulfilled. She even put in the thought that perhaps it was better that we didn't.

I look around at the women leaders and thinkers we have out there and I'm really... well, sad. Sure the Maureen Dowd's can turn a phrase and the Martha's can help you find your inner domestic goddess and the Oprah's can help you streamline your emotions/ purchases/ thoughts/ life so that it's all rosy and fun, but we've come to placate more than we liberate and smooth more than we ruffle. My own days as a more active feminist involved posting quotes and stats all over lower Manhattan to get people to talk and think. It involved pointing out patriarchy and bullshit. It involved saying "I'm ok without you, foo". When I learned of Wendy's death I immediately thought of her plays, and then of their limitations. Still, she moved things forward and that act deserves to be recognized. She didn't stand in the safe sidelines critiquing others' works. She didn't steer from the complications of life in order to be happy, or as a way to market herself as The Grand Answer Holder. She was flawed, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

A friend of mine spoofed my blog in an email to me once, riddling it with unanswerable questions. I do throw out a lot of those and I think Wendy did too. Call it feminism. See, I think that seeing one's self as the final answer is so incredibly infested with testosterone that I can't see the screen for my eyes rolling back so far. There are far too many blogs (written largely by men) dedicated to throwing out the person's opinion (however witless) about some grandiose issue. This person, this Cube Dweller, knows the answer though. Just ask. Or don't ask... he'll post anyway. This is not to say I find women's blogs to be a lot better. No, those are often sad songs about dieting woes, dating mishaps or (and this kills me) product endorsements. They don't encourage enlightenment or being a more open person or discuss the complications of their personal life. No, they encourage their readers to be more vain and image obsessed. A decade ago, in a room of feminists, if someone said "are you hot?" the group answer would be "who the fuck cares?" Now, even among the more vocal, educated and opinionated women out there, the answer would be "I sure hope so". Am I alone in finding this a problem?

Coming back from Peace Corps gave me a fresh take on American life. Once something of a political junkie, I admit that I now find caring a problem. Coming back and scanning the channels filled with political and business leaders, I immediately noted their sunken faces and deep lines and lifeless eyes and my first thought was "that's what your face looks like when you spend your life trying to control everything that isn't yours and avoid what is". Sure, it's a generalization, but it was my first reaction and it was as clear as could be. Everyone wears their history on their face. Some are just better mask makers than others. In my days in feminist meetings we had a "this is me, take it or leave it" attitude. I miss living in a world where people are like that, one where people are political about things that affect them directly, not in an attempt to manhandle the lives of others. Now, people just want to rule and be liked and are unabashedly willing to become whatever is needed to make that happen.

I realized while abroad that as much as the path to political or business success was alluring, the people I really respected were those that were out there living their lives and following their passions and just... leaving the mask at home. There are people who've done both, but I've met so very few of them. In a world where we drug every mental and physical problem, strive to exceed the Joneses and "present" ourselves to all but a select few, it was inspiring to know that there was one more person out there. One more person not afraid of the answers, so she didn't have to control them. She was more into the questions. In a world full of answers and answerers, I ask this: where have the maskless questioners gone?

Begin the Begin

2006-01-31T20:30:00.000-06:00

For those who do not know, life changes and introspection have led me to decide to file for a legal change of name. Today confirmation was received that the judge approved it and I am, in so many ways, not my father's daughter. The rest of the process (an antiquated requirement to make a 'public notice' in a local paper I've never heard of and then changing all personal documents) will take another month and needs to be handled locally. This means I have approximately a month until I am free to move.

Being tied to that process has allowed me to take some pressure off myself to just run and jump into what's next and instead really think about what I want and need. Some days my own thoughts annoy me to no end, other days pieces seem to effortlessly come together allowing me to realize things I should have noted long ago. It's purgatory, but a much needed one. I, finally, took DC and NYC off my possibility list realizing that the friends and would-be life in Chicago have taken a life of their own - a life I eagerly await to live. I've come to fully appreciate the need for like minded friends to be close and to share my life with them. I want to be closer (yet not sooooo close) to my family. I want to pursue my interests and even my non-corporate talents. I want to sail and bike and own a Wrangler that I beat the living shit out of. I want to box again.

The list of things I've had to fret about in the last month has been rather overwhelming, but having one closer to completely finished means I am that much closer to moving my energy down the list. This next month will be, largely, about preparing to tackle my new life by tying up loose ends locally and healing some significant old wounds. When I head to Chicago I'll have a new name and, really, a new me to go with it. I, at least once a day, beat myself up for not moving faster and doing more, yet my days are full and I begin and end each day aware of my center and myself. This itself is tremendous progress. This is the beginning.

The great blogging silence

2006-01-30T21:27:00.000-06:00

I've kinda fallen in love with blogs, well, good ones. I love that the artificial distance encourages people to be more open and honest and just put themselves on the line for all to judge. Recently, many blogs (including my own) have been absent of significant new entries. I know some of the people in the blogs I read and I know this is generally not for the lack of news or changes. Most people's lives are actually changing quite rapidly. Call it regaining one's life in the late 20s or early 30s. Call it the response to dealing with a redefining world. Call it the beginning of the returning Age of Aquarius. But whatever you call it, note that it's happening.

My own life these past few weeks has been a whirlwind of monotony, if that's possible. I set the ball rolling to major changes in my life (and was dealt more) and these weeks have been basically about, well, administering those changes. Today, for example, I had not a moment to spare between 10:30am and 9pm. What did I do? Not a lot. Worked out, a meeting, dinner, grocery shopping, online stuff and...that's it. I chip away at the things I need to do. I can only look at my to do list in terms of weeks because there's no way I can finish one of the massive things I need done in a day. So, weeks go by and people asked what I've been up to. A lot and not so much.

Returning from Peace Corps can be quite frustrating. Returning from a rather hellish existence makes one realize what is needed and wanted - and unneeded and surely unwanted. I've returned being less consumed with news and gossip and more concerned about me and my needs and boundaries. Some of this is healthy, some is... well, needed in my current state. I find myself talking about my own issues and concerns more than those of friends. I can only give you vague ideas about what's going on in the lives of the people I know because nearly ounce of me has been dedicated to keeping it together, staying focused and minimizing the breakdowns. I've been a great friend to myself recently, but not such a good one to others.

I'm usually the listener and the rock and the confidant offering empathy and a shoulder. I still have those things to offer, but I offer them less. Yes, of course part is due to my own need for self care, but part is due to something else. It's hard to take steps toward recognizing your life isn't your own, your 'support' is mainly crutches and addictions and that you have a duty to yourself to live up to your potential... it's hard to do these things and not expect the same from others. It is, of course, the other person's choice, but how involved do I want to be with someone who chooses not to? I'm not sure. How does one stop being an addict if one is surrounded by addicts? What's self-righteous and what's pro-actively taking control of one's surroundings? I find myself refusing to engage in old games and negative interactions, creating distance and perhaps even some confusion. For those still in PCVland - you don't just fit back into your old life. But, if you were really so happy with it would you have left it? Probably not. Redefining, or even just finally defining, relations is both troubling and rewarding. Mainly troubling in the beginning...but, still, who among us doesn't need it?

It's difficult to communicate with people who, daily, take great strides in maintaining their lives when I only inch toward changing my own. Disconnect. It causes me to be silent and distant...and sleepless. I chose to walk the reentry path on my own. My silence is because I'm in the process of sorting my ideals, beliefs and internal rhetoric. They are thoughts that never leave my head, and unless you're there for the whole conversation, it's probably just less confusing to be told the ending.

...or perhaps I just need to order the shit enough to convey it. That's a possibility.

The Beginning of the End

2006-01-15T20:32:00.000-06:00

The URL, with "bulgaria" in the title, beacons me to abandon this blog at some point and move to a more long term destination. It's been nearly a month since I parted with Bulgaria and it's time to start putting the experience behind me and embracing what's ahead more than I dwell on what's gone.

A few entries ago I included that I wasn't fond of Peace Corps and would comment on that more extensively at some point. Seeing how I'm trying to leave this and move on, I suppose that point is coming. Deciding to leave brought a whirlwind of support and disbelief and even some direct criticisms. I received emails and IMs from close Peace Corps friends, from distant ones, from volunteers I barely knew and even from some former PCVs who wanted to share their stories, opinions and support.

Speaking out against the Peace Corps is not exactly an easy thing to do. See, it's like a secret society and talking badly about it breaks some vow of silence I never promised to observe. Also, my objection isn't a simple one. I don't like the organization, I don't like the way they treat volunteers or host country nationals and I'd even go as far as publicly admitting I don't like most volunteers and generally feel like a large portion are serving for the wrong reasons (and doing the wrong things).

I spoke candidly to an organization I served about Bulgarians and Bulgarian attitudes and how it leads to nothing changing or getting done. We also spoke about organizations and how they function (or don't) and why that happens. Eventually, I realized I was in a group of Americans so completely guilty of what we criticized and found myself in no real position to change it. As one PCV wrote about me and my experience with other PCVs: "Things happen that we can't deal with, but if you let other people take responsibility for your actions, you're going to feel uselsess." I'm not 100% clear what that meant, other than implying I can't "deal," but I assure one and all that I take responsibility for all that I did, including leaving - I did it because it was the healthiest option around.

For the number of people who read this, and those who might stumble upon it in the future, I need to wrap this up as well as I can and to explain myself - my thoughts and feelings - as best as I can. I'll say that I don't regret my decision to join Peace Corps. I learned a lot and met a number of great people. So, take that for what it's worth...because I don't regret leaving either.

I walk the line

2006-01-08T21:29:00.000-06:00

Today I saw "Walk the Line". Ah, American theaters... Anyway, I'm in love with Johnny Cash and June Carter's story. The bond that brought them together and was so incredibly dynamic. Two larger-than-life personalities. Two people really trying and daring. Depth. Longevity. Passion. All in the face of adversity.

More than the love story, I was struck by a connection I felt with both characters - the need to move and change and explore coupled with the dedication to family and old friends. There's a profound commitment that has to be made to have both and it's rare to find people who want both; more rare still to find someone who achieves it. In my life as a transplant (first in NYC, then briefly in DC and then in Bulgaria), I've met plenty of other drifters - travelers, movers, dodgers, the lost, the confused, seekers, avoiders. I was once awestricken by people who'd traveled, same as I was by people who went to a good school or did other "noted" things. Then I did them and realized that most people do "noted" things to... be noted. Right thing, wrong reason. Many people who've traveled extensively treated the stops like they were rides at a cultural Disneyland - stopping long enough to say they'd been there, get the stamp, get wasted and then move on. Few self-described travelers talk about the essence of a city or its rhythm, much less its soul. Few talk about what a country or town made them rethink about themselves - priorities, values, identity. Just make the stops, get the trinkets. It's not the act, but the "why?" that matters.

Among the drifters is the tendency to recreate life anew at every port. There's a tendency for people to think of the new as more fascinating and having more potential than the old, until the new slips and shows that it too has limitations (psst, and you do too). Time for new again. Drifters have an odd relationship with history - a tendency to never get over it, but discount it nevertheless. Same thing keep happening? It's the world, not you. Yes, yes. Of course. Much like people in therapists' offices, people in new situations control and spin the versions of their personal history. It's a history that includes, inevitably, being misunderstood or victimized by nearly all. A convincing and well-rehearsed story ...the first twenty times. Those drifting with old, dear friendships are few and far between. Even those with them often do not make them a part of daily life. They are something that will reenter when the time is right, usually when the drifter needs something. Out of sight, out of mind. Taken for granted. Undervalued for the new and shiny. The here and now. The easy and tangible.

In my moves and journeys, I've tried to keep my friends and family close at hand. When I said I was returning to the States, I received countless offers for places to stay and visit. Phone calls. Emails. We didn't even need to catch up, just reconnect. They already knew my details, and I knew theirs. I was already a part of their lives and they mine. I didn't need to start anew or pretend to be shiny and perfect - I didn't expect it of them either. Neither of us wanted it.

Gritty drifter. I guess that's what I am. I like being that way and honoring the connections and people who've helped and inspired me. Those things - their depth, passion and longevity - keep me going. I don't want to stand still because of them, I just want to make sure they come with me. Ideally, I'd like to meet other gritty drifters. In fact, I've tired of the shiny ones. I have no room in my life for perfection. If I was dying on the side of the road and had to sing one last song to express my life, I'd want it to be something closer to 'Folsom Prison Blues' than something about how great I was, how much peace I had or how many friends/things I collected.

Moving on and holding on. I walk the line.

A return to childhood

2006-01-08T21:02:00.000-06:00

On one level I'm very lucky. I'm surrounded by people who love and support me and at this time in my life that's so very important. However, at least 5 times a day I have the following thought: I am TWENTY-NINE and living with MY MOM. Ahhhhhh!

Roughly a year ago my parents' divorce was finalized - a 25-year marriage ended. It was long overdue and desperately needed. Both parents remarried quickly, meaning I live with my mom and her husband... using 'stepdad' is beyond me. I think if a parent remarries after you can legally drink whatever they do doesn't change the titles in your life. I'm going with that. The dynamic is strange at best. I've not been home for more than a summer for more than 10 years and even then I showered and slept and left. I never enjoyed just hanging around the house and with a car and an income I didn't have to. Ten years later I am without said car and income and unused to not having a calming cup of tea and a book read before bed...in silence. I do so miss silence.

I'm a daughter, but not a child anymore - yet I've not been home significantly since I lost the latter title and my state of dependency doesn't much help my case. I get chores to do and told the time when something will happen. I'm not consulted about it, just told. Truthfully, I have no transportation or duties, so anytime is good (in theory). It's the principle of the matter though. I've lost my options and I don't even get an allowance for it. I'm close to putting stickers and passwords on all my things. Privacy, I miss that too.

My life state is one of fluxuation. I can't join a gym because I don't know where I'll be next month. I can't afford a car. I could get a temp job (yes, H, I know, I know) but that would mean that I have less time to look for a job... or just regain sanity.

I've returned to hanging out in 'my room' - which, presently, is my mom's husband's office with a daybed in it. Occasionally someone will walk in looking for something. It's beyond feeling like my space is being invaded. It feels like I don't belong. At least I have an incentive not to linger. If it was spring, I'd rent a car and just drive... space, sanity, silence, privacy.

Honesty and Confusion

2006-01-06T14:57:00.000-06:00

I've hesitated to write again here because I attempt to be honest in my writing and I'm not quite sure what I'm feeling these days. People ask and I answer, providing the standard "I did the right thing" answer. It's honest, I do think it was time to part, but just because something is right doesn't mean it's easy.

With every major change comes a door opening to new potentials, but it also included a closing of another door - however muted - of experiences and a life that are now... inaccessible. Changing one's life involves both doors and any honest answer from someone who's undergone a major life change should include responses to both. I suppose at this moment I'm still standing still, taking in the changes and not sure what to feel or do about either. It's the overwhelming nature of being momentarily... normal.

I left behind a lot of bad. At a certain point I felt like my life was toxic and that I was surrounded by people, Bulgarians and Americans alike, who were engaged in self-destruction or at the very least actively ignoring the existential calls to take control of their lives. Daily I felt I was enabled and enabling stagnation. Sadness and depression met a dozen virtual shoulders who helped me point to situations causing me to be or do what ever I was, or was not. Negativity was everywhere and I was drowning in it. Positivity seemed to be based on old crutches and habits - enabling and enabled. As I tend to do in my life, when I know I need to get out of a situation and am not sure how to do it gently, I just broke it. Leaving was so amazingly healthy.

This is not to say that I left nothing good. I never got a farewell visit to my host family. I miss my NGO counterparts and know that I'm miss seeing that organization change and flourish. I miss chatting with certain friends daily, sharing the experience with them. We co-occupied the trench and had a camaraderie because of it. I'll doubt my decision everytime someone tells me of a hiking or visiting weekend or traveling adventures. I'll know I'm missing that and wonder what I'm missing it for.

It seems impossible that I'm not in my old blok apartment and living that life. My leaving caused at least a few to think about their own decisions to stay. My old friends have justified why they stay, something that's really a personal choice. My abrupt departure and vocalized discontent made it seem like I was judging why others stay. I'm not. I haven't. Honestly, I don't fully understand it - given what it is - but it's not my judgment call and not my life. No one outside a relationship truly knows what's in it, be that relationship between two people or between a person and aspects of his/her life. I am curious why people stay - curious beyond the standard answers. Curious how people answer the questions I couldn't. Curious about what they are getting from it. People don't give something and expect nothing in return. Handing over one's life is quite a large something... and the return is just as large (not SHOULD be, but IS). I'm curious about those honest answers, though I'm not sure if I'd get them. I'm curious not to make a judgment, but to better understand human motives - one of my deepest pursuits.

The door opening is a door to a new city, a new job, a new name and a new me. I can jump wherever and do whatever. Infinite possibilities. It's startling and terrifying and exhilarating and exhausting. I left because I knew I wasn't in the right place and doing the right thing. I knew the Real Me was elsewhere and that's all I needed to leave. I'd like to know where she is though. I have this nesting dream of finding her and creating a stable, stationary life. It's what I want, or at least what I want to want. A close friend this week called me a rolling stone - something I never really saw myself as, but I think her case is better developed than mine. I move every few years. I get comfortable and then get...out. I don't understand people who "want to be happy" - I've always felt like we don't have much in common. I want to question. To explore. To feed my curiosity. To push. To dare. In my mind, the pursuit of happiness often works against other - greater - pursuits. First step is realizing the next step isn't about where I want to land, but where/how I want to grow. Second step is deciding where/how I want to grow. It seems like it's as simple as getting out a resume and cover letter, but (at least for me) it's a bigger question.

Those stupid bigger questions got me into this mess. They'll get me out of it... and into another. I want to not be that person, but I'm really quite fond of her. She's who I am and most likely who I'll always be. What's the profession for a complicating, over-analyzing, excessive thinking, troublemaker? I hope there are a few answers because I'll probably explore them all in due time, but now I'm just startled by the change in winds... and that I'm the one who caused the change.

The Q word

2005-12-11T16:01:00.000-06:00

My apartment is a disaster. What to take and what to leave? I really don't know. Seems strange to take things that I can buy where I'm going. Seems strange to be going some place I might like to buy things. When I left for Peace Corps, I sold all major possessions: car, furniture...er, that was it. I return to owning little of my former life. I did that for a reason.

In telling people that I'm terminating my service/leaving Bulgaria it's been rephrased back to me in terms of something involving quitting. "I didn't know it was so hard," some say. "It's not like you to quit," say others. Um, I'm not. Period. Perhaps it's semantics, but I've quickly grown tired of people implying that I've committed myself to something and am just ditching it. People who know me - REALLY know me - know it's not my style. However, committing to something, finding out it's not what it says it was and then telling it to fuck off certainly is. This move is more like the latter.

Peace Corps is a complex experience and I'm sure I'll be deciphering it long after I leave. There are 101 reasons to stay and just as many (I'd say more) to go. People stay and go for all sorts of reasons. I stayed this long because I was really getting something out of it and felt like I was giving, or beginning to. I used to joke that this was an abusive relationship - you stay under the promise that things will get better and that you just need to have faith and the goodness will appear even if all evidence is to the contrary. For me, that abuse never ended and I committed long ago to not being in any more abusive relationships. People say that the second year is much easier and that people are much more prepared. I suppose. What I see is this: deadened spirits and blank eyes. It makes things easier, that is true. It would make damn near anything easier. One of my 5 goals here was "affect and be affected" - to honor that meant no deadening. No deadening meant it didn't get easier, and in some ways got worse.

Following the lines of "quit" and "quitter" I worry what employers will say about my early departure. I have good reasons, I know, and I'm not afraid to voice them, but still... Peace Corps is this experience that sells people on smiling Americans helping poor but eager brown people. I never really liked that image. I never even believed in it. My reasons for joining we much less marketable. Walking away seems like it could be perceived as some prissy American not being about to hack the "hardships". You know, I grew up poor living in a 1-bedroom house with bad plumbing and questionable structure in a neighborhood often called "the war zone" - the square footage of that house was smaller than my current apartment and I shared it with my parents, sister and aunt. I lived on grilled government cheese sandwiches for about a year - so long that it took a decade for me to ever eat one again. This... really, is nothing.

I leave for many reasons, but one is this: I never grew out of asking "why?". Since a young age, if I didn't like something or thought it was stupid or a waste of time I simply didn't do it. As I grew older the depth of that conviction grew to include things that were offense or inefficient. Try to change the system, but if you can't then walk. It's not quitting it's something people have long since forgotten and have even grown to fear when it's done in a meaningful way: civil disobedience. For reasons I'll get into when this crap is packed and I'm enjoying wi-fi and a cafe mocha, I cannot service this operation any longer. It violates too many things I believe in and fails to do so many other things because it's an outdated program in desperate need of being revamped. There are reasons for volunteers to be out in the world helping people. What we do here isn't one of those reasons.

I sold my material things prepared to come back a different person - with new views and new tastes. I have some of those. I have a lot. What I have more of though is strength and clarity. A stronger belief in my own convictions and moral code. What I'm doing is right and done out of thoughtfulness... even if it does just look like I can't take one more gray meat stick.

There she goes

2005-12-08T15:08:00.000-06:00

I'm no stranger to hardship or sacrifice in my life. I've worked since... since I don't know when. Since before it was legal for me to work. I babysat my weekends and summers away until I could work for a whopping $3.25/hr (yes, I'm that old). Worked through high school and early college, one summer having 3 nearly full-time jobs. (I don't know how that math worked either... but I assure you, it's true.) Eventually, even with working part-time I couldn't afford private university any longer and worked full-time. Well, NYC full-time - so more like 60+ hrs/wk. Eventually I professionally maneuvered to be able to work full-time while going to school part time. This lasted until the summer of 2004.

It took me 10 years to graduate college. Academics were not the problem - financing was. Still, I wanted the degree, so I worked until I got it. My friends had long since left and found careers and spouses and even advanced degrees. I sucked it up and reminded myself I was a stronger person for it all. Unfortunately, I'm a forgetful person and I forgot that whole character-building part and really just kind of hated the process of sitting in a room with trust fund brats who had never, and would never, read the material. I was after a degree and an education. Ten years later, I got both.

Chris Mathews said in an interview long ago that he felt like he was playing a game different than other people. He, like others, liked to win, but unlike others he wanted to do it right - the right morals, means and ends. He was playing by different rules and, while he felt like a better person for that, he also found that he often lost because of it. Like Chris, I want to do the right things for the right reasons. I too feel like it means I play a different game. I'd like to win, but mostly I want to look at myself in the mirror, look deeply into my own eyes and know the person there is someone I respect. I work everyday to make sure I can still do that. It's something I do every single morning.

I think of myself as a giving person. A rather selfless one. Still, I have my limits. I read an article a few weeks ago by a woman who said she never gave, in any way, that wasn't sustainable. If she couldn't always drop a dime in a cup, she just wouldn't. It saved her from giving and eventually feeling badly for it. If she couldn't repeat something, she didn't do it at all. I read this and was in awe of her dedication to defend and preserve herself. To not be depleted, but to still be giving. It's the kind of thing that seems harsh and rash from the outside. Unless, of course, you too are easily cornered into the gift-than-grief cycle and then it all makes sense.

Confucius said "Have no friends not equal to yourself." Again, a harsh way of thinking perhaps, but quite sensible to those who've found themselves the lesser of two, or even the daunting task of being the greater of two. Being carried is humiliating and carrying only breeds resentment.

All of these things: integrity, self-respect, a search for equals lead me to one of the biggest, most deliberate life changes I've ever made. The Peace Corps ads say "Life Is Calling. How Far Will You Go?" Ironically, life is calling. And I'm answering. I'm not only willing, but able to go... even further.

Once upon a time...

2005-12-07T12:46:00.000-06:00

...in a land far, far away, there was a girl. This girl was quite particular, but thought it unfair to ask others to cater to this finicky nature so she was quite self-reliant. She had her own way of living and doing things. People found it 'quirky' but highly respectable.

She lived and worked and studied with great seriousness. Every room in the house had a half read book in it. Even the kitchen was lined with cookbooks. When she walked into the local independent video store, the clerks addressed her by name and pointed other customers to her for advice. She worked out, she cooked, she read, she relaxed. She was a good and loyal friend, especially to those close to her. Though often late to arrive at work, she was often late to leave as well. Hired to do one thing, she quickly found greater problems and challenges and soon found herself juggling multiple projects, advising her superiors and managing structural changes. Every moment of the day was a multi-tasking moment and this left her feeling like she'd had a full day's work and could go home in good conscience.

Then, a major decision, a pile of paperwork and an international flight later she found herself in another land. Few books were read. Few movies watched. Limited local ingredients restricted culinary experimentations. Gyms were small and with questionable equipment. The solid divide once separating work and life faded. Work was everywhere and nowhere. As was life. Suddenly there was no control over any major life factor. 'Accept' or 'do not' were the only choices.

The girl once known for making colleagues laugh at the drop of a hat, whipping people into shape and routinely thinking outside the proverbial box (rumor was that she actually couldn't think IN it) was no longer that girl. The light in her eyes diminished a bit, as did her humor and her spirit. Compromise after compromise - over values, integrity, professionalism, quality - meant she felt less and less whole. Less and less content. Less and less quirky. Less and less respectable. Less and less like herself.

'Accept' or 'do not'... those are indeed the choices.

Binding ties

2005-12-06T12:43:00.000-06:00

We all do it. We set up rules in our lives. Things we see as good signs or bad signs. Things that make someone right or wrong. Deal-sealers and deal-breakers. One thing I've learned to be weary of is people who use the following phrase: I knew you'd understand. This is a phrase often used by Person A on Person B (someone who cares about Person A) signifying that Person A was given a choice between Person B and someone (or thing) less loving/understanding and chose the lesser of the two. It's a phrase that most often means: I shat upon you because I knew you'd take it.

Humans have this unfortunate way of hurting those they love and care about the most - dumping on the people they know will take it. They may appreciate their support system all the more for standing by in the "tough" times, but there's only so much shit a person can take before they start to resent it and slowly back away. People dole it out because they can, often not stopping to realize that it is because you can, that you shouldn't. Unfortunately, fan clubs aren't built and popularity contests aren't won by shitting on people who won't take it. Shit-giving is the anti-prize for love and loyalty.

Three women. Three crises. One day. One issue. Family. 'Family' is Latin for "those who love to shit upon one another." 'Relatives' being "those who are selfish or self-centered and who often do things with little regard for the impact upon others in the family." Mostly people just give what they are used to receiving - things marketed and sold to them under the brand of Love. Chalk the cycle up to brand loyalty. I know so many adults who, once you get to know them, have tons of insecurities and triggers in unlikely places all thanks to the TLC of their loving families. While it's true we would have far exceeded the baggage weight limit if we'd checked in our emotional baggage, we'd have also never passed the medical exam if our emotional scars were obvious. Cut veins, track marks, bruises, broken bones, torn muscles, swollen joints. All the things we've been put through are so obvious under the right light. All things done for people we love. All things we're so glad others rarely take the time to notice. 'Adults' is Latin for "those well schooled in the art of pain disguise."

I wonder if it's a commonality just among the people I befriend or if it is more general: that of feeling orphaned at some point in your life. As if your family had other, better things to do. The point where something thinks "I'm all alone now" even though they are surrounded by 'family.' It's usually brought on by a death - perhaps literal, perhaps more figurative. Death of will, of interest, of strength, of courage, of joy, of passion. The point where there is no more giving or comfort or security... and certainly no joy in it. It's gone. Gone for good. In the living, you can see it in their eyes - life becomes too much and a certain blankness takes over. A blankness that can suck the life out of everyone around the person, especially offspring. A parent's own need for more or less, their anger or fear or cowardice, their own limitations - these things can smother a child well past childhood and become a role reversal, one where the children are expected to nurture the parents. Parents who are often not enough are just as often, though in different ways, too much. Depletion and exhaustion have successfully recycled themselves.

Talking to others about their own families, especially their parental problems, has helped my own to resurface. Black and blue, bloody and sore I see my old wounds have not yet healed. I keep trying to be understanding, but I've been asked to do that for far too long.

Sunday, the adjective

2005-12-04T07:18:00.000-06:00

Without a doubt, Sunday is my favorite day of the week.

When I was young it meant large homemade breakfasts and/or even bigger dinners with family and family friends. I could be busy with school or work and excuse myself from nearly anything I wanted, but absence from Sunday dinner would require a terminal, jaw-locking, immobilizing illness. Even then, I think Mom would have found a way to make it happen. Sunday was a family institution.

In New York, Sunday meant brunches and indie films and art museums and long walks. Well, it did when I was feeling social and left the house for more than the 30 min it took to grab a bagel, coffee and the NYT - at which point it involved said bagel, coffee and NYT; NPR, nap(s), and long phone conversations with distant friends and family. Sunday was my personal, temporary, sleepy nirvana.

Here, Sunday means any number of things. It's often gobbled by bus rides back from a weekend visiting a friend. It's one reason I've come to hate to travel (that and my new, shiny cheapness). Traveling means Sunday disappears. When I do it right, it still involves some version of my old habits - brunches (though not with friends and not with a bottomless coffee cup), NYT (though online, which isn't nearly as enjoyable or... corporeal), family and good friends (though online chats replace phone-based ones). There are no bagels, few - if any - phone calls, no art museums, no indie films. And, until today (when a friend simply emailed my lazy ass the webcast link) no NPR.

Sunday, while populated with quirky hobbies and semi-traditions, is so much more. It's a state of mind. Something that releases and replenishes. It's not just about food, but food that fills you in a way that means you aren't looking for something to eat again for most of the day. It's salty and sweet, spicy and bitter, crunchy and smooth, cold and hot, creamy and fruity. Sunday friends aren't just people to pass the time with or people who simply want to shoot the breeze or people who want you to join them in whatever mental state they are in. They're people who do pass the time with you and can shoot the breeze and who will share what mental state they are in, but not expect you to rush over to it. They most often find a calm point between you and them and settle there, even if only for the day. In person it's a drifting from independently reading the paper or a book to sharing thoughts about the reading material to sincerely connecting and reconnecting - in small and large things alike. It's a flow that is easy and easily achieved. It's calming.

Somehow I always felt like I left Sundays more intelligent, more interesting, more informed. I knew more about the people in my life, more about my world, more about art and expression. I felt bigger and newly centered. I felt revived.

Some people are the "let's go" Monday types, the "gotta work" Tuesdays, the "just getting started" Wednesdays, the "still truckin'" Thursday, the "done!" Fridays or the "freebird" Saturdays. I' m more of a "tea and sympathy" Sunday.

People. Thoughts. Thoughtfulness. Coziness. Pajamas. Coffee. Bloody Marys. "Prarie Home Companion." Dozing. Quiet and lazy. So very Sunday.

Saturday night

2005-12-03T13:52:00.000-06:00

Home on a Saturday night. This doesn't bother me - in fact, given the local options and general social nature of other volunteers, it's rather nice.

What bothers me is that I have no water, my internet is being flaky and my electricity is flickering.

I suppose it's rustic and adventurous or something.

It just reminds me that I have a lot of control issues... problems being patient... anger issues.

As a friend says "abandonment called." I wouldn't know, I assume the phone is not working as well.

It ends not with a bang, but a whimper

2005-12-02T14:52:00.000-06:00

Suddenly it went from 9am to 11pm. A to-do list barely tackled. A day I can barely account for. Piles of Christmas cards that need to be filled out. Over 200 messages in my inbox. Projects to write. Research to do. Calls to make. Connections to maintain. Where does time go?

While I am often good at beating the clock and getting things done (even if only barely under the wire), I still lack basic time management skills. In a fast-paced environment where I have no choice but to move, move, move I do. But given the choice to move or not and I almost always choose: not. It's not one of my most flattering traits and something I still struggle to overcome and decipher. Part is I am much more externally driven than I like to admit. Part is that I like structure and keep it well (until I get bored and break it all to hell... but that's another entry). Part is that... part is that I am a horrible, horrible daydreamer. Some is just classic, cliche procrastination and some is that I am... I'm... I'm a premature evaluator. It's true. I do a poor job of hiding it. There it is. Yesterday I spent an hour looking at personalized notecards. Why? Because I said that as soon as I found myself a "permanent" place (in my world meaning one that I didn't plan to leave before moving in) that I'd buy myself some. So, seeing how I'll be living in the States in, oh, 12 months, it's a fine time to start looking. Crane's has a nice site and good designs, fyi.

Work is busy and yet not. A pending large project proposal will likely eat my next two weeks. I am not happy about this - it's a good project and my organization can do it but... poor planning on their part has meant an emergency on mine. This pisses me off. At the same time my building receptionist/door person has decided that her son needs English help. They should teach a class on getting Bulgarians, especially Bulgarian women, to understand "no." I mean, I tried. I even made my Bulgarian worse than it really is (which is a SKILL, I tell you). It didn't work. Again, her poor planning = my time crunch. My other job depends on the verdict of a project proposal, but for now I just uncomfortably wait and worry what to do if it doesn't come through.

All of these happy events are added to me trying to finish a humor writing course. My life was fairly dead - and even fairly amusing - until I paid $400 to use free time and be amusing. Now, I can't seem to do either. Part is that whole time management thing. Part is that after dealing with projects and logistics all day, a girl can feel really uninteresting, uncreative and unfunny. In fact, I am feeling very "un" lately overall. Part is that when I'm supposed to do something, I suddenly don't want to. For example, I read Foreign Affairs for fun, until I took a class that made me read it - then I read everything and anything else but that. (How can one girl be externally driven AND not like authority so much that she stubbornly ignores it even when it asks her to do something she already likes? Now you're getting to understand me more... or not.) Part is that if someone tells me to think of something funny my brain immediately produces the saddest event I can recall. My brain is a real brat like that - only it's a clever brat and I've not quite learned how to trick it into producing specific things on command. I can write... just not with humor. This is an issue.

My day ends with me entering a restless night where I'll think about all the things I need to do, want to do, should do, could do, might do, won't do, will do... and what kind of sofa I'll buy for my new apartment next year. I'm thinking something bold and funky, though my notecards will be more classic.

That was then...

2005-11-30T16:24:00.000-06:00

Looking for another document, I stumbled upon this one. After blowing the proverbial dust off it, it gave me some food for thought about why I entered, what I'm taking and what I'm leaving. I'll leave it in it's pure form for your own thoughts, given what you know about me.

Peace Corps Aspiration Statement (written about 1.5 yrs ago)

Expectations
In order to be consistent with my answer to "Strategies for Adapting to a New Culture," I have to admit I don’t know what to expect. And I am perfectly fine with that. As far as my assignment goes, however, I do have a general preference: As I mentioned to both my recruiter and placement officer, I do not want teaching to be my primary assignment. Instead, I’d like something that will utilize my skills (advising, organizing, problem-solving), add as much as possible to my professional growth, and maximize my potential contribution to the program.

Strategies for Adapting to a New Culture
Both my elementary and secondary educations were at urban public schools. Being a target for philanthropists and "do-gooders," urban schools attract a wide range of givers. Watching the wealthy and worldly come and go, each person thinking of his/her contribution as unique, taught me a lot about the best ways to add to, take from and ultimately embrace a new culture. I gradually came to notice that those who make the most significant, lasting contributions in any arena are themselves equally shaped and changed by the act of giving – they were the people who entered thinking they had at least as much to gain from an experience as they had to give to it. Drawing from these observations and encounters, I always enter a new environment with my antenna up and ready to receive signals – both signals of what is expected of me and signals of what I can expect – before I assume what I am there to get or give. In any new culture there will be great differences to face, but I have always been able to manage potential conflicts and misunderstandings by building a foundation on similarities. I attach my identity to who I am and the experiences I’ve had rather than my current circumstances or environment, allowing me to draw from others’ experiences, proudly share my own, and never get lost in the shuffle.

Personal and Professional Goals
With a long standing interest in the transformation and development of Eastern Europe, I am pleased to use an opportunity like the Peace Corps to learn from the area, not just about it. My past work experience involves politics, public policy and business and my interests center around how these three factors intersect. While I welcome a municipal or business development assignment, I would be most excited about a position centered on private/public interactions.

I worked my way through both high school and college and thus have been consistently confronted with the task of applying classroom lessons to the real world and intellectually exploring professional problems. With this background as my foundation, I am compelled by the convergence of, and frequent disharmony between, theory and implementation. I have also always been interested in development – initially local development and then international development and how private and public sectors help/hinder the process. My attraction to all of these factors leads to a fascination with public policy. Guided by the questions "How does this work?" "How should this work?" and "How could this work?" I would ultimately like to combine my interests in theory and practice by working in a hybrid of international business and international development.

Hermitage

2005-11-30T02:11:00.000-06:00

In the past week or so I've conversed with several smart and interesting people. We've talked about the following: movies, distilled vs. bottled vs. tap water, holiday decorations, holiday plans, the weather. These are not my usual topics of conversation - though who among us can claim anything to be 'usual' anymore? Here we are, interesting, interested, engaging and engaged people having conversations as if we've nothing in our lives to look forward to. As if our lives revolve around showing up at work, working for something we don't particularly love and then returning to the couch. Unfortunately, our lives do revolve around those very acts. And it shows.

I've come to find leaving my house something of a hassle. In-town jaunts are fine, but I literally dread leaving my town these days. Cold, unreliable buses, bad connections, hunting for food in a foreign town, attempting to entertain myself. What was once a series of adventures is now just a series of hassles. Cutting back on travel means I've become accustomed to being alone - perhaps too much so. I'm overly self-reliant to the point where I think it's unhealthy. We're social beings, right?

When I'd given up the dream of finding a normal, stable roommate in New York I searched for an affordable place to live alone. In my search, I found a small house in a suburban cul-de-sac within my price range. My excitement was soon dampered by the insight of a friend who noted that if I moved there he'd never see me again. It was true. I'd easily slide into my own universe and then wonder how I got so far from everyone.

I've done this now, here. I talk to people and then think "I have nothing to talk about." It's not that I want to distance myself from people or that I don't care to speak to them. It's just that we don't really have a lot to say to one another. I don't like to talk about work much. I'm tired of complaining all the time - of filling my life with that energy. I watch movies and read, but we all share the same copies so it's not like we can really get a book club going. We know the basics of each other, but the deeper details and stories don't really connect to anything right now - we share as necessary or appropriate and, oddly, weather discussions don't prompt significant childhood recollections.

We all walked away, at some point, from the life of half-hearted work, tv watching and the mundane only to arrive right back in it. I don't know anyone who wants to be at this point - to live with it and just accept it. It's like we all became stuck at the same time. We've faced a lot and have more to face but we're tired and want to breathe for a bit. Unfortunately, that pause is taking so much out of us and making us feel all the more lost and alone. We don't talk about ourselves much because, partially, we are tired of dealing with it and can't imagine others want to either. As Leonard Cohen would say: forsaken, almost human; we sink beneath the wisdom like a stone. Work. Parties. Alcohol. Zoning out. We've become the zombies we despise.

My former chatterbox addiction has turned into me hiding out more - turning it off, staying 'invisible' or just 'away'. I do it to get more done. I do it to not have a ton of "how was your day?" conversations. I do it because those conversations should be "what's going on in your head right now?" - only I don't want to initiate them all the time. And right now, I'm not so sure I want them initiated.

Sigh. Get any snow?

When did that happen?

2005-11-29T12:40:00.000-06:00

A conversation with a friend today came to a point where she laughed and then playfully asked "when did you become so cheap?" I've had a number of negative adjectives attached to my personality at any given point, but I assure you cheap has never been one of them. People are more likely to ask things like "you spent how much?" or "do you really need that?" than to point out my miserly ways. No more it seems. Cheapness now gets added to the stack of bad habits and traits I've mistakenly acquired in Bulgaria.

I make it through every month within my living allowance (well, except for the travel-intensive summers) but somehow it's started to make me nervous. A case of realizing I head home in less than a year perhaps. My new obsession with having a theater and modern art filled birthday in London perhaps. My ever dwindling home savings perhaps. Perhaps.

So much of me has left or changed, for better and for worse. I've recently started being more vocal and ballsy at my work places and just being honest about my opinions and views. My professional history is all over the map, but what it basically has meant is that I go into organizations, give them the benefit of the doubt for some time and then get frustrated and rip them apart. It seems I've reached that point. The return of Candid Me has surely raised some eyebrows and made people think "who's she to say?" but that always happens. I'm blunt but critical and take my professionalism and the work attached to my name seriously - something people don't always realize. I might have been quiet for a few months, but never because I wasn't thinking and observing.

How does this all relate? Quality. Some say I'm obsessed with it. There are worse addictions, I say. I've become cheap partially because if it's great I don't mind paying for it, but if it's poor or mediocre I'd just rather not. I've become increasingly comfortable with my own company and unless I'm traveling or spending money to see good friends or do something great then I'd rather just stay home and do my own thing. My first year I was ok with shuffling about more and spending more freely, just as an escape and an outlet from daily frustrations. Those daily things don't bother me anymore - I no longer seek to escape them with such fervor, so my quality conditions have resurfaced. Same with work. I spent a good deal of last year not rocking any boats and just trying to feel comfortable, but as I kept playing the 'good American volunteer' role and not asking pointed questions or feeling ok saying 'no' I drifted further from being present and gathered resentment to the whole experience for it. I'm sure it was felt by others. I don't want my name on projects that are half-ass or to be a part of half-baked ideas. Do it or don't. You may not value my time and energy, but I do and I intend to let you know it.

I've made reference here to the idea that people, self included, have spent a lot of time playing and being easy-going and 'fun.' I suppose I'm just officially tired of it. I like to change things and push people and make things happen. It's what I do. It's what I'm good at. I like a life filled with good things - with quality - I'm not afraid to pay for it or work for it, but if it's not up to standard I'll most likely not even bother. It's bitchy, I know, but that's a negative adjective I've come to embrace. I'm still just not sure about 'cheap.'

And so it begins

2005-11-28T12:21:00.000-06:00

In the States, Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season of shopping and fretting and families being too close or too far and decorating and various festivities that keep you from sinking into a winter slump, which you find eventually anyway. Here in Bulgaria there is no Thanksgiving and thus no official "kickoff" of Christ-Kwanz-Hannak-mas. The holiday season slowly trickles in without much enthusiasm or hurry or excitement. More than anything in Bulgaria, the first cold week just ushers in sick season, which last until March and then slowly morphs into vacation season. Christmas is in there some place.

Christmas is the only holiday I really cherish. I blame it on my parents, but (for once) in a good way. My memory of my childhood was that we rarely received presents outside of Christmas and our birthdays, but the abundance of everything at those times always made up for the delays. Christmas was always, regardless of our financial situation, filled with food and gifts and warmth. The house was decorated from floor to ceiling in mistletoe and mini villages and a tree that held a piece of our family history in every ornament. Friends and family popped in and out of the house - bringing treats, taking treats; sharing laughs and stories and kindness. I remember my parents' house being an active, crazy, loving, non-stop holiday fest.

Every family has their holiday traditions. Most of mine are gone. My parents have separated and remarried, my sister has her own family and I am here in a semi-developed nation that's figured out high speed internet, but not a safe and reliable water supply. Forget Bailey's-spiked hot chocolate. Thanksgiving this year was spent with friends and friends of friends - fun and loving people that I know with varying degrees of closeness. Fun was had, food was eaten, drinks were surely drank, but something was missing. This was not a tradition and it wasn't even the start of one - we'll most likely never do this with each other again. It was a party to cover up the lack of a holiday that covers up pending seasonal doom. The Band-Aid's Band-Aid.

This weekend reminded me of how much I miss. I miss letting my mom be the matriarch and plan everything. I miss being in a sea of people that know me deeply and personally. I miss jumping all day and into the night from personal conversation to personal conversation. I miss making snotty side comments to my sister. I miss pulling my mom aside to figure out what someone's deal is. I miss the rhythm people have with one another - the one that comes only from years of closeness and countless trials and tribulations. I miss longevity and traditions - knowing what to expect and depending on it.

I think this is the time in my life where I'm supposed to make my own family in the traditional 2.5 kids sense or in a more alternative sense. I've always thought of close friends as my chosen family, but we don't live in a stationary world or all share the same 'families' which provides some obstacles. All this means that just as the cold season approaches with its sickness and mental weight, one learns that looming problems are not so looming. Ah, winter.

This is where we go forward. We've changed and moved and grown. We wanted to. We needed to. We know we can never truly go home again. It's our relief and burden. We're learning to live with it... slowly. So slowly. In the meantime, we seek and enjoy laughter and love ...and hope the season passes quickly.

Blogs are a funny thing

2005-11-22T15:03:00.000-06:00

I keep my blog as a type of online journal. One that keeps me writing and isn't some secret journal that I think no one reads. Fine, here it is. Read it if you wish. Or don't. Whichever. Not hiding it means I don't' have to worry about someone finding it. Also, I just like to write and express myself and share myself through the written word. I've always been drawn to it.

Blogs aren't really writing though, most of the time. They are often rants or unsupported arguments or tales of a day-in-the-life. I've seen some that talk about the most mundane details of a person's day. I wonder who reads that and why people write it. I wonder why the writer is trying to say - if anything.

Blogging is interesting because it's easy, global publishing. Most people can do it and like things that most people can do, it produces a lot of crap. Democratic means are a beautiful and grotesque thing. I keep up with about a dozen blogs and randomly follow links to many others. It's an odd world when you keep up with friends and even some strangers via their journals - never making contact, just checking in and seeing what's new. Or not new.

As a writer, blogging provides interesting challenges. Write regularly without a deadline. Make essays that say something about you and the day, but in the end piece together to collectively show a well-rounded self-portrait. Make first drafts that are releasable. Know you'll put some stinkers out there, but just let them be. It's a great exercise in finding your voice and exploring styles and topics. It's interesting to see what people relate to and what they don't.

I saw a blog today of someone I know and I thought "people just have no shame anymore. " Blogging and the net have made us all celebrities in our own mind, invading our own privacy for ratings. People feed this. I started my blog thinking my family would read it, but now I think it's mainly people I barely know, if I know them at all. Voyeurism or perhaps genuine interest brings people here. Perhaps they stay, perhaps they don't. People I barely know knowing my innermost thoughts. Interesting and frightening. Thought provoking. Amusing.

In my inner circle, few of my friends and family read this, making it something of a private place. It's the journal no one reads because they can. It may not work for people who don't know me, but it works for others. Reverse psychology is fun.

Buck/party stops here

2005-11-21T14:33:00.000-06:00

I've never had a problem making friends, nor do I usually have a problem keeping them. It's been that way since I was in elementary school. I remember friends literally fighting over who carried the label of my "best friend." A lifetime of friendships has meant many years of closeness, sharing and confiding. My closest friends have been around for almost a decade - some much longer. We share and lean and laugh and cry and fight and... all the things you do with someone you are close and honest with. I tend to befriend interesting and intelligent but complex and even difficult people. Birds of a feather.

In my life I've gotten more than my fair share of 3am phone calls about everything from drugs to breakups to scares to just basic nightmares. I'm that friend. I don't even think twice about being that person. The unfortunate side effect of being someone people can lean on is that you tend to fill that role and get locked in it. Something bad happen? Go to Jen. My lack of shyness in dealing with messes means that sometimes it's all I get. If something shitty happens, go to Jen. Otherwise... have more fun elsewhere.

I admit I'm not the biggest party girl. I think a good party involves good wine and gourmet food, not drinking and yelling and acting like a frat party incarnate. I even enjoy not drinking. A dive bar has its place as does cocktails and margarita nights, but I'm most often guilty of doing nothing more than speaking louder than necessary (ok, sometimes much) and laughing so loudly that it fills the room. However, get me excited about a topic and I tend to do those things anyway. I don't believe in escaping who I am - I don't feel trapped by it. And I don't believe in pretending - I'm a little old for that. I prefer honest, open conversations with or without sauce to happy times convos about the good old days or endless "this one time..." tales.

One of my closest friends found me to be this way. I never realized it until a mutual friend of ours moved into my apartment. Despite the fact that the close friend had lived blocks from me for 2 years, I'd seen her in my apartment more in the first few months I had a roommate than the previous years combined... and it was always when they were on their way out. I was the multi-hour phone conversation friend and the "what do I do?" friend and the "I need some help" friend, but I was never the art opening friend or the Friday night friend or the vacation-taking friend. My role was the pillar and the leaning post. I wish it was a one time event that I could blow off, but I've been typecast for years.

Eventually I walk from these friendships. One should be invited to the good and the bad, the pleasure and the pain. Without those things, they drain and take more from me than they ever give - there is no balance in them, though the connection there is true. It is this connection that's nearly impossible to walk away from, however dysfunctional. I assume I have to own at least part of this trend. I must do something to inspire or encourage such thinking and behavior. Not sure what it is.

I think back to so many of those conversations I've had with past friends who fit this description and those discussions we had - the sharing - were so candid and ernest. It was an all-cards-on-the-table arrangement. Sometimes I think that people just don't want that. They don't want to look in the eyes of someone who knows the negative things. They don't believe someone can see those things and still think of them as amazing, lovable people. Personally, I need someone to know my faults and demons before I believe they want to be there. I won't play up to some image they have in their head of who they want me to me. I'd prefer they just knew and decided to stay or go based on as much evidence as possible. Affection isn't affection isn't affection. Realness matters.

My life has been recently populated by restless nights, odd eating, mild depression and the beginnings of emotional extremes. In my world this is my body's way of saying "psst, break's over - stop ignoring it." My body's kind of cryptic though and never says what problem/issue I'm supposed to stop ignoring. I just get to be tortured until I figure it out. I can't ignore these signs. I never can. They don't go away until I wrestle with them, sometimes tearing my life open and apart in the process. This is how I live - moving ever closer to being a full, real, honest me even if it means lots of fighting and tears and sleepless nights in the process. Who wouldn't find that fun?!

Temporary Insanity. Inanity too.

2005-11-16T15:58:00.000-06:00

Here we are. Kids in La La Land. Pretending to go to work. To cook. To pay bills. To be adults. Some of us really work, some don't. Either way, we still pretend. The results don't matter. They don't determine our fate, our careers or any potential raises. There is no need for fear there. Just comfort, however we prefer to take it. We cook on post-teen EasyBake ovens, we pay luxury bills (internet, cable, etc). We drink and travel and avoid and confront at will. We aren't adults, we're spoiled rotten children.

There's so much lacking that people just start creating. Like a bored toddler we just pick up something and see what we can do with it. Sometimes what we can do is ingenious. Other times, most times, it's lame or random or even destructive. We are living the life of our inner child. Rather than being freed by this we are crushed by it. There's a reason why that kid is kept quiet and doesn't run things: she's an idiot.

I think I've been an idiot in some form or another since I got here. Actually, I think it's how I got here. Whatever. Point is that I do things here that I'd - the old, real me - never do or think about doing. What I do. What I stand for. Where I draw the line. "This isn't me," I constantly say to myself. Others tell me the same about themselves. We're living in a parallel life from the one we had and the people we were. We don't know these people at all. When we close the door at night, we face The Stranger.

In addition to the rather obvious personal strive and identity crises we face, there's the other obvious one: who ARE these people? We're stuck here, on a deserted island of sorts, with people we didn't know before we came. In some ways we are extraordinarily close, in other ways we are not. I don't know the me that is here. Likewise, I can't expect to fully know the "them" that is not here. Who and what do I really know about my friends and confidants? The amount of chaos and havoc and absolute wreckage caused by me is only matched by the amount caused by others I know here. I know this person - this destroyer that I can be - isn't me, but when and how do I know if it isn't others? What's a serious character flaw and what's a lapse of judgment? What's grounds for confrontation and what's grounds for simply walking away? I don't claim to know.

Forgiveness and release of anger has been on my mind a lot recently - both needing to give it and receive it. Primarily from local devastations. Escalating battles of who-cares-less and verbal knife fights haven't left anyone better for the wear. We're broken - as much by what we've taken as by what we've given. We've let the inner child out to roam free. Unattended, she's wrecked everything in sight. Now we clean the mess.

A few days ago some kids passed me. One of them, a local kid, likes to shout "what time is it?" to me in English. He's bashful but learning. It's a game we've played for months. Anyway, he was with friends a few days ago and they decided to practice their knowledge of English too, a knowledge that centered around the phrase "fuck you." Pissed and angry I wanted to give them a proper Jen-verbal-smackdown and then I stopped myself. I took a moment and called on my inner adult. I needed to see what she thought. She laughed, said "stupid kids" and walked away. For the first time in a long time, I listened to her. It's what the old me - the real one - would have done. It felt right.

I'm spending a bit more time with my inner adult these days. We've got a lot of cleaning to do. Stupid kids.

Bippity Boppity Boo

2005-11-15T13:40:00.000-06:00

I recently received an email from my ex-trainer. He's now training a top-10 world heavyweight contender. I used to see him at least once a week and near the end it was nearly every other day. Pushed, exhausted and sore as hell I'd retreat to my cozy home and well-outfitted bed to rest my weary bones. Generally, I made a point to not be a big whiner when I went to train. At $75 a session, I needed to just accept that I wanted to be there... on some level. It took time and dedication to repeatedly return. Actually, I liked my trainer so much that I often went out of duty and loyalty to him. I'm like that - easier to keep my promises to others than the ones I make to myself.

While the sessions were always fun (I had a hearty laugh at myself every damn time), they could be really frustrating. Still, I went. My last sessions were back-to-back as I recall. One a day. There was something I needed to see before I departed, I was told. Everyday I went in and worked for a solid hour with a large ex-Marine standing over me. Though I was supposed to be seeing something, I had no idea what it was. Finally, at my last session, I asked just what the hell I was supposed to have seen. An hour of abs, then upper body, then lower body. There seemed to be no obvious epiphany there. Laughing, my trainer went to get the sheet monitoring my workouts. Still laughing he hands it to me and tells me to read what I could do my first session. Let's just say the things I could do when I started coming were numbered in repetitions, not hours, and you could count those on your hands. Similar story for weight.

I struggled a lot with those sessions, but they rank among the things I miss the most from my former life. Going forward, making progress, building something. Baby steps. Good pain. The knowledge that you were doing something tough, but for good reason and with good payoff. I've never slept better than those nights I trained. I've never eaten healthier. I've never thought more clearly. I've never had more energy than when I was getting my ass kicked on a routine basis.

I think of those sessions as I've been having trouble eating and sleeping and thinking. I'm tired so much that I run solely on caffeine at this point. I'm running, in every way, on E. What I put in my body and life is certainly a culprit, but - for me - what I've given so greatly influences what I take. I've developed a budding interest in Taoism and, from what I can tell it's partially based around the idea of a state developing from doing the opposite: strength from weakness, control from chaos, seeing the world by staying in and seeing yourself. There is wisdom in that and it functions on my favorite concept: the paradox. They are truisms that a friend lightly refers to as "Eastern hocus pocus."

I've recently explained to one of my organizations that the best way to solve financial problems is to solve all the other problems. The finances will basically fix themselves. Non-profit Taoism. I know from my past that my own answers lie in the same approach: solve by solving the rest. Solving by not solving. Everything feeds everything. Everything is connected. There are consequences, accept them. Easier said than done.

The key to progress, it seems, is finding nourishment and not seeking its rewards - just enjoying it. The training sessions were such a release and victory in themselves that I didn't concentrate on moving forward. My progress was not even much of a thought. It was achieved because I barely considered it - it couldn't overwhelm me because I didn't depend on it. Now, progress and rewards and measurements of success seem to be on my mind a lot. Yet they are not there. Same with personal growth. And fulfillment. Funny how that all works.

One but not united

2005-11-13T10:24:00.000-06:00

A Sunday walk through town. Back home I took pleasure in waking early on a Sunday, getting my coffee, bagel and NYT and listening to the sounds of a city coming to life. Enjoying the peace and stillness and then the enthusiasm and drive that push local life forward. This afternoon I ventured out to take a stroll and was met with a ghost town. The town that thinks of itself as a city seemed abandoned. Few cars were on the street, no one walked the sidewalks. The stores were closed, and those open were empty.

I'd always considered Sunday the day that told what people would do if left to their own devices. What was once strictly considered a day of rest is now the time when you do what you needn't coercion to do. In a metropolis it means jogging and brunches and leisurely reads in cafes and farmers' markets and museums and home repairs. People enjoying their interests, living their lives.

Bulgaria, as I'm living it and seeing it, doesn't have a lot of outlets for people's interests. You can meet your friends and have coffee or drinks but other than that it's quite lacking. I've a time or two tried to move my reading into local cafes, just to be out and to do what I might be doing at home. The looks and whispers, however, made it clear that it was a social venue and that I was violating local norms. I became so distracted that I stopped enjoying any part of the experience and returned to my private sanctuary of Brit Pop and tea with milk.

Americans are a nation of joiners. We belong to clubs and subscribe to things. We even have silent memberships with the people who hold our interests and do what we do - people we routinely see at the gym or the guy behind you who orders the unusual thing you were thinking of ordering. Memberships are paradoxically bound as much by what we have in common with other members as they are by what distinguishes us from non-members. Membership, in some ways, is about being an outsider. It follows then that a country still valuing homogeneity and people not rocking the boat doesn't join much. Here there are few clubs and activities to make you join together because there's little interest in standing apart.

My Sunday walk left me feeling alone and longing for Sundays where I joined my interests with others, or at least had multiple options to pursue them on my own. A year later and I have nothing outside my apartment that feeds my love of art or theater or live music or great food or books or independent film or... anything.

At 3 p.m. the town still seemed to sleep. A people isolated by their own similarities.

A fear of the fist

2005-11-12T09:46:00.000-06:00

Confusion. Exhaustion. Sleepless nights. Bizarre dreams. Life changes. Restlessness. Vacancy. It seems to be all around right now. We tend to go through things together and in cycles. It's strange to speak of your mental and emotional state only to find that others are in the exact same space. Comforting and discomforting. Nice to have others to share and understand, but a distant yet knowing eye would be an incredible gift. Unsure of what to do and where we are going we just waste time or occupy ourselves with being busy. Merriam-Webster says that words related to "busy" are: absorbed, tireless, alive, vigorous. I beg to differ.

A year into the program and we all begin talking about how we are starting to understand, but only starting. It's making more sense what to do and not do, but still not completely clear how. We're a sad bunch - finally understanding but with little energy to do much about it. Like a boxer who, too many punches to the head later, finally understands how to move. Impaired vision and a fear of the fist means we are not much good in the ring any longer. We stay both fearing this will be the hit that ends it all, and fearing that it won't be. We train and focus but our bodies and minds are weak and malnourished, doing little more than trapping us inside. Like all boxers we need skill and heart, but our spirit is elsewhere. Fighters need breaks - preferably long ones to let the body recover. To regain strength. To find a center. Our breaks are short and few, and even then not mental ones. When there's noise, you try to block it out and when there's silence the mind produces noise. We live inside the ropes and find ourselves leaning on them with increasing frequency and need. I believe the term is "washed up."

Like fighters though we insist on hanging on until the bitter end of our careers. Personal limits and professional realities are hard to bear. People find outlets, usually ones that reaffirm where you are already headed. Destructive and short-minded behavior seem to be something of the norm. Instant gratification - get it while you can. Get out of your head and go anywhere that will take you - anywhere that doesn't see a crumbling fighter.

The search, what little people have left in them, is for glory and redemption. Answers. What have we done? What have we lost? Is it worth it? There's a struggle to make this worth the sacrifices and to not be that person... the one people thought would be great but didn't get far. There's a fight still in us. One that makes us want to prove, and need to believe, that this was for a greater cause. That we didn't put ourselves on the line for local entertainment. The fist we most fear is the lack of that proof.

So simple

2005-11-10T11:10:00.000-06:00

I've begun to have a problem feeding myself. Seems my tummy doesn't like many carbs any more (well, it still likes sweets, but for whatever reason bread and potatoes are not so good). My palate can't take too many of the local meat options. Veggies are... ugh... such a pain sometimes. Find good ones, buy them, clean them, cook them, jazz them up somehow. It's a process. I'm not into processes. This leaves... not much.

I don't really care to eat. I do it because I have to. There is no joy in my consumption. This, as a bona fide foodie, saddens me greatly. I want a pill that can give me all the nutrients I need and make me feel full. It's not a dieting issue. It's a total lack of interest issue. I simply do. not. care.

What I really want is to walk out of my car, shut the door, walk across the parking lot and order a cheeseburger with fries. And a Cherry Coke, lots of ice. I want, not a boutique restaurant, but a truck stop. Roll up the sleeves. Dig in at the counter.

I am now officially one of those blogs that talks about what I eat. Super. Yesterday's entry used the word "organizational" four times. What a page-turner.

Will someone just shoot me? Seriously...

Losing battles

2005-11-09T10:24:00.000-06:00

I have two jobs. Both frustrating for different reasons.

The municipality makes me feel uncomfortable every time I'm there. I hate going. I'm ignored or talked around (ignored) or made to feel guilty about not being there or doing something. Today a woman I don't remember gives me a warm greeting and says that she doesn't see me around much. Um... I have nothing to do here and fighting with a computer that barely works or staring at the ceiling makes me want to go postal. No one liked when I read at work. It was anti-social. I'm supposed to find money or just sit there but I won't do either. I think this might officially make me a "bad volunteer." I don't think money solves anything (in fact, the promise of it creates its own weird demons) and I'm not just going to find money to dump here. Give me a reason and a focus and I'll run with it. They have neither and so I tend not to go for long. And when I'm there I feel like shit. Quite the incentive, eh?

The NGO I work for was all excited about applying for a grant through the embassy. They've wanted to before only it was out of their league. Still is. They are hellbent on applying for what might be the most competitive grant competition in the country. I explain that it's a large program. I explain that they need a proven history doing whatever it is they want to get funded for. I explain the competition. I explain that you can't just throw this together. I explain and explain and explain and explain. They want to do a project for women. Apparently a woman on the committee really likes those. I'd imagine she really likes solid proposals too, but they aren't after that. It's a women's project and we'll write it... in under a month. This translates into: Jen writes it. They think of educating people about anti-discrimination laws. How? Why? Who? How does one get such a message across effectively? Why are we qualified to do this? Why does one need money to do this? These questions are not answered. They cannot explain. This went on for over an hour. They're thinking on it. I explain to them that they are at the stage in organizational development where they need to have ideas that the community and the organization need and have them prepared for when a call for proposals presents itself. They need to stop concocting projects when they see grant offers. They understand that better organizations do this, but they are caught in the hand-to-mouth poverty loop. No planning. No foresight. Just going after what you need right now.

I feel like I am stuck in both places. I can't seem to make them understand larger things. Strategy. Planning. Organization. Critical thinking. I'm struggling to know where to go with this. Some days I could see myself doing a third year. Some days I want on a plane immediately.

Today is a plane day.

Seeking a non-tard nation

2005-11-09T03:21:00.000-06:00

I've generally kept up with American politics since I've been here, but the news is typically about one windbag throwing cheap shots at another. I've begun to doubt my political interests (never in running for office mind you, just in the process and outcome and policies) . American politics seems so trite. Trite I cannot deal with. Then today, Yahoo gives me some little nuggets of news when I log into my email account. One of them is this "Texas voters add gay marriage ban to constitution." Um...what?!

There are so very many stupid aspects to this whole thing. 1) It's Texas. Texas should not exist. 2) They already had a dumb law about same-sex marriages. 3) They wanted to curb any, um COURT issues about the law, like...I dunno...taking away basic human rights. 4) Something like 75% of the voters voted for the thing. I come from a sad and insane nation.

Let me start with this: if I see "homosexual" in print any longer I will scream. Perhaps it's technically the right word, but it's sterile and formal. It's a word used by people not comfortable with the topic or associated issues. It is the 21st century version of "negro." Please, just STOP using it. Gay, lesbian, queer, LGBT community... whatever. There are so many better ways to talk about the issue.

The typical social liberal rant is something like "don't legislate what people do with other consenting adults." True and very valid. It's the heart of the issue really. I'll add two things to that 1) society should be encouraging committed relationships, not discouraging them and 2) queer unions, recognized or not, have had (and will continue to have) a profound impact on straight ones.

Depending on the source, the generally argument is that 40-50% of marriages end in divorce. Texas is among the highest. Many others fail to get married and many of those spend a lifetime bouncing from one short-term "commitment" to another. The union of two people, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health till death do them part is becoming more rare. We're a mobile society - we move residences and jobs and relationships with ease. Rarely looking back at what we left behind. One jogger told me a neighbor asked him "what are you running to? Or are you running from something?" Our lives are something like this. People sticking around and making something work - taking the good with the bad, showing their full selves - is becoming more and more rare. It's a decline in the *gulp* morals of our society. Unions and community and working for something other than yourself should be valued and respected more. The fact that these threads may come in queer shades does not make them less valuable to the fabric of society. Historically, the diversity of the threads has even made us stronger.

Even though women have gotten more degrees and become more independent, by and large people still don't know what do to with that - this means men and women alike. Women have locked themselves into a public display of insisting that we are still feminine, even with a paycheck. Heels, makeup, cleavage, flirting when things get too serious, giggling at the right moments, tossing the hair. These are all back. They mean to say this: don't be threatened, I was just playing. Taking equality seriously has taken a backseat to playing the game and being "caught." I believe the term is backlash. Men bulk up, women slim down. Gender's become a caricature of the real thing. Balanced power and equality, especially in relationships, is hard work. It's better to be a leader or a follower and just work the role. Only those roles aren't very fulfilling and they're based on not fully knowing the other person - just accepting them as less or greater than you. While queer stereotypes lead people to think that there's a butch and a fem in every relationship, it's not always so. In fact, I know of no queer relationship where that's true. Long-term successful gay and lesbian relationships seem to be more based on seeking and finding an equal...sticking with the person and making the union work. A roleless connection. Imagine...

There are a few human rights issues in our time. This is one of them. By birth or by choice, it doesn't matter. A society needs all the goodness, commitment and compassion it can get. And then there's that whole "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" thing, whatever that's about.

Small Town Infidelity

2005-11-08T10:54:00.000-06:00

I'm cheating on men. A few of them. And some women too. I'm not cheating on them sexually, I'm cheating on them commercially. Those in a small town don't understand. See, when you live in a small town (by Bulgarian standards this is large, but I assure you it's NOT) you buy things from people - the SAME people - everyday. The fruits and veggies at the end of my block are manned from dawn to dusk by the same old couple. The dooner stand (dooner being a Turkish sandwich, like a gyro...only not) is always the same guy. Even the grocery store has the same counter people and cashiers. Everyone is the same no matter when I go.

Being a sad creature of habit and also sticking out like a sore thumb means I attract attention and people know me and recognize me. Part of it is that I'm an American. Part is that I speak Bulgarian like crap. Part is that I use the words for "please," "thank you," and "excuse me." Whatever it is, people know me. Some refer to me by name or as "the American" or even "my American." Others notice me in line and just automatically make what I normally order. It's a relationship, of sorts, with each of the people. An acknowledgement and a shared respect. A fondness even.

And then...I ruin it. I get bored, I start looking elsewhere, I think "hey, there are other dooners in the sea" and I try something new. Sometimes it's just as great and sometimes it's even better. And then...I'm totally torn. Do I break it off with the old guy? How do I tell him? I can't just walk by the veggie stand with VEGGIES in my hand. God forbid. Or stroll past my old favorite dooner stand with another man's dooner in my mouth. What would people say?

Forget sex, drugs and rock n' roll. I'm just looking for a good tomato.

Just admit it. You don't know.

2005-11-07T08:43:00.000-06:00

I've learned a number of things here in ole Bulgaria. I am the best, and only real, measurer of my success. Character is everything. Stupid is as stupid does. Taoism has some real merits. Blah, Blah, blah. There're also beliefs that I had before that are now just stone-cold facts in my head. One of my new facts is this: there are no experts and people who claim to be experts are ignorant assholes.

There are moments of serious discussion and reflection with my Bulgarian friends and co-workers. They tend to come from left field and leave me thinking "well, yeah, but where in the hell did that come from?" Today, for example, in discussing a potential trafficking project with my NGO counterpart she basically begins talking about benchmarking (aka looking for best practices). OK. Yeah, totally. But, um, where'd THAT come from? Talking, talking... and she says "I don't want to be one of those organizations in Bulgaria that think they know everything and just make brochures and seminars on topics they don't even understand." Uhhh... I'm so elated I'm speechless. She points to stacks of books "too abstract - too much theory." She points to brochures "they don't go to the problem - corruption, desperation, communities that help this happen." Uhhh... I have no reaction that doesn't involve cursing and jumping and clapping so I just say "exactly."

I work with and meet tons of "experts." On what? Good question. They are just experts. Their title says so, don't question it. They know and have certificates that say so. This country is certificate crazy. The certificate means this "I've read some brochures or binders of info and went to a seminar...all produced by people with certificates in something else." The country is talking, no one just has any clue what people are saying and what the hell it has to do with anything real.

I'm writing a project that would make training tangible to local leaders - take the theory and the rhetoric and apply it to your organization. Let's talk about what happens. People don't do it here. It's all models of project planning and management and analysis tools. No connecting, no thinking. Just models... and then doing. A country spinning its wheels.

This isn't a Bulgarian problem. It's a global one. In the States people are hired because their resumes have the right schools on them or the right degrees. Yale, MBA, Stanford, PhD. These are our own stamps and certificates. People have a piece of paper - they went to school, read some books and sat through some lectures by people who... spend a lifetime in lectures and books. These people go out into the world and run things. Skills, natural talents and character be damned. Without the right credentials merit means nothing. Credentials are your merit. Just ask anyone with them.

My own life is torn between work that's practical and work that's analytical. I want both. One without the other is empty to me. But... where and what is that work? Development largely seems to be a big word for "liberals in nice offices with nice theories." There's money for capacity building and integration and education... throw it into the problem. Maybe it will work. The thinkers have clean hands and ponder waste management while the workers are up to their eyes in shit.

The gap between thinking and doing. Perhaps there should be a seminar.

Like a junkie

2005-11-05T12:29:00.000-06:00

I found myself this evening darting to and fro in my apartment. I felt out of control in the situation. I just kept looking in cabinets and drawers and moving things. What isn't here? What??

An old saying says that home is where you hang your hat. Never one to wear hats, it's never quite fit for me. One day, many years and apartments ago, I was living in a situation that I was tempted to get out of. I'd been in the apartment almost a year and if I was going my lease said it was time to do so. Confused about how I felt and what I wanted, I looked over at a wall lined with boxes. They contained all my books. My entire personal library. Nearly a year later and they, both my children in some sense and my mentors in another, were still without a place. I looked at those boxes and I knew, for me, home is where I put my books. Having never felt comfortable enough to unpack them, my decision to leave was immediate. It was simple, really.

An international move meant that I couldn't possibly take my library with me. I thought about it, trust me. Much like that point where I decided to stay or to go in the old apartment, I look at the books I have here - books that were among the first (if not the first) thing I gave a home here - and I want more of them. I want at least part of my library with me. This, however briefly, is my home.

This sounds a bit compulsive and rash, I'm sure. Like I have a strange attachment to just being near books. I do. I love it. Every room usually has books stashed someplace (except the bathroom...um...I don't really need them there, thanks). Part is that I just love books. Part is that I love having a huge selection on hand so that whenever I finish a book I can walk into my library and pick whatever suits me at the time. I haven't read half of the books I own, and it will probably always that way, allowing me to shop in my own library whenever I choose. I buy books in bulk. I walk into a good bookstore and I come out with an armful - as content as I could possibly be. Some women like to buy clothes or jewelry, I like to buy books (and homewares and skin care products...I digress).

I'm due, in my own mental health timeline, for another vacation. Most likely a solo one. I'm tempted to go someplace (namely, London) with great bookstores and tea/coffee shops that I can sit and read in. Great art, great history, great theater. It all works. Well, except for that whole expense thing. London would take all that I have, still, I am oh-so tempted. I'd damn near fly back to New York just for the treat of browsing stores I already knew and loved. I could see thousands of dollars flying out the window and into bookstore registers. It'd be so easy and fun to do.

I miss the books themselves. I miss the access to knowledge and other points of view. I miss being able to say "I really want some feminist theory" or "Hmm...Eastern religion..." and just diving in. I miss a room lined from ceiling to floor with books - books stacked and crammed into every free space and even then, spilling into other areas. I miss making my home really look and feel like me.

Dysfunction Junction

2005-11-03T12:15:00.000-06:00

Looking at my lifespan I've had a number of dysfunctional relationships of varying types and degrees. This does not make me special. My current most dysfunctional and co-dependent relationship is... with this laptop. It's become my life and my blood and the vast majority of my friends are now, literally, two-dimensional. I no longer see people or hear them, but if I'm in the other room and IM messages are arriving, I can tell by the pattern of the beeps who the messages are from. Sad. Sick and sad.

My connection with my town leaves something to be desired and I am quickly learning, with the help of a sitemate who's had no problem being welcomed here, that the problem might just be with me. Initially I'm rather shy and I'm still bashful with the language (even after a year - what's my problem?!). I have extrovert tendencies, but only after I warm up to people, and... well... I've been attached to this computer a little too much to warm up to most people. I've not really explored doing things here, often due to just feeling weird and nervous about doing things solo. No one in the States would have ever accused me of lacking initiative and self-confidence, but somehow it's a part of me that I've lost or forgotten about. Peace Corps does that sometimes. A little too often, in fact.

It becomes very comfortable and satisfying to come home to a host of people online wanting to chat. People you know quite well and are connecting with more and more each day. And there are friends and family back home that I miss and keep in contact with. With the exception of a handful of people, everyone I know and care about I connect with via internet. This... this THING has become my portal to companionship and understanding. I've really not given people much of a chance here and I'm sorely regretting it. Not only because I'm missing out on actually living here but because I've just become not so present in my life. I chat a lot, but... well, I don't have a lot to chat about. Once upon a time in a far away land, I chatted with people a lot less and had a lot more to tell them when I did. Coincidence? Probably not.

I need to do more things and get out of the apartment more and stay in town more (add that to the list from yesterday - oiy!). I feel like I've missed a lot of what I came here for. A lot of life. And a lot of me too.

9:30, ugh

2005-11-02T13:33:00.000-06:00

Suddenly it's 9:30 p.m and I don't know where the day went. I haven't sat down for a meal all day. Breakfast was while I was dealing with the internet guys who were here to fix the cable that the roofers cut yesterday (smooth move, guys). Lunch was in between jobs. Working. Emailing. Researching. Tutoring. Coffee date. 9:30.

This seems to be how my days go here and where I am and what I do in the day seem beyond my control. I plan to do so many things with the day and then...9:30. I want to read more and write more and study more and cook more and exercise more and keep in touch more. Where I find the time and how I do this... I have no idea.

I've always been one of those people who irrationally spend something ten times over. If you tell me you'll give me $100 (and please do) then, in my mind, I can somehow justify spending it several times. Your $100 will end up costing me $300. It occurs to me that this might be happening with my days. I've always thought that if I got 30 hrs for everyone else's 24 then I'd be ok. I just need to learn to hate sleep. To not need it. I just, you know, need to be superhuman. Then I'll be able to keep up with myself. Ugh.

So...I sit here with a hunger headache, a looming to-do list and an online group chat I'm supposed attend starting at...oh...3 a.m. Guess I can start that no sleeping thing now. Usually I'd just procrastinate.

Faith and focus

2005-10-31T13:53:00.000-06:00

I have this overdue submission for a class. It's supposed to be funny. Now if you told me to write about my dead grandmother I could tell funny stories, make snide comments and genuinely be unable to be serious for long. Tell me to be funny and suddenly I am the incarnation of a third grade jokester or an overly serious nun.

I think about where I get my inspiration from in my writing. The style, the content, the voice. There are many sources, but the biggest (and strangest) always guides me through what I am saying. My greatest writing inspiration isn't Eugene O'Neill or Gloria Steinem, it's the Baptist preachers I listened to as a child.

Now, in the 'hood, church and Sunday school are very popular. It's nice to believe in something when the table's empty. That's true. And belief in God and faith carries people through. That's true too. But here's the harsh truth, folks: in the hood the church is some free babysitting. Period. There, I said it. Now I have officially reserved my place in hell.

I sat in the pews as my parents slept in and my cousins fell asleep, listening to the sermon and being absorbed by it. It was rather intoxicating. The preacher would take a current event and make it universally apply to everyone's life, bring it through the Bible and leave people with something to think about. Unfortunately, few were away by the end except for the old ladies fearing The End and me – a weird kid.

It took a lot of heart and thought to do what those preachers did every week and an ability to critically look at life's events and ask what greater lies in simple daily things. It's something I found really lacking in the Catholic church and something that always made me respect the aim and thought of the Baptist faith, even if that faith didn't work for me and the metal detectors at the door got my voodoo dolls confiscated every damn time.

I try to do what those preachers did, both for myself and to give my writing focus and meaning. Only difference is that I try to keep people awake for it. Oh, and that whole god thing.

Greatness

2005-10-30T14:14:00.000-06:00

This weekend, in celebration of a famous local violinist, there was a music festival centered around the violin. Friday night I went to the philharmonic and stood in the back watching. Things like orchestras and plays excite me to no end. There's a beauty there that most art forms don't have. While there are the lead players in each production, there's a certain social equality and dependency that few people lack the courage to have these days. The best Willie Loman could walk on stage, but if the guys in light and sound aren't on their marks, that flaw is all people notice. A crash or a screeching violin means that dozens of people's perfection is ruined. You could ruin them. They could ruin you. And yet, people do it. People live for it.

That fear of failure could make people not play their best, not try and not care. I'm sure some do just that and glide through. The production is weaker for it, but people aren't necessarily sure why. It's the safe way out. It's the coward's way. I see a woman in the third row of violins nearly hidden. She could just be going through the motions, but she's loving every minute and playing her heart out. Her work is so much more stunning than the soloist's. She's not playing for me. She's playing for herself. She doesn't seek recognition for her work, she's just adding as much as she can to make music as beautifully as she can make it. People like her are rare. People want to be soloists and leaders. They want to be The Voice. The bravery and dedication and fortitude and love and loyalty of a good crew member is harder to find than a willing and able captain. I look at this woman and I do not see ego. I see belief. I see faith and love. I see that she is not gloating in her gift, but succumbing to it. Giving it as completely as possible.

Orchestras and plays have dozens of people and thousands of possibilities for the production to be chipped away at or destroyed by flaws. Few today write for those willing to risk it in those arts. They want to control the product, get to say "cut," have no one ruin it for them. They want the final word and they miss out. We do too. We miss the art. We miss the greatness and excitement that can only be produced by a dedicated team working in concert - leaning, depending, believing, risking.

We all want to lead our armies of one or to be The Great One, but some want to be a part of something greater, whatever part they can play. From these people, not from those pretend armies, greatness appears.

I haven't seen greatness outside of the theater in a long, long time.

Embracing the Dark Side

2005-10-26T12:27:00.000-05:00

A youth of too many horror films and a bizarre imagination has, oddly, meant that I don't understand Halloween. It's so...cute. Once I reached an age where I had truly independent thoughts, I only wanted to be Dark Characters. Vampires. Jason. Crazy Person in a Straight Jacket. I thought Halloween was a time to explore and exaggerate our own darkness and sinister natures. Now it's about Hallmark and sexy nurses and... nice, cute things.

I have this strange but clear memory of looking for a costume at an early age and asking my mom if I could just have the money. "No" was clearly the answer. And then I tried to rationalize with her: I could use the money to buy more (and better) candy then I'd get out of trick-or-treating and save my evening. I believe this was the moment my mom knew I was Different.

My freshman year in college there was a Halloween door decorating contest. I'd just arrived at NYU and thought I was with the Smart and Literary and Different. I got my roommates to agree to giving me full authority over our door - I'd taken it anyway when I moved in and starting posting quotes and clippings and pictures on the door. It was already the most visited site in the dorm and they were interested in what I could do with it next. Armed with Imagination, old magazines, masking tape, police "Do Not Enter" tape and fake blood I set to work. I had a roommate lie in the doorway of our room, so her top half was in the hall. A body outline was drawn with masking tape. Using my King James Bible (a must for any serious Western Civ student) I found a quote on death and did it ransom note style using letters from magazines. That was hung above the door. The police lines were taped to the door, making it look like the door was blocked off, but keeping it open for use. Before I put the police tape on, however, I had to add my best part. Liberally putting fake blood on my hands, I dragged and slammed them into the door. Within minutes the door was covered with the paw prints of a struggle with death. I admired my creation. I laughed gleefully.

My roommates were stunned when they first saw it. Flabbergasted really. But after the initial shock they too appreciated the art and humor in it. They were quite amused. Rumor took hold and within hours every time we opened the door there was a group awestruck by "the scene." They'd just stand there. Openly gawking. The authorities were not so entertained, however. I was questioned about my mental stability and any suicidal tendencies I might have. I think laughing was the wrong answer. To make matters worse, we lost the contest to a door of smiling construction paper pumpkins and "Happy Halloween" spelled in orange and black and being followed by too many exclamation points, as if they were guarding the purity and cuteness of the words themselves.

Halloween reminds me of a high school classmate who liked to say she was "different" and "creative" but never was. I still can't hear "creative" without hearing it in her voice. Creativity is stifled by the social fascism of people who claim to be creative. (They're FuN!!!!) I knew that early on. No thanks.

Halloween isn't about embracing the Dark You. It's about pretending to be someone else. I think Pretenders need some serious mental help. They think I do. This is the story of my life.

not every day is deep

2005-10-25T12:27:00.000-05:00

Sour gummies shouldn't come in lemon and lime. Those flavors are already sour. They should just make the pink and blue kinds. The point is tart and sweet, people. Tart and sweet. ...with people too.

And nylon stockings should be outlawed. Seriously when those finally go, we will have evolved. Scarlet may have never gone hungry again, but I'll never wear nylons again. God as my witness...

And every country needs a Boston Market. Some nights you just want some chicken and some gravy and some mashed potatoes and some green beans and... and you don't want to spend 4 hours making them.

And it's ice CREAM, not ice milky-stuff. It should be creamy. And have chunks of shit in it.

...Diet Vanilla Coke...mmmm....

A few Bulgarian tales

2005-10-24T14:15:00.000-05:00

Today was a day where I was going to start afresh and really do something, get something done. Ah, Bulgaria. It was a funny little thought and dream. Instead I waited to apply for my litchna karta (ID). The woman at the local immigration office said it had to be seven days before the old one expired. Seven. That's today. I went in expecting to complete the process.

"We're waiting," my co-workers said.
"For..?"
"A copy of the contract that we need to give immigration"
"OK"

Sounded simple enough. After an hour or so I inquired again. Still waiting. Finally a co-worker explains to me "The contracts woman just got a divorce and she misses her man" (his words, not mine). I've been here a year and I am still unsure what this has to do with getting a photocopy. Hours pass. Eventually the whole day. I am not sure about missing the "deadline" for immigration renewal - something that I know isn't universal, since other friends in other areas were given no such rules. I'm sure the deadline is made-up, but those bureaucrats behind the tainted windows have such power to make your life hell. I guess I'll get to be a legal alien whenever the contracts woman gets over her divorce...and if the lady in the window lets me.
________________

I like my town here - it's my local home and I can be rather defensive about it for that reason. However, there is something kind of screwy here. We are the home to the oldest mosque in the Balkans. A few years ago the city built and paid for the world's largest Virgin Mary statue to be erected. Personally, I think this is a "our god is bigger than yours" move. I could be wrong.

There's new evidence to back up my theory though. The oldest mosque in the Balkans has had a construction project surrounding around it since I arrived. New buildings that way caught my eye today and I wandered over. They were doing construction alright. The mosque is now basically enclosed by....shops. Islam is being attacked by capitalism ...ummm... Anyone know why there's instability in the world?
_________________

I was helping a co-worker translate a document today so the head of our department could give a lecture on development. She needed the document translated from English to Bulgarian so she'd know what she was supposed to lecture on...though she supposedly already went through the process. We have a framed certificate that says so.

Anyway, at some point my co-worker comes to me and points to the phrase "developing world." He looks at me and says "what's this mean? Does it mean places like Africa?"
Yes.
He reads the rest of the sentence aloud "Here, like in other places in the developing world..."
He stops. "So are we in the developing world?"
Yes.
Pause.
"Americans see us like Africans?"
Ummm...

Lost indeed

2005-10-23T12:06:00.000-05:00

I went out tonight after being cooped up in my apartment nursing myself back to full health (with the aid of a server full of "Lost" episodes). I emerged from my well heated apartment (by local standards...hell, who am I kidding? I keep it toasty) to find an absolutely gorgeous day...one that had just ended.

Those things, me taking care of myself and it meaning that I missed a really great day, made me think of my experience here. When I take care of myself I tend to miss things...and when I try to participate and branch out I seem to deplete myself. I have no balance here and I'm not sure how to get it. I feel like I've been trying to find it since I got here...but haven't. I don't know if it's an extreme disconnect with this place... or that I just haven't looked hard enough... or if I just don't want to find it here for some reason... or...

Balance. Drive. Enthusiasm. Stability... all things I don't have here. All things I'm used to having. All things I really could use right about now.

Broken lenses

2005-10-22T09:24:00.000-05:00

I'm having a hard time recently - letting go and realizing what exactly I need to let go of. There's quite a lot, I think, I just need to pinpoint it. Primarily, my concern recently is on the relationships in my life - what I give, what I get...and how that all measures up. In short, I'm feeling drained - so drained that I think about skipping off to someplace random and parking it for a couple weeks to refuel and regroup. Someplace where I'm left alone.

I feel that I sign on for people's journeys - good and bad, great and small, I want to be there to share in the experiences of the people I'm close to and I want to share my experiences with them. However, what if what you buy something different than you thought you were in for? What if you are intentionally sold something false? What does one do then? I'm not the kind of person who walks away, but I'm feeling a little bait-and-switched with a few people. Feeling like the journey I agreed to isn't the one I'm in for. What do you do then? And how do you know? What's a needed detour and what's a blatant parting from course? ...When are you sure that the person is different than what you thought? How much evidence is needed?

Basically, it seems like the afterschool emotion of the season is giving up real, personal human struggles for a good time. There's a Garrison Keiller line that things are "good...enough"- something I don't live by and don't really hang around people who do (or at least I didn't think I did). That's where so many people are. It's good...enough. No point fighting or growing or questioning or contemplating - just enjoy. There's a carpe diem ideology in there someplace, something I know people should value. Seizing the day, however, usually gets translated into something like "just enjoy...what if it's the last day?" It's a philosophy that I've never taken to. I don't think people should live like it's the last day of their lives. Live like life is forever...eternal, non-disposable. Care. Invest. Own. It's harder and not as much "fun" (a word I've never cared for and am coming to hate) but in time you end up with so much more - so much that's richer and fuller and more real than anything you could build in a day.

I've come to wonder what I have in common with people and usually it's that they are builders - people looking at what they have (past and present) and wondering about what to do with it (the future). I'm not the fastest builder or the most efficient one, but the Lego blocks are always moving and I'm always thinking about where they should go. I'm just...I'm finding that this is rarely the case.

I've listened to a lot of people's dreams and fears and problems and just assumed that if people saw them so clearly that they must be willing to do something about them. They must be looking to change and to grow - that's the lens I saw them through. Perhaps it was unfair on my part to jump to those conclusions about their strength and courage...about their humanity. I look back at those old mental pictures and it's as if people had plastic surgery - I barely recognize them at all, but I still don't know what's real and what's not.

Cameras are a funny thing. I've always thought of them as having the ability to capture more than what's there. It's not just about the subject, but how the photographer sees the subject. People take pictures of me and some seem so flattering. Some friends only seem to capture me having a really great time. Others, those pictures seem to show me just as I am. And others still...well, some friends haven't bothered to capture me at all. I wonder how people see me and how accurate that is. And I wonder how clearly I see people - or if I just change the lens to fit my picture preference.

"If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't. "

2005-10-20T14:15:00.000-05:00

A rewatching of "Fight Club" left me thinking about the alter ego Tyler Durden's we'd all like to muster. What would push us to the point we needed to reach? Would they be the opposite of us? A better version? What do we want to be? Why aren't we that person already? I once went to a brainiac summer fellowship where people took the liberty to try on different versions of themselves. People do it a lot. Through travel. Through acting. Through changing the people in their lives. Move on. Reinvent. There's always a later, better version of everything. Upgrade.

I find the trying on of other selves a bit strange. If I really wanted to be someone else, then I think I'd just be that person. I never really felt like I chose this version anyway. It just kind of evolved and felt right and I went with it. I've thought that I could do what I do better and be a bigger person in some ways, but I don't think about reinvention. I don't remember thinking "I am someone I do not want to be". Of course I've done things I wish I didn't do or said things I wish I'd remained silent about, but scraping the whole thing doesn't cross my mind.

There's a definition of insanity that's something like "repeating the same behavior and expecting different results" I know a lot of those people. The details change, the people perhaps, but the set up and situation remain the same - each time leaving the person to think "it'll be different this time." Do they want it to be different, really? Or do they like the game and the results of it? To go with Chuck Palahniuk again:

People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.

I'd add to that "big scary responsibility for themselves," which is the great unknown. Doing what you are comfortable with, even if the results are less than satisfactory, is satisfying. That safety becomes it's own reward. It's an addiction of sorts (addiction and recovery being my newest obsession) . Addictions feed us while keeping us in some predetermined, invisible box we are convinced we don't deserve to get out of...and often don't want to. Completely filling a box too small is much less ego-trying than finding oneself in a box with no idea how to fill it. We all have addictions - that's my fascination. We all keep ourselves from the better version we could be. The version we already are, but mute.

If your ideal is your opposite, are you strangled by who you are? How so? Even real Tyler kills the idealized alter ego one - it's just too much. It pushed him in the right way, but needing it as a version of himself dissolved at some point. The addictions and delusions and need for emergency exits left...leaving only one full, real Tyler. Where is that point and who's strong enough to get there? Who's brave enough to even try?

I'm the worst

2005-10-18T12:26:00.000-05:00

I write everyday for a week and then... radio silence. I know. I'm the worst. In my own defense, I was on the road and then came home sick. For those who don't know, I am the worst sick person in the world. I should get a medal or something, only it'd probably irritate my skin and make me cranky.

In any case, when I don't feel like shooting off my own head to put myself out of my misery, then I shall resume...I'm building the quality, length and frequency here, folks - it takes time.

I also committed to this writing thing a little more and joined a real, live writing class (humor writing) so assuming my writings don't suck, I'll post those for your reading pleasure as well.

Patience. It's called patience. I know, I know - I'm the last person who should talk about patience. Still...

My toy brain

2005-10-10T12:26:00.000-05:00

The last three days were centered around food. I wasn't gorging myself (God knows the food here isn't that good), but I was shopping for it, preparing it, or eating it for the bulk of the last three days. I've mentioned before how this experience keeps you on the bottom of the hierarchy of needs, but that little fact keeps kicking me in the gut. A friend was here this weekend and after having coffee (slow to boil on my pretend stove), going to lunch (waiting on the pretend staff and then waiting again while someone very, very slowly prepared the pretend food), going to get vegetables at the farmer's market and stopping by the pretend store we sat down for a soda. At that point I realized the time. 4:30 pm.

Like many my age, I'm still a little shocked by the idea that I am a real, live grown-up. It just doesn't seem possible. Responsibility and commitment scare the living crap out of most people in my generation, self included, but there's something about this experience that makes me feel like I am pretending to be a grown-up - as if I am playing house or office or having the dolls for tea. Pretending to be an adult is much more annoying than really being one. Being one, at least for me in the States, involved a lot of ...multi-tasking (a word I always hated, but one that I currently long to live again). I could have friends over for tea. As it was boiling we'd talk, perhaps while I was folding laundry. I'd talk on the phone while doing dishes, pay my bills online over lunch, check my voicemail while walking to work. Juggling wasn't as bad as I thought it was. In fact, it was a lot more fun than playing.

The playing part revolves around this: I don't worry about rent or keeping my job or a performance review or not returning a really important call. There is nothing like that in my day. I go to work and play office like everyone else - as if it's always coffee break time and social hour. There's a certain mindlessness to the filing and other office tasks that says "I don't know what this is for, but I've seen it done." Pretending.

I admit to being a bit of a workaholic. OK. I am one. (Hi, Jen.) I've worked since I was young - babysitting my weekends and summers away, then having 1-3 jobs, then working while going to college...I like being productive. I came here in part to walk away from that, but also in part to be more honest and open to myself...to stop pretending. The Real Me in the Real World wouldn't stay in this job or, if I had to, would have side work or a second job. I like building and accomplishing things. I like to live a full day. I even like to have a life slightly bigger than I can control. Here, I try to feed myself and only end up starving. It's OK. I can pretend.

Paths less traveled and good fences...

2005-10-08T06:28:00.000-05:00

After an overdue mass email to friends and family, I've been catching up with certain friends. Two in particular. My email conversations with them are deep and personal - sharing both our private selves and our concern for greater things. Both of these friends have made life choices that don't parallel mine at all, at least factually. One would never put our generic profiles into a database and consider it an easy match. And yet, it is. Always has been.

This and other developments have me thinking a lot about the people in my life. Who's there. Why. For how long. For what. Both of the above friendships could have me on a plane tomorrow if something went astray. I'd never think twice. Our paths are different, though they met once, but somehow they always remain together... as if our journey is the same though our means are quite different. I think about my closest friends and I think that's true for the lot. We share both heart and mind, self and world, laughter and tears. These are the relations that keep me sane and together. They help me grow, yet be comfortable where I am. They help me be a greater me. They make it so easy to give. And they easily give.

Not sure what will happen in a year and what my life choices will be, I've been thinking about my relations here. Am I parallel enough in journeys with people to keep contact with them, to grow with them and to share with them when this shared point is over? I've found myself staring into space many times over the past few weeks pondering that question. Wondering what I want and need from people. What I get. What I don't get. What I give and don't.

In the past I surrounded myself with thinkers and feelers, doers and delegaters, takers and givers, creators and consumers, movers and shakers.... not separately, but together. All in the same person. I doubted my discriminating tastes for awhile - wondered if I asked too much. But I've found those people before, and one of the things I love the most about them is they don't settle. So far my lack of settling has kept me in very good company. I have no reason to think that won't continue to be true and I need to be more comfortable letting go of people with whom it is not true. Or at least limiting my relations with them.

One of my goals here was to "challenge and establish personal truths." This is one: There is no luck in friendship. People get what they give. I give greatly and expect great things from great people in return. That's totally fair...and it works.

I call myself the human trampoline

2005-10-07T11:46:00.000-05:00

Today I:

handed over a small grant I won ($300) to a Turkish mother of 10 to help buy her children their needed supplies and clothes for the school year. She was bashful, but appreciative.
invited the two Bulgarians who have most stood by me and welcomed me into their circle to lunch at my apartment Monday. It'll be the first time they visit my apartment and their first taste of "real American food." They were nearly jumping for joy.
caught up with a friend who had been on vacation, emailed many others who've written me recently, sparred with a worthy opponent ...and had various other digital contacts.
was greeted warmly by the woman from whom I buy rotisserie chicken and my vegetable guy. I am often introduced to their friends as "my American."
had two students in my building say hi to me as I passed them on the way in (which never happens).

...and yet the only real feeling I had today was the end of "The Bourne Supremacy." Clips of New York. Seeing it and thinking about that energy took my breath away.

I miss working at my capacity...and meeting friends at dive bars with great jukeboxes.

Luddite tendencies

2005-10-06T13:06:00.000-05:00

I've recently separated from my chatterbox programs. Not a complete divorce, but a trial separation. It just seemed like we were growing apart. I was feeling stifled. My past is like this - I've drifted apart from many other partners. I was one of the first to have a nationwide cell phone, roughly the size of a Big Gulp and with a monthly plan that was too much to even think about. However, one day I found myself in the produce aisle answering the question "what are you doing?" to someone far away and I realized I didn't really want to answer that. I happened to like my solo journeys through the leafy greens, and so I returned to them. Another time, I found my constant computer staring at work was capped by going home and turning on the computer there. It was ok until an electrical storm blew my modem and, well, I never fixed it. Those last couple of years were actually nice, everyone quickly adjusted and knew if they wanted to reach me after office hours to call. If I was home, I'd answer. If not, well, I'd call them back.

I've done the same with caller ID, call waiting, voice mail (currently without) and just about every means people have to get in contact with me. I've been known to not even open snail mail for days. I like being independent. I like doing my own thing and I like people not knowing where I am or how to reach me every second of every day. I like having my own life. Unfortunately, there's a PC rule that they should be able to find you whenever the need arises, the computers and connections at work are so bad that I really have to have them at home if I want to use them at all and the landlines aren't reliable (and you can't text on them), so that adds a cell. I could be in a room of a hundred people and it wouldn't make me feel as stifled as a cell phone ringing at the same time there was a ding from an incoming IM. It's strange, I know. I just don't want people to be here, unless they really are here.

In addition, perhaps I am greedy, I want people's full attention. If you can't give it to me now, fine. There will be other times we can talk and I really don't take it personally. BUT, an IM conversation with multi-minute delays, scattered haphazard responses and a feeling that the other party is only partially paying attention...well, that I take personally. I hate it. It's not so scattered that I can do something else, but not so together that it takes all my time. I'm not ADD like so many others in my generation (and after it). I do one thing, I focus, I finish it, I move on. I don't even have music or the TV on right now. The sound of my hands hitting my keyboard and the traffic outside is all the noise I have. When I listen to music, I tend to close my eyes and, um, listen. It's not background, it's an art form. It's supposed to be appreciated...it's a solo act.

I used to keep myself logged into my chatterbox programs, often with an away message, but it came to be that old feeling of being tracked down. There's reassurance in people knowing they can contact you if they need you, but there's also the temptation to reach out whenever boredom strikes and, well, boredom strikes a lot here. It's also nice to be able to contact people when I need them or just want to chat. But...here's the thing I think people miss: when you contact people it should be about them. Not about you. You should want to talk to them - not because you are bored or angry or need someone to talk to, but because you need or want that person. To quote my best friend: "people need to learn how to self-soothe rather than looking to others to fill in their gaps." Amen.

Given that I don't have a home line, cell calls are too expensive and I don't want to be kept on chat all the time, but don't typically mind being seen as available, what should I do? I want to have an agreement pop up that people click on before a chat session with me:

"By engaging in this chat you agree that the chat is conducted out of earnest interest in the other party, agree to give serious attention to the conversation at hand and agree to end it when either of the afore mentioned conditions alter."

I wonder if I could set that up.

I still haven't figured out what to do with the stupid phone though. I leave it in random places a lot, keep it in the other room or in a bag. I don't check it for text messages except for about once a day. Still, I don't like it. The Man can call me on it whenever he wants. And I thought sudden company in the veggie aisle was bad.

To sleep, perchance to dream

2005-10-05T14:36:00.000-05:00

Some days I miss America. OK, most days I do. But today is a total I-Miss-America Day. Some days it's about access to finer things like art and film. Some days it's about access to finer things to put in my mouth (er...that didn't come out right). Today is an odd reason: it's about having the freedom to be politically apathetic.

Now, for those in the know, you are aware that political apathy is not something I am typically accused of. I've been involved in political causes since I was quite young (once a friend and I went to an animal rights meeting and since we were too young to drive her mom took us - wearing a fur coat) and think that one of our greatest assets is the freedom to speak your mind and not fear repercussions.

I still believe that, but today I realized the value of living in a place where you don't need to be political. I work with a guy (actually, just one) who is a shy, new father and is seriously concerned about raising his daughter in Bulgaria. He's thinking of immigrating to England, if possible. He used to work at a mill but he speaks 3 languages so he got hired at the municipality to better utilize his talents, though he has university training in food and tourism. Whatever. The guy likes to work, but isn't being used at all. He's not really paid a wage that can raise a family. He sits all day in an office and doesn't do anything but think about what he can't do to make his life and his family's life better because he's underpaid to sit in an office and it's the best job he can find.

While this all just seems to point to a bad economy, in our discussion he talked a lot of wanting to find better work, but hating the system. It's been my experience with Bulgarians that if you want to fully know what the hell people are talking about you have to question and question some more, so I did. And he said that he hates political parties and he doesn't want to be aligned with them because they change leaders and focus too much, but that finding a job (even in the private sector) depends very heavily on your political party and the connections you have through that. As he gave examples and described it more and more, I realized that the country is functioning under the same party nepotism that it was under communism, only now it's a roulette of which one you should choose. It's no wonder people think back to the good ole days here.

In the States, there are millions of people who have no idea what is happening in the political world. It's often disheartening to recognize that and easy to assume it's the sign of a weak or failing democracy, but ...as golly gee as it may sound... it's a sign that we have something that's stable and responsible enough to leave us to our own devices. It's when government encroaches so much that the average person feels they have to get involved that's a problem. Or, here, when politics rules so much that you sign saying you are political, but keep your opinions to yourself - both wishing that you could be open about your true beliefs and wishing you didn't need to think about these things to have a healthy, stable life.

I saw a production of Hamlet tonight. Hamlet is a tale of many things including personal greed and conniving politics and their impact on a deeply feeling, thinking man. Bulgarians, I am told, have a special fondness for Hamlet. I wish it was because of the writing.

What's your motivation?

2005-10-04T13:01:00.000-05:00

A strange wind is blowing through town. As all the people in my group enter the anniversary of starting work at our sites, we also endure the pain of going to a conference to talk about what we've done so far. Even worse: share it with new volunteers. The measuring sticks are out and Peace Corps has invited certain people to present, and not invited others, labeled some a success and ...just not labeled others. Even those invited to speak aren't quite sure how much wisdom they have to share. Who are they to say, after all? And what have they really done?

Peace Corps has a very large share of overacheivers. People who had high GPAs and good jobs and all the right "things," but those people jumped ship, came here and tried to start anew. As a lover of dramatic lit, I am always interested in people's motivations. In the framework of running overacheivers, did people come here to break free? To prove that they could do it in an even more complicated setting? To be overwhelmed and prove once and for all that they really just aren't that good? One thing I think we've all be a little shocked to see is just how driven we are to obtain external validation. It's easy to seem internally motivated when you are in an environment that values and utilizes you. But when that goes away who's left?

In addition to being overacheivers, Peace Corps volunteers suffer from a disease to please. People pleasers run amok in the PC and people get run down, distraught and overwhelmed because of it. Peace Corps wants one thing, the organization you are assigned to wants something else, you want something entirely different. Which comes first? Probably not the last. In a conversation with a friend the other day we were talking about how projects and funding are used as a measurement of success here and how misguided and misleading that is. If I came here and taught people nothing, but got them 200,000 Euros in grants, I'd be quite the star. Money is easy to see and kudos are given promptly for it (and from every direction). But... what if you did teach? And work with people and just encourage them to do things differently? It's harder, it's a less obvious success, the appreciation is quiet (at best) and it might even fail. What's the reward there? What's the motivation?

There's no coincidence that I had three volunteers write me today about fearing disappointing someone by what they were doing or not doing or would like to do (like just leave). If just purely motivated by having others validate us, we'd find the money, stick it out and follow orders like a good soldier. But many don't. They question it and torment themselves - not because they stopped needing the approval, but because it's still there, though they know there's something greater. They just aren't sure what It is and where to find It. They just aren't sure how to shake that need to care what others think. When you spend your whole life getting As, it's not done quietly - it's presented at assemblies, put up in hallways and on certificates. It really starts to define you. So, at grading time, the list without your name on it seems terribly impossible. Someone must have made a mistake. There's been some horrible error...

A friend told me today that I was really good at following the spirit of the law, as opposed to the letter of the law and that it was something of a defining characteristic of mine. It's certainly something I've tried to do - to get at the higher point of what rules and guidelines were aiming for, not the laws themselves. I debated with my professors, wrote papers that I knew wouldn't be popular and took the harder classes even when it meant a guaranteed lower GPA because I wanted an education, not just a degree. Here, I want similar things. I want to help without enabling; educate, but not demean; and create without destruction. Unfortunately, despite its hippy past, a government bureaucracy isn't the best place for such lofty goals. And yet, I stay...

Me hungry. Me want cookie...and some Richter.

2005-10-03T11:54:00.000-05:00

This whole experience was supposed to make my life simpler. I think it's failed. See, while I live without certain things I haven't really gotten over their absence. Like...um...culture. Yeah. Once upon a time I shopped at independent bookstores. I went to art house movie theaters. I called in sick to see art exhibits. I saw as many plays as I could afford. I rented movies from a video store that catalogued by country and director's name then openly criticized you for not knowing where to find a movie. I ate at restaurants where "on the side" was assumed so much that I often felt like I was making my own meal. Now...now I do none of those things.

In addition to eliminating the actual events above, the anticipation of doing them is also eliminated. Will they have the obscure film I want at the store? Is the exhibit overhyped? What can I assume about the movie by the people buying the tickets? Will I have a random find at the bookstore? There's a multi-act play in all of these delights. The set-up and longing then the confusion and conflict (Was a whole room of the artist's early drawing necessary? Is there room for dessert?) and then the resolution (this, as all snobs know, is the verdict and judgment).

While I know I was sent here to hang with "the people" and to not see them as the salt of the earth, I do think that freshly ground sea salt is so much better than table salt...but, really, if properly spiced, salt isn't always needed... Basically, I miss being a snob. No, this experience hasn't knocked it out of me. No, I do not feel ashamed of my discriminating tastes. No, I do not intend to teach you.

In addition to doing these things, snobs also do something wacky. They discuss and debate. Is Fellini overrated? Is opera a living art? What's missing in modern art? Is it ever ok to serve beer at a dinner party? When was the last time a book changed your life? People really think about these things. I think about these things. I miss people who also think about these things and want to hear what others think. I miss people who want to process. People who delve. I miss those bastard thinkers. I miss my people.

I've met some smart people here, even some fellow snobs. But we really aren't working with much. Want to see a mainstream film? No, but I will. What do you think about it? It sucked. Yeah, that conversation gets old quickly. It's the mixed reactions or the overwhelming awe one has for things that make it worth discussing. Here's the key to bitching that I've learned: it's only fun when you have good things to balance it, otherwise it's flesh-eating.

I find myself feeling empty a lot here, often in ways I can't describe. I remember similar but muted feelings back home. Those are the days I always rented a good film or went to see one, saw an exhibit, bought tickets to a play, had a meal that was an event, or...just filled up my soul. And then I'd meet with my people to fill up my brain and I was ok. I haven't found that here.

Dear friends, the food is bland. The culture and people too. Send help. ...No, seriously.

Psst. Pass this note...

2005-10-02T11:13:00.000-05:00

My agent frowns upon me replying to people directly here, but he's about to be fired, so that's ok. For the fan(s) who like to post anonymous comments about getting in contact with me: my email address is in my profile. Feel free to use it. When you post anonymous comments, I don't have any means of contacting you. Unless that's the point and you are just trying to make me go mad. If you've been reading this blog regularly you must have noticed I needn't any help going crazy, so thanks, but no thanks on the assistance...but thanks for the support.

This killing time is killing me... (-Clint Black)

2005-10-02T10:57:00.000-05:00

There often seems to be a bit of a time warp here. The days drag, but time also seems to wiz by. I both can't believe I've already been here for a year and think that this day will never end. After a couple of what I'd call near anxiety attacks, reestablishing my habit of sanity walks and a lot of thinking, I've determined the bizarro time isn't so bizarro at all. See, there's this habit that's easy to get into when you live in a culture that sits in cafes for hours with a shot of espresso and a pack of cigarettes. That habit is killing time. There's no rush for anything. Nothing is waiting and if it is, it's in no rush either. There's no rush for anything. It'll happen when it happens. Unless it doesn't, and that's ok too.

As Americans we are very disciplined, or at least we think we are. We are used to coming into work at a certain time (sometimes running errands or going to the gym before even arriving) and having to-do lists and checking things off and going to meetings with agendas and...just having goals and a point to the actions of the day. What happens when that goes away? What does one do then? What happens is we find all kinds of ways to occupy ourselves, typically to amuse ourselves. Movies and card games and web surfing and online chatting and cleaning and wandering and staring into space and...oh, you get the idea. Luckily, it means we are assimilating into the culture. Unluckily (and non-grammatically), it means we are also going a weeeee batty in the process. Self included.

Much like being unemployed, the thought of free days is liberating and fun at first. Eventually though, when left to our own devices we don't...well...we don't really do much. It's sad, but true. I look back at the last year and I realize that I've convinced myself that it's flown by because I have so little to show for it. I would have done everything I've done in the last year in no more than 2 months in New York...and I would have even watched more movies there!

This weekend was, on paper, an R&R weekend. I really did need time alone and I do have a fondness for vegging and reconnecting with my homebody roots. However, what the weekend really served as was time for me to get some shit straightened out and my ass in gear to actually, I don't know, DO SOMETHING. Granted, I am not sure what exactly that is, but an inbox with less than 100 unreplyed-to messages, a not-so-outdated blog, a cleaner apartment, long walks and some good viewing were part of it.

Daily I am still not sure what I am supposed to be doing at work (though I think I do just as much as other people...if you count my worrying, I do double), but even if I can't solve that I don't intend to just kill time anymore. Well, ok, at least not so much.

Why celebrities save us

2005-10-01T06:45:00.000-05:00

Long ago I got out of the habit of talking about work. It just seemed like I should have better things to talk about (and I did) and that defining myself based on my work was a bad idea (and it is). I just tend to talk about other things. Here, unfortunately, there are a only handful of topics to discuss: work, daily activities, self, what you read/see, other volunteers... There are only so many times one can tell stories of chores and how the language or cultural barrier complicated them before they become stale; you tend to see and read what most others here have (and what people back home did months ago); talking about other volunteers is...messy. More or less, one is left with work and self as primary discussion topics.

In the last two weeks I've had quite a number of successes with my NGO, often attached to good stories. While I've had some experience with smaller successes, I must admit I haven't had significant experiences with larger ones here. I've had ideas implemented, helped write projects that received funding and made people think about things differently, but only now are the benefits of those changes becoming apparent and shaping even more changes. This might actually be working.

In having these successes I've found something odd here in the dynamics of PCVland: happiness can be very isolating. You can have a mental breakdown, be depressed for months at a time, fail at any number of things or majorly screw up nearly anything and people will stand by and support you. However, this is the Ego China Shop and success is a raging bull that threatens to smash everything in sight. The questions start arising: if one person can do it why can't I? What explains that success and the lack of one with me? Do I measure up? In a kind of false bravado, people construct all kinds of reasons why something happened in one place but not with them, almost always depending on the Luck Defense. In fact, all towns and people we work with are different, but people still make of them what they can (or want to) and having that work packaged into a luck-based explanation (or simply undercut in some not-so-indirect way) is disheartening. It's best to just keep these things to yourself.

This and some other observations have led me to recently withdrawing from group functions and from most other volunteers. In addition to not wanting to drown in my own unhappiness, I also have become increasingly discomforted by the apparent social order people have either grown accustomed to or seek. It seems as though many aren't looking for friends who are equals (with successes and failures that don't necessarily coincide), but rather friends who can bask in the glory of their light. My successes or failures have on multiple occasions supported or threatened an unstated social order. I didn't come here to be Barbie to a sea of Skippers, and I sure as hell didn't come here to be Skipper.

With the lines between professional and personal lives being non-existent among volunteers it's difficult to determine when to be supportive/cooperative and when to be competitive. I struggled with that myself, especially in the beginning when my slow-starting nature seemed like it wouldn't get me anywhere at all. The success of others really was difficult to not place on some mental score card where I seemed to be the perpetual underdog. What I've done at this point doesn't add up to a year of "American" work and might not even compare to the accomplishments of others, but... I'm not here for that anymore. Somewhere along the way I lost my self-confidence and self-assured nature. Fortunately (for me), I found it again. I look in the mirror and know what I've done and haven't done. I try and then succeed or fail - either way I get something out of it and remain in tact. Unfortunately, this growth hasn't been universally welcomed.

Despite my "I'm beyond this" tone, I admit to still having struggles. Lots of them. I'm still figuring out things about myself, still growing and changing,still figuring out how to be a better person, still finding Achilles' heels at the most inappropriate times and places. I'm still here to do so much work with myself and with others - journeys best shared with people looking to grow and heal, others comfortable with exposing themselves. However, in a constructed world semi-based on rank and order and filled with fragile egos, who's willing to do that?

Now that work and self are out of the conversation topic list, it doesn't leave much. Got any gossip? Heard the new Death Cab?

Doing the Unstuck

2005-09-01T04:06:00.000-05:00

In 27 hours I will be on my way to Prague. More importantly: leaving Bulgaria and all the craziness that is my life here. My last vacation proved to be somewhat of a mixed blessing - refreshing me, but reminding me what I was missing by having a so-called life here. I add a new dimension to this vacation: an old friend who knows me well. That aspect makes Prague itself seem less exciting. Real conversations with someone who "knew me when" is nearly overwhelming.

My life here has progressed and changed, morphed and evolved in many good ways, but in so many ways I can barely process them. Things are done and undone, fixed and broken, running and then crippled. Each day is indeed a new one, but whether that is good or bad is undecided. It's easy to forget to be light-hearted here, and while laughs are good and strong they sometimes feel too few and far between. I've taken enough hits that my peripheral vision has been greatly reduced. Blind spots are so irritating.

I am giddy with enthusiasm to share my experiences over the last year with a close friend - to hear his perspective, to absorb his insights. Like all great friends, he is good at not only picking up on my blind spots, but pointing them out with care and finesse. It takes a good person to make a swift kick in the pants feel like a bear hug, and I could use a lot of both.

I have a lot of work to do this next year. I'm just feeling stuck. Sinking in the mud of my current life. I know there's a way out, I just can't see it. I need to be refreshed and pushed. I need to have an outside perspective with a brain and heart I can pick. Someone who can help get me out of here, but point me in the right direction. I need someone not involved in it at all, but someone very involved with me. My whole being needs this vacation something terrible.

...Kick out the gloom, kick out the blues. Tear out the pages with all the bad news. Pull down the mirrors and pull down the walls, tear up the stairs and tear up the floors. Oh, just burn down the house, burn down the street! Turn everything red and the beat is complete. With the sound of your world going up in fire, it's a perfect day to throw back your head, and kiss it all goodbye.

Near Wild Heaven

2005-08-16T16:57:00.000-05:00

Surrealism. That's what this is. A few days ago I went to meet the so-called newbies - the fresh batch of Peace Corps volunteers - at the airport. Slightly dazed but eager, they were full of excitement and questions. They'd literally just stepped into the next phase of their lives. It was so easy to feel excited for them and to rattle off answers just as quickly as they could ask them. Everyone on the staff and all the current volunteers were all smiles and laughs. Later, I felt like I'd been momentarily possessed by some happy-go-lucky, huggy spirits that sought to falsely portray PC life. I think they may have succeeded.

My answers to the soon-to-be volunteers were never lies - it is a great time and you do make great friends and it is the best of times (and the worst) and it is totally worth the struggles...sometimes. How does one give a snapshot of PC life that is accurate but not disheartening? That's encouraging, but realistic? That's hopeful, but not toooo hopeful? I attempted to lace my answers with clever wordings and sometimes just by throwing back questions trying to get the question to be narrow enough that I could give honest, positive answers. I was walking a fine line, and probably just confused people even more. Hell, I think I confused myself.

Some time ago the country director dedicated a letter to the topic of these little online journal things - about how they inform and influence incoming or potential PCVs. This is a quote: "the attitude of an RPCV who's been home for two years is often a whole lot more positive, balanced and, I submit, realistic than many PCVs who are in their first year at site." Hm. The letter when on to state that "we all have a responsibility to prepare the newest members of our team for Peace Corps". I often think that some of the staff considers that to mean pumping people full of facts about the country and quirky stories - and both are indeed useful. However, there's a certain Peace Corps reality, the most influential aspect of it, that we face that people don't outline well - the emotional journey.

Everything here feels so raw and every emotion tends to be extreme. A great time feels like you are having the time of your life and a bad time seems like you are three steps from checking yourself into a mental ward. The ping-ponging of your emotions even seems out of your hands. One moment you are dashing towards a touchdown and then some invisible linebacker comes and slams you so hard you can barely breathe. You're playing dodgeball - not with a soft, plastic ball, but with a mace. Think I'm exaggerating? Think again. Every day I wake up unsure about how I really feel, unsure if I am capable of playing the hand that the day will deal me Often it seems like a game, but then other times it feels like my life and sanity are the trophies I hope to be awarded and it just doesn't seem so fun any more. It feels very unsafe.

But, there is the other side. You'll laugh harder with and feel more connected to your fellow volunteers (and faster) than you have to people in years - perhaps ever. You really share a huge life experience with people - you lean on each other, encourage each other and get to know the ins and outs of each other with profound clarity. When you have even the smallest success it feels greater than the enormous ones you had back home. You reintroduce the concept of "first times" into your life, and that can be really amazing. You reshape and redefine yourself. You get to know yourself in a way you never understood before - your strengths and weaknesses, your assets and liabilities and you'll do it with people also growing and expanding - people eager to learn and share. It feels very safe.

Confused yet?

Shortly after leaving the airport, I began my multi-hour journey home and absent-mindedly put on REM's Out of Time. Turns out the album hits a lot of the themes of the PC experience. It is an Endgame - it seems like the rollercoaster is over and then suddenly there's another hill and dip. You're so close to freedom - you're unshackled from the expectations and pressures of home and family and professionalism... "those barricades can only hold for so long"...you "breathe at the thought of such freedom". There will likely be the saddest dusk you've ever seen (or at least feel like it) and you will turn towards believing in (and hoping for) miracles with a tired head and a heartache...Half a World Away. You move in a still frame, howl at the moon; morning will find you laughing; up and down....Low. Knocked silly, knocked flat, sideways down - these things they pick you up and they turn you around... I've everything to show, everything to hide... I would give my life to find it, I would give it all - catch me if I fall... Country Feedback is all too real.

Know what to expect? Think you do? I hope not. You don't. It's better and worse than you think. Be prepared for that. For your skin to not feel like your own and finally feel like your own. Be prepared to feel like everything is finally real, and yet totally fabricated at the same time. Luckily for PCVs when you check your baggage in at the airport they don't have an emotional baggage limit. If they did, every PCV would have some serious fines to pay. Somehow there's this idea when you get on the plane that your physical luggage will go with you but your emotional luggage will stay behind or be transformed. Unfortunately, there is no on-plane lobotomy and the baggage handlers often make mistakes. You arrive as the version of you that you were before. What you do with that is up to you. You can ignore the demons or wrestle with them. You can fight or flight. The best part? It's all up to you. The worst? It's all up to you.

I think that Carl (the Country Director) might be right: the view of returned volunteers is probably more positive and balanced than those of us still in the trenches. However, I don't know that I think it's more realistic. At some point the rose-colored glasses come out and history, instead of being written by the soldiers in war time, is written by the victors afterwards. We all know how that works. If choosing between coming in as upbeat, positive and optimistic or negative and cynical my advice is to choose all of the above. They're all valid and all realistic. I say this not to overwhelm you or discourage you, but to take my responsibility to prepare "the newest members of our team" seriously.

Throw your heart open wide. Be prepared. Leave the expectations at home. It's going to be a bumpy, but amazing, ride. Welcome aboard!

Where's this going?

2005-08-11T12:16:00.000-05:00

My job here is hard to define. I go into work for about 3 maybe 4 hours a day. They exhaust me. Utterly exhaust me. I wanted to do development work when I got here, but now I just want anything but a desk. And you know what work has? Lots of desks. It's not like an American workplace with job descriptions and goals and a general idea of what to do with your day. It's showing up, chatting, hoping something comes out of those chats, finding a new section of the wall to stare at and then leaving. Well, most days.

Last week and the week before, while everyone else was vacationing, I wrote and polished a proposal for a project I'd be really interested in doing - working collectively with my town's non-profits to move them in the right direction. The proposal writing process seemed to be endless and I'm sure there are still parts I could have polished. I was wiped at the end of it. Now, this week, my department is writing a proposal for about 60x more money in, oh THREE days. Am I going insane? Why yes, I am. Thanks for asking. I bust my ass for two weeks only to arrive at a week of stress founded on poor planning and lack of foresight. I need my old gym and a pair of boxing gloves. God, how I miss boxing!

In any case, so I read through this thing and it barely makes any sense. I'm torn. My professional ethics say "suck it up, it's only a couple days". However, I came here for many reasons, one of which was not to work all the live long day. To have better boundaries. To not be so professionally defined. I'm not sure what to do. The project itself COULD be good, but for this deadline? I think not. Too much work. Too much thinking. Too much planning that hasn't been done. It's frustrating. I think I am going to see if they'll take the time to redo it after the deadline with me to show them how it works, or how it should work. To see what a polished finished proposal looks like. However, in part I am also talking out of my ass. I have no clear idea of what a polished proposal looks like, I just know what makes sense, what's logical, what stands out...what looks "polished". I need to ask Peace Corps and other PCVs if they have an example. Something to work from. Hm. Another project.

Here's another problem: I am sick to death of not only offices but projects and proposals. I joined the PC to AVOID this shit. Now, here I am knee deep in it. I bravely jumped ship to dive into something new and just ended in another ship. Explains the headaches, I guess. I just don't know how to escape it here. Organizations want money, the temporary but fun and brag-worthy band-aid. And I'm an American. I am walking money. They don't see my knowledge or skills, just my link to the cash. The pursuit of cash kills development. If I was still interested in policy work, that'd be my grad thesis topic. It gives people, especially people used to depending on the government, an extension on their excuse to not take control of their own lives. To wait for the hero. It gives the idea that your world can and will get better with little effort from you. That there are free lunches.

I spent ten years (off and on) studying politics and economics. I joined the Peace Corps to do development work. Now, though both interest me, I'm unconvinced I want to do either of them for a living. I want to write, but I have to be prepared if that doesn't work...or, for something to do while I make it work. That sounds better. I'm qualified to do a lot, as a friend insisted earlier today, but what do I want to do? Where do I want to apply these skills (which are...??... somewhat unclear to me at the moment)? To what do I apply them? This is what this next year will be about for me, at least in part. Figuring out what's next. What all of my wacky live experiences are pointing me to. Identifying what feeds me and will fuel me too. Or, just figuring out how to make this damn writing thing go. That works too. Ah, so much work to be done...

The reading, the writing... the living

2005-08-09T15:21:00.000-05:00

One of the major joys in my life that I allow to slide by unattended to is reading. The time commitment is an issue, as is my tendency to throw books with bad writing across the room in anger. When a book is worth it, it's really worth it. When it's not, I want to sue for my time back (though at my current wages, it's not really worth the suit). All good books give the reader at least one morsel to chew on for a long time after the actual read - one of my last reads, On Writing by Stephen King is no exception. It's a sort of chit-chatty book about how he became a writer and what to avoid or do in one's own writing (and avoiding a alcohol dependency seems to be part of it).

I'm a major believer in loving a book - really loving it. The first thing a good reader should do to a book is crack that damn spine. A lot of time and heart was put into it and a reader should go in expecting dirty hands - treating a book like it's a fragile, sacred thing only decreases the reader's comfort and increases her distance. My copy of Camus' Stranger has been so devoured that it's held together by a rubberband. All of my notes are in it - each read in a different color so I see how my perception changes, how my connections to Camus do too. My library at home, and a library it is, is a private collection - not just of books, but of notes, underlines, stars and an occasional circle. I go back to books not just for the author's words, but for my own renewed take. It's all I can do to not mark the hell out of a book, which makes relying on borrowed books incredibly difficult. If it's a fluffy read, fine; but if it's a good read, or even one that triggers something in my mind, I want to bend the page, make the words stand out in some way... come on! The author would want me to!

Stephen doesn't have anything to say about my philosophy of reading (probably because it's just so obvious), but he does point out that a good writer is a good reader and an active one. One doesn't create in a bubble and she should be aware of what others have already done - especially what works and what doesn't. The beginning writing mimics good styles and through such flattery begins to tease out what works and doesn't for her - it's a creative playground. Agreed. (Shocking that I haven't been doing either particularly well...)

Stephen also states that a good writer must be a truth-teller - someone completely open and honest.... and (this has been one of my chewy morsels) that "if you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days of a member of polite society are numbered". I've never really prided myself on being a member of "polite society" and think of it as quite a fake bore anyway, so no great loss there. However, how truthful can one be in one's writings without completely ostracizing oneself? Plenty of people have written memoirs about both their personal and professional lives, but how many of those documented people still speak to the author?? I wonder. And think the answer's: very few. I don't consider myself a dishonest person with the people in my life, but I don't think I openly and publicly dissect them either. There's some cruelty in that, even if it's only identifiable by the person themselves. It's something I struggle with though. This blog is introspective, but still rather private. I've mentioned people but not gone into full-blown analyses. There's something incredibly dishonest, and even cowardly, about airing that much laundry to the world, especially when it's not your own. But...when what you see and think about are PEOPLE and RELATIONS how do you not write about what you see? How are you honest but respectful? I guess I still hold on to being polite. Hm.

Another nugget Mr. King threw out there was: "fear is at the root of most bad writing". This (coupled with the fear above) really has me thinking. See, my writing has been complete and utter shite lately. No focus or clarity. No particularly deep thoughts or anything close to an epiphany. Just garble. I feel good as a person, but as a writer I'm running on fumes. I know/think/feel that it's possible and, even typical, to be happy because something is being successfully avoided. I don't think happy people are necessarily avoiders (though I have my suspect) but I do think avoidance can lead to the illusion of happiness. The fact that I have no clarity or focus (or drive even) makes me wonder about the sincerity of my current state. Truthfully, I feel like I've hiked to a plateau and am catching my breath before the next big climb. I'm not staying here and it's not who I am. I'm just getting some refreshments, refueling, taking in the scenery and then starting on my way again. I know this isn't the summit or where I want to be, but I'm ok just enjoying the breeze for now.

Worse thought: happiness is the root of most bad writing. If so, what do you choose? Answer's not so easy on this end. And I suspect I'd choose the writing. In part because I link it to the journey. To the quest. In part, because it's a part of me that has to live. In part because I do believe that permanent happiness is an illusion...and that's the part of polite society that I have no shame bucking.

Great Wide Open Me

2005-08-07T08:29:00.000-05:00

A year ago today I was in Philadelphia having one of my last Starbucks, bored out of my mind (as I always am at conferences) and taking thoughtful glances around the room trying to predict who I'd happily share the next two years of my life with. I remember some faces clearly. Mainly Megan's, Harmonie's, Chad's, Kate F.'s, Brian's and JAG's - all people who, I am happy to say, surpassed my predictions. The rest fall into a sea of faces for me. I didn't go out of my way to talk to many people then, doing as I tend to do: going deeper rather than wider. We were given one of those ice breakers (the premise of ice breakers being "see, we're all dorks now, so relax") where you match people with statements describing them. I think very few people filled my slot in that day - and my sheet was nearly empty. I'd wondered for a second if it was the beginning of me checking out of the experience, but I know now it was really the beginning of me checking in.

Who I was at staging (Peace Corps lingo for "get used to paperwork, folks") is fuzzy. It seems so long ago. I'd just left my family and some friends in KC. Family in St. Louis before that. Friends in Chicago before that. And a life in New York before that. All in less than a month. Everything was in forward motion. Everything was a possibility. I like to think of life in chapters and I'd just closed one and was eagerly awaiting the next - wherever it came from, however it went.

This is one of those long chapters - the ones you wish the author'd split into pieces so you could just go to bed. It's two years and some change. The beginning was full of doubt and a lot of tears. A lot of tearing myself (and various things I'd built around me for comfort) down to make room for something more genuine and authentic. Something more me. I find myself in a stretch now where everything seems almost too good to be true. Work is picking up. I have a life filled with good, caring friends and a social schedule that I can barely keep up with. I've come out of the other side of something - something I still have yet to fully identify - as a version of myself as close to the real thing as I can remember having in the last decade. The laughs outweigh the tears 20:1, at least. Some days are hard, and there are aspects of my growth and evolution that I still struggle with. When I entered this I allowed those days and struggles to define me and sometimes swallow me whole, now they merely serve as a reminder that I still have work to do and encourage me to tip my hat to the work already done.

I wasn't sure why I started this chapter allowing myself to fall apart - to almost shatter. Looking back, I think there's a certain strength in weakness - in allowing your parts to seperate and to go wherever they want to go. Likewise, there's a certain weakness in strength and keeping all your ducks in a row - showing the world the "collected" you. Allowing the pieces of you to drift requires a certain confidence that they have a home to begin with and that they are mature enough to find their way there. It also requires a spiritual strength, one that allows the center of you to hold strong in the mist of a major storm - to not just close your eyes and hope for the best, but to take the helm, let your heart leap out of your chest to and be fully aware of - to fully feel - every drop that hits your face.

Being some place for two years has a few built-in difficulties, the biggest being you're not permanent, though it's too long to act like everything is temporary. You invest and then leave, sometimes investing to leave. I like the idea of not feeling like this is the end - that this is my life. However, I've never been one to establish something temporarily. I'm present. I invest. I care. I don't understand people who think the best way to live is like today is the last day of your life. There's no sharing, no connecting there. And while that's the scary stuff, it's the good stuff too. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was anything in my life that means a damn to me. It's all been a lot of effort and a lot of time. Not all of those investments worked out, but those that did more than made up for those that didn't. I know I'm only mid-chapter because there are still plenty of investments I've made in this experience that the jury is still deliberating. Plus, I know that the most permanent investment I've made here is me... and that's nowhere near completion either.

I think about those days in Philly and wonder how I could have missed all those other faces - some of which mean a great deal to me today. I'm thankful that I've had this time to recognize and share with those people and look forward to another unpredictable year - knowing that the way this works there'll be at least as many downs as ups. I look forward to sharing myself - my full, flawed, fulmmoxed self - with those who care to share themselves. I look forward to working with my town for another year, to seeing what I can offer them and what they can offer me. I look forward to traveling - emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually - in pursuit of greater comprehesion of both myself and this crazy world we live in. I look forward to the laughs, and even the tears if they mean that I entered with an open heart and was earnestly affected.

That form - the ice breaker in Philly that I ignored - was the beginning of me. It was the beginning of me saying "This doesn't fit and I'm not wearing it." Both my clothes and my skin are feeling a lot more comfortable these days and I've never regretted ignoring that form - or the many others I've ignored since.

The bittersweet daily grind

2005-07-18T13:28:00.000-05:00

My municipality is doing repairs for another week and so I am "excused" to work at home for the time being. I went by my other organization today several times and no one was ever there. In short, I had the day off. When you work at a slower pace a day off doesn't seem like a day off at all. Your whole life gets slower and thus a couple hours of tasks takes you all day, making it seem like "work". Life may be in bold italics, but verbs are usually in quotes here. My day was filled with emailing, buying new basil plants, going to the center, dishes, laundry....and that's it. It was my whole day. I really don't know how. In fact, it's 9pm and I just got around to having dinner. I never even got around to repoting the plants.

I've become a little too skilled at killing time here. It's a part of life I've never endorsed or enjoyed. I enjoy going to bed at the end of a long, hard day and knowing I really earned the rest I am about to have - and what a sound rest it is. My rest lately hasn't been so sound - not so much because of anguish, but because of days like today - the difference between being awake and going to sleep isn't that much different - just at a different angle. I've enjoyed exploring life without being professionally absorbed or driven, but in the end it really does matter. I mean, I don't want to operate or be motivated by people's expectations or opinions, but pushing myself and my work forward IS rewarding - and it's rewarding for the right reasons. It's rewarding because I see things changing and developing - and I allow myself to do the same. I don't feel like I get that here - I'm not kept on my professional or intellectual toes. My brain is indeed getting quite mushy these days. ...Psst. And I think I'm getting a little bit boring in the process.

The problem here, to be perfectly honest, isn't a lack of work (I even have several large projects moving forward). The problem is a lack of motivation. I work on my projects well...enough. And I do this blog thing...sometimes. And I read and explore and do things I like to do...on occasion. For an obsessive, motivated person I am quite undisciplined and sloppy. The tug-of-war there is endlessly frustrating. When I do commit to doing something and do it like a habit, it becomes tiresome and I become like a machine, just going through the motions. There's a certain joy that sloppiness and inconsistency allow one to have.

Can I commit to something and make it a part of my daily life without feeling like it's sucking the life out of me? Isn't that the question of my generation??

A piss poor balancing act

2005-07-17T14:03:00.000-05:00

One thing I like about my writing is its ability to tie together, swing wide and then come back and neatly make a narrow point. It requires some focus and some thought. It requires that I be able to do that in my life first, and then in my writing. Recently, as the last entry just mentioned, I lack a certain focus and balance - everywhere. After one of the best weekends I can remember, I spent the majority of today on a bus only to come home to a horrendously dirty apartment and a load of emails. Following one step behind my life.

When I worked fast food and at a movie theater during high school I got to the point where I could predict what meal someone would order or what movie they wanted to see or that they wanted extra butter but a Diet Coke. It was a game I played with myself and sometimes I liked to freak customers out by starting to punch in what they wanted before they even said anything. Part of it was my interest in human nature and in patterns (my personal definition of intuition is "accurate stereotyping"). Part of it was boredom. I think a lot when I'm bored with the outside world (the world in my head is very developed at this point, trust me) and customer service jobs are just about as boring as the outside world can get. Right now though the outside world has taken up camp in my head - I'm having enough trouble just keeping up with it, much less processing anything. My down time is about exhaustion or about preparing for the next thing, not chewing on the pieces of my life to see what's in them.

Peace Corps is about a lot of things, some of which I think I do not yet even know, but one of those things is trying on different life choices and seeing how they fit. I'm trying on a go! go! go! life and I am enjoying it - I just feel like part of me is getting a little lost in the process and I don't know how to keep that from happening. Back in the day, in those customer service jobs, I came up with the theory that to best observe human nature one needs to stay stationary while others pass through, giving the person a quick glance at people and allowing those stereotypes to start flowing. It's why I love to park it on a bench and just people watch - I do extensive people watching in every vacation I take, it's great fun and keeps me on my generalizing toes. I haven't done a lot of sitting still recently (and not conincidently, not a lot of theorizing either) , so my insight into the human condition is pretty rusty, as is insight on my OWN condition. Unfortunately, it's not only something I like to do, but my desire to explain and understand the human experience as best I can is one of the things I like best about myself. In fact, I'd like to make a living off of it someday. Today, however, I didn't even make time for dinner and that's basic Hierarchy of Needs shit. Can't get to self-actualization without being able to feed myself - thanks for that insight, Maslow.

I SWEAR this had a point in my head... Oh, like always, when I get stuck I look for answers elsewhere and here's another astrology thing, which I thought was an accurate description of me and relates (sorta) to my current situation:

April 29

You are a restless soul and though you want security more than anything in your life you seem to be compelled to keep moving. Even if you settle down at times your mind still moves like the wind. You will journey many times in life. These travels may not only be of the world, but of the mind and spirit as well.

You are always learning - the eternal student - so to speak. Your appetite for knowledge is excessive. There is an ancient saying "knowledge is bondage". Know when to say "enough is enough".

One of these days I'll stop doing these fucking annoying blog rambles people love to do and put some meat on the page again. Not today, obviously. You'll just have to stay tuned until I get back there. It might be awhile...

Making a date with myself

2005-07-14T08:30:00.000-05:00

Summer's arrived - or at least the calendar says so. The amount of rain and cool weather seems to be pointing to spring and gives me hope that somehow winter will simply be crowded out this year. Probably not. With summer comes vacations and traveling, something I've managed to dive head first into. I've come to really like and even enjoy Haskovo, but I also know there's a country to see, hiking to do, friends to catch up with, good times to have...oh yeah, and work to do. I cannot remember the last weekend I stayed in town. I think I might have been ill. I've been hiking, wandering through towns, visiting friends, meeting new people and even will head to the beach this weekend (I've always thought of beaches as a thinking woman's hell, but I'm going to give it a go anyway). This has meant that my life is largely centered around the timely unpacking and packing of my backpack. I have no idea what all this other stuff in my apartment is for at this point - I never use it - and the constant in and out makes me feel like I am living in a storage unit (and it looks like I am too). My inbox of undealt with emails is over 100. I haven't spent an evening in the kitchen (something I love to do) in at least a month, probably closer to two.

I state this things not to point to my so-called social importance, but to point out a real quandary for me. I really love seeing people and traveling and I've had multiple weekends that were nothing short of wonderful - I can't name the last bad one I had. But a part of me - part of myself, my life and my duties - is being neglected because of it. I'm a little spent at the moment. Trying to embrace the work hard/play hard mentality has also killed my intellect. Thoughts and insights pop into my head to be quickly pushed out for logistical matters or the topic of conversation at hand. My intellectual and emotional development requires a lot of introspection (arguably I can overengage in such things, I know) and I have simply not had time for it. I feel a little crazed - part of me is being very well fed and another is just getting by on scraps.

Faithful readers may have noticed the recent dearth of entries here - something that is no small matter to me. My writing is my greatest commitment to me - it's my own chat by the fire with a cup of tea with my inner self. It makes me process myself and my world in a way that mere thought and conversation don't force me to do as in depth. Many of my better writings have been fueled by great conversations with like-minded (or not-so-like-minded) people, but when everyone is in vacation mode (and I'm always bopping about) those conversations don't happen so often either. I've had an incredible amount of good chats in the last couple months, but I fail to remember any truly great ones. My writing (both quantity and quality) and my deeper inner self have suffered accordingly.

Due to some bizarre series of social events that has resulting in meeting and connecting with new people, my social circle has expanded to about twice the size it was 4 months ago. There's not a single person I regret meeting or adding to the people I keep in contact with - they are pure joy, I feel no obligation nor sense of weight. I guess I am unsure how to honor the social me that wants to hang and have a good time and connect with people with the introverted me that wants to write and think and read and spend some time in herself. I've tried to think back over my life to whether I've ever achieved both at once - I know I've achieved both individually - and I can't recall that I have. I've flipped back and forth many times, but never rested on a good equilibrium.

Part of the issue is that I am a high contact person - the people in my life are there on a regular (often daily) basis. I want that and expect that - I hate people that just drop in for the big stuff. Yeah, I said hate. People don't get to know me through my big moments - it's the daily messes and teeny struggles and triumphs that show who I (and anyone else) am (is). I am online a lot and have unsaid chat dates with multiple people every day. I try to keep the conversations one-to-one (scattering yourself over multiple conversations just keeps each in second gear AND it annoys the shit out of anyone trying to have a genuine conversation with you - don't be tempted), but it's resulted in me being online at least 4 hrs a day. That's a lot of time staring at the screen, writing, but not really.

The struggle here isn't deciding who to keep and discard (it's not even a question - every friendship is unique and wonderful, why else would you have it?) but balancing what I give myself with what I give others. It's my lifelong struggle, especially since the time and energy I give others I also see as something I give myself. I guess I just need more alone time. To quote Oprah (as I love/hate to do):

Alone time is when I recharge and go back to my center, distancing myself from the voices of the world so I can hear my own with clarity. It's when I consciously count my blessings, take a deep breath, and try to absorb the wonder and glory of all my experiences.

Having a grand time, but I've been kinda missing me lately. Time to fix it (again).

A few of my favorite things...

2005-07-07T10:17:00.000-05:00

As the season has included more rain and storms (storms providing me a private, happy place) I am reminded to note a few of the things I genuinely appreciate about this wacky country I'm living in. Some of them are, in no particular order:

storms, especially ones that make the electricity go out
walking to work
zoning out/reflecting on the long bus rides
seeing the country change and develop right before my eyes
the universal curiosity of children
witty and/or loving text messages
Bulgar English/American Bulgarian
access to mountains and the beach
friends who are excited to see me, and who make sure it happens as often as possible
friends I can't wait to see
getting to know friends better, seeing each other through good and bad times
long sits in outdoor cafes
seeing my NGO develop and being a big part of that
students in my building who are genuinely happy to run into me
the smiles I get when I arrive to work
online chats that last for hours and hours
real, in-person chats that last until we can't keep our eyes open (and even a little after)
meeting country people who are tickled to meet an American
hiking
long walks through my town, others too
the people in the veggie market who insist on helping me find the best veggies
people I pass who look at me like I'm not from around here, but who think that's just fine
second hand clothes stores
knowing that I am changing and developing every single day
the guy who works at my favorite dooner stand
Toni and Veneta
the moment my bus pulls into Haskovo and I feel like I'm home
my growing balcony garden
having an evening cup of tea on my balcony
reading
my local internet server (illegally hosting copies of lots of movies)
my Camelbak - well, all my backpacks, really
veggies - yum!
Plovdiv
getting packages and cards
sharing music with friends
my apartment (when it's clean)
taking more pictures
taking more time with things and with people
detaching from being professionally driven
people watching
my laptop, my savior
candles
cheap, good wine
waking up in the mountains
sunflower and lavender fields
picking fruit right off the tree and eating it
napping
losing myself to see what I can recover
the best sound in the whole world: genuine laughter

Just sharing...

2005-06-21T12:14:00.000-05:00

An astrologer did a mini personal reading for me, based around my Saturn return (previously discussed). Some of it is as follows:

You have Saturn and Mars together in Cancer in the 5th house and are experiencing your SR [Saturn Return] right now! ...Your house of romance is afflicted but the house of marriage is fine. If you will switch your emphasis from wanting romance and put it instead on "marriage", you should accomplish that goal within 6 months now that your SR is over.
It seems you have been concentrating on the tangible things in life, getting help to people in terms of goods and resources, foodstuffs, help building, medical supplies, etc. but your real interest, aim, passion and goal in life is to learn about and talk about what motivates people and what are their inner resources, the invisible qualities that make some people thrive in adversity and some people cave in and cry "Uncle!"

You are well qualified to write if this is what you will write about. It must be deep writing, though it can be ironically humorous as well, and it must deal with the real lives of lifelike people!

You've had many lifetimes as an island unto yourself and it is time to reach out to others in order to get the energy you need for transformation. You've gone as far as you can go solo. You NEED other people though that thought hardly ever occurs to you... You need to "lose yourself in another to find yourself" so go and do that.

I don't feel any need to comment.

Not in Kansas anymore

2005-06-18T10:21:00.000-05:00

There reaches a point in every blogger's life where one thinks, "Fuck! Where do I even begin." Yeah, I'm there. So, I will begin again by really not beginning at all.

There are these fragrances that I love back in the states from a company called Demeter. They are sort of wacky and offbeat, but there's usually at least one that people are really drawn to. Having a conversation with a close friend today about these (don't ask, I just have strange conversations), I looked them up online and was surprised what they considered to be "pick me up" scents. Things like: funeral home, glue, condensed milk, poison ivy and holy water make me think that people really are very screwed up (that and there are WAY too many alcohol and food smells - don't alcoholics and overeaters already smell like that?). The scents I'm drawn to aren't that typical either: laundromat, tomato, thunderstorm, paperback and crust of bread. The scents you find intriguing are most likely random as well (feel free to share).

I just realize time and again that our senses all have their own memories and can bring old feelings back just by being excited. I remember hearing the footsteps of coworkers before I saw them every morning, the smell of the soap a friend used, the heat of my mom's kitchen, the tilt of the seat in my car. That's one thing that you never get used to when living abroad - the lack of bumping into your old senses, of being taken to a time and place that was so enveloping you feel you are back there instantly. There are new sounds for sure: the laughter of friends, the smell of the veggie market, the sudden drop in temperature you feel when entering a blok apartment building, but their presence without the historical reminders makes for some serious reality doubting. It's like being a baby - when people walk out of the room they really do disappear to you, there's no concept of what they are doing when not within the senses. You have no history comprehending this place and these people. What it all is and means seems so questionable. So very foreign. So isolating.

When I think about landing in the States I think about seeing loving faces, hugging the people I miss so much. But I also think about that moment. The moment where you step out of the airport and are hit by the local temperature and smells. When I suddenly remember that it was just like this that one time... I've had some "that one time"s here and somehow they manage to be a little sad. Something that passed so quickly - too quickly. Things shouldn't be over already, but they are. My term is nearly half complete. I've seen half the things I will probably see, done half the things I will do...only made half the mistakes I will make. My senses are overwhelmed with what to take in and what to leave out, what to analyze and what to take at face value, what to mourn the loss of and what to cherish the memory of (and what to fight like hell to keep). My time here is so long and yet so limited. My entire body is still adjusting - still figuring out how much is too much and how much isn't even close to being enough.

My full presence is needed here, I'm just still not sure where I am.

J-complex in B-overly so

2005-05-31T15:01:00.000-05:00

I am not the person who stepped off the plane last August, for better and for worse. I've lost some of me and gained some parts I never knew were there. I'm less confident that what I'm doing - at any given time - is the right thing (and I never needed any help in the overthinking department). I'm less conviction driven. I often feel (and fear) I am less intellectually curious. Emotionally...I am all over the place.

I feel more like a global citizen - a certain inherent respect for the places I've seen and will see. I have a greater comprehension of the little underlying differences that most tourists never see. I've finally started questioning what I want to receive validation from, and not just seeking it from safe though ultimately unfulfilling sources. After several years of hiding from the New York social scene to avoid the awkward silences people gave me when they learned I was still getting my BA (after which I often took pride in introducing them to some intellectual whoop ass), I feel like I am finally honoring that extroverted and social part of me that was trying to claw her way out (I mean, I wasn't online earlier and a friend texted me to ask if I was ok. Um, yeah. Chat addict.).

Through the process of becoming both bigger and smaller, I have also become - a bit to my own dismay - more complicated. As I speak I add clauses and qualifiers to nearly everything. God help me if I learn to footnote my blog entries! We are a product of our environment though, and this is a complex one indeed. No one fully understands this experience like another volunteer, but speaking to someone about your complaints or fears or secrets opens the highway for gossip and misinterpretation. Having issue with another volunteer, something bound to happen, is the worst. Something that would typically be a personal issue - sometimes very personal - and would rest with close, trusted friends has no place to call home. Keeping the feelings and quips internalized isn't healthy, and your choices of who to lean on are those in the distance (and with great distance from your present life) or those who are also the friends, colleagues and support of the other. There are no noble or right options there. Throw in some emotional instability (often towing her ugly friend Bad Judgment) and confusion and you may very well have a disaster.

I came here to make mistakes and test who I am. I just wanted to do it tucked away, in a provincial environment. One that somehow managed to not to close in on itself. I want this to be both smaller and bigger.

The Ultimate Answer: 42

2005-05-29T01:07:00.000-05:00

College philosophers may sit around and discuss what the meaning of life is, but Peace Corps volunteers sit around and ask their own unanswerable question: why do we stay? I've never met someone with a good answer and last night, a friend and I went into another round of questioning this only to conclude (seriously): we want our moms. It's so adventurous, eh?

Like philosophers, we tend to construct more questions than answers. The questions are something like: What would we go back to? Where would we go? Would I be abandoning people here? Would I be a failure? What am I missing here? Would I be missing it someplace else? Am I sacrificing something by leaving? By staying? What did I come here to do? Have I done it? Why did I even think this was a good idea in the first place? Is there a secret (besides alcohol)? Can I have it? What if we just all left en masse?

Why do I stay? I really don't know. I think about it often. About leaving too. What would it take for me to call it quits? Up until last week I couldn't visualize the process of leaving, that's how I knew I wouldn't. But, suddenly, it seemed easy to take stock of what in the apartment was worthy of being taken back and a bus ride to the Peace Corps office followed by the simple phrase "I want a ticket home" seemed like a clear and simple solution. Seeing that made finding the answer to the question that much harder.

I look forward to things here, but they are mainly times with other American friends. Like an 80s factory worker waiting to be rescued, I live for the weekends. That's when I see people and get out. That's when I connect. Being stuck at home for the last two weeks (and weekends) has not been good on the ol' psyche. Once those things I look forward to disappear, the lack of answer to The Question becomes all too nagging. Two weeks of being sick and nagged can make anyone bitchy.

There are times when the question disappears, I guess those times are the answers. Those times are always centered on really good times with friends. I don't know why I stay in the larger sense, but in a day-to-day sense I stay for them. I stay because there are good people here - good people who are my life rafts. Every day I, and many other volunteers, board a sinking ship because we know there are life rafts. Seems like an odd reason to climb aboard, eh?

2005-05-25T10:59:00.000-05:00

New York State of Mind indeed...

A hard day's night

2005-05-25T10:22:00.000-05:00

Some days your life does not seem your own. None of your clothes are what you'd pick to wear. Nothing in your apartment seems like it should belong to you. The food in the fridge seems like it was picked for another girl's palate. The music you own seems like it's almost right. Your friends seem like obligatory postcards instead of the warm, inspiring letters they usually are. Some days everything is...off.

Today, if you couldn't guess, is one of those days. A day when nothing really seems funny or light and everything conveys meaning to your subconscious in a way your self-respecting conscious mind says "no, seriously...where'd you get that?!" There's a storm that keeps passing over town. It rumbles and looks like it's about to pour but never does. Today's sort of like that. I wish it would just storm like hell or pass, but instead everything just kind of lingers and leaves me waiting for the verdict. That's what's driving me mad about today. I feel like it's a waiting day, that there are outcomes out of my control that could seriously impact my life and I can't do much about them.

I've never been a bystander in my own life - I've done all I could to not be that. I've made choices and sacrifices that, in the end, I seriously doubted or even regretted but I always knew they were mine. There's something about Peace Corps that makes you feel like you become just that - a bystander. You're given a town, a job and an apartment. Your job? Stay. It's like I left the country and became a dog. I'd love to be in a car right now driving the country roads with some music turned up loud enough for it to take over my head. But I can't drive here. I'd love to be someplace better, fuller. I'd love for my friends to not all be hours away. But reality is something different. Something so much different. Too much different.

I was listening to Billy Joel (see, I told you my music selection was off - I sunk to Billy Joel!) earlier. When you're from New York, one of the worst songs to hear on a hard day is "New York State of Mind". It somehow captures how you are feeling and makes you want to run to the nearest airport. I wonder why I am here. Why I stay. Why I know I have talents and skills that would get me a job almost anywhere I wanted and yet I don't go. I wonder how long it would take to pack all this stuff. How much would I want to take anyway? I wonder how many people would care; how long it would take people to notice if I didn't tell them. I wonder in 5 years if I'd regret staying or leaving more.

I just want answers. And to have my life stop feeling so damn affected by external changes. I want to stop feeling like a basketcase all the time. I was to stop feeling like an egg, kept together only by a thin shell - one that with the smallest crack sends me uncontrollably splattered all over the place. I want to stop feeling so alone.

The rain's started, which means the internet will go soon. Be careful what you wish for.

2005-05-23T11:20:00.000-05:00

Danish life and color...just hours from Bulgaria

Finders keepers?

2005-05-23T11:12:00.000-05:00

What seems like a million years ago, but was really more like a week, I was in Copenhagen. I was sitting by bodies of water, reading and sipping mochas between long strolls in some of the most livable neighborhoods imaginable. I was just doing whatever I wanted to do...living life on my own time. Only vacations aren't life. They're a whirlwind romance with a potential life where everything is new and fresh and exciting. In short: it's false. Like all romances though, it's an intoxicating falseness. If not resisting is part of the fun, I had an amazing time.

Keeping consistent with myself, though, I knew even as I was sampling the cafes and tucked away boutiques that while it would be fun to live in Copenhagen (and I would seriously jump at the chance) I couldn't possibly do it for more than a couple of years. It's not that the romance would wear off - there was some substance to my love of the place (clean, diverse, amazing mass transit, bicycle and pedestrian friendly, loads of young - or whatever I am now - professionals living healthy lifestyles, water everywhere) - but there's an acknowledgement that I need to be challenged and pushed and, in many ways, made uncomfortable. I like to grow and I need those things to do so. With that in mind, I knew that Copenhagen could never be my long-term home. The full realization that I was spending a life running from comfort was a bit saddening, though it helped explain some random life choices. By the end I really envied the couples having quiet dinners and wine with friends. Not because they had it and I didn't, but because it filled them in a way it never would fill me. I know I can't live the simple life, but like vacation spots, it was fun to romanticize that I could and that fullness was something I could find - it's why I used to eat so much...a search for fullness of any kind.

I returned to a rather easy adjustment - an evening and day in Bulgaria's capital city with my friend Megan where we stayed up and swapped tales until we just couldn't say one more syllable and then woke up to go to coffee and repeat. Sometime between our chats and laughs and my return to my apartment (which no longer held the sense of home it had when I left) I caught a cold that turned into bronchitis. In addition to being one of the worst welcome home gifts I could have imagined, it cancelled my trip to Turkey and helped smack me against the Bulgarian quasi-reality wall with astonishing speed. Suddenly my movements were restricted and I felt like hell. Everywhere I went with my sneezing and coughing I was looked at like a walking virus. All the feelings of imprisonment and discontent I left behind were somehow transformed with the volume turned to "head rattling". Going from Copenhagen to this was simply whiplash.

So, I am here in my apartment just before dusk on a night begging for a long stroll, because I can't breath so well and I can't be away from a pot of tea for more than about 30 minutes. I sit here and not in Istanbul with friends because the bus ride was just too long as was the risk of additional attackers on my weak immune system. I suddenly feel just that: weak. And alone. Like the world is too much for me, and too little. Like I need to figure out how to accept a life of quiet dinners and find contentment in cafes. I feel like a duck, one being prepared for the dinner table but still dreaming of southern migration. I just want to be someplace and be happy that I'm there - to have it be real and without qualifiers - even if it's only for a little while. I know my fullness doesn't last, I just want to be big enough to find it...and still dream of being small enough to keep it.

Getting off script

2005-04-26T12:10:00.000-05:00

Once you are a Peace Corps volunteer you begin to understand that as soon as you get comfortable and start to cruise along, an identity/emotional crisis is just around the next bend. It's spring. We are all happy to have sunshine and warm weather. We're traveling more. Opening the windows and letting the dirt and debris freely drift in. Ah! Perhaps that's why so many of us are now revisiting why we are here and asking "what the fuck am I supposed to be doing?" See, those of you watching at home think this is...damn strange. It's spring! Enjoy! Frolic! (OK, no one I know would say frolic, or encourage me to do so with a straight face, but you catch my drift.) Those of us not yet voted off the island see such spender as a time to pull out the berets and black turtlenecks and ask "Why? Why me?" It's our own special cult ritual.

There are reasons to stay, for sure. The country is really beautiful and there are lots of outdoorsy explorations to be had. We've all made great friendships here, and I count myself among the luckiest in both quantity and quality in that sphere. We really see things that need to be change and want to help change them. We still believe, in our heart of hearts, that the world can and should be a better place and we want to do our part for that. We still want to buy the world a Coke. Sigh. Again, the viewing audience and the players are seeing two different things. You see greatness, nobility, fortitude, perseverance. We see...handcuffs. We have NO idea how to make this happen. It's not like we just walk into an office and say "ok, your change agent is here!" and everyone breathes a sigh of relief and breaks into applause (see, that was our secret dream - no seriously, it kinda was). People don't care and those that do care don't believe something can actually be done about it. People are not so happy with their lives, but they are OK with them...and they don't wish to risk something that's ok for some crazy idealistic American, thank you.

Embedded in the issue is the phrase "walk into an office". See, again, you at home might think an office is a comfortable work environment. You might even use *gulp* "natural". Or *flinch* "thoughtful". We are going to politely but insistently disagree. See, we left our offices (some recent college graduates (RCGs) left before they even got one), because we wanted to do more, think bigger, get our hands dirty, think about problems outside of reports and spreadsheets. We packed up and moved across the ocean to be given 9-5 working hours and have a poorly designed desk. It's slow, but deliberate torture. We make less, use a worse computer, sit at a more uncomfortable desk, do less challenging work and live away from our family and friends. This would almost - ALMOST - be ok if we felt as if we were really accomplishing something. But are we? Doesn't really seem like it. We're free spirits - the kind that make you jump into a developing country where you don't know anyone - the kind that flees monotony, basic daily life and a job you don't truly love.

I've written this entry outside of my usual first person form, not because I've suddenly decided to become the Royal We (though it would be funny to just switch to that and make no mention of it), but because I keep having these conversations with person after person. The conversations we have with people outside this experience are often different that those we have with others in it. We show personal struggles that we could be having anywhere (she said then he did...), tell about whatever work we are involved in (or hope to be involved in) and share culture tidbits. Telling you why we stay is so much more complicated. Most of us aren't really sure, and sometimes the answers aren't so pure - we often just stay because we don't know what else we'd do (in fact, that's the usual reason). We're really still searching for answers (even finding new questions from time to time), and that search isn't something that's so easy to share. Some days it feels like you have less than you started the experience with and you fear, as a friend phrased it, that you are wasting good muscle. It makes you feel that you are worse for the wear. That you have shrunk in some way. That horrible feeling is our dysfuntional, semi-abusive relationship with the experience. We stay because we came to become better - bigger in some way - and we think next week/month/season will be different. And we are different, even bigger and better in some way, but the struggles and the frustrations continue. Sometimes the berets and turtlenecks resurface out of depression, other times frustration, other times annoyance, other times a complete lack of self-worth. They are barely taken off long enough to be stretched out by the unnecessarily rough washer and dried crunchy in the sun.

Like all beret and turtleneck wearers, we generally keep to ourselves - it's a style that just isn't accepted outside the circle. In fact, like all socially imposed uniforms and philosophizing circles, it's a little ridiculous and self-indulgent. We know that. But we came here to be a little of that. Or a lot. Whatever. In the end, I guess the message is this: from the comfort of your homes this may look a little more noble, a little cleaner, a little simpler than it is. On set, it's just fucking emotional chaos.

Finally inviting myself to the party

2005-04-17T15:39:00.000-05:00

If you've ever had a conversation with me you know I like to solve the world's problems - or try to. I am a theorist who didn't want to spend her life writing for obscure journals that no one but my poor students read (and they only read them because I made them). I like to solve puzzles. I am often guilty of telling people why something will not work. It makes me seem like the World's Biggest Pessimist. I'm not. Really. I want the answer and I want it so much that I pick holes in every answer presented so that I know if it's not the right one I can keep searching. My external pessimism is internal optimism: the great answer exists, just keep at it.

Being here, in Bulgaria, where everything is just-not-so, I want change. Change, change, change. I want people to understand things can be bigger, better, faster. There can be more. Go! Get out of that comfort zone! Explore! In my head, I admit, my thoughts were of the asshole variety: "Look at me! I did it! I came here!" Yeah, for all you PCVs and future PCVs out there: that's being an asshole. I came here with the backing of the US government, with a job, with housing and salary provided, with access to modern medicine, with a ticket home if I needed it. That's not leaving the comfort zone, that's moving to a different comfort neighborhood. Here's your Whizzo button. You moved.

Comfort zones are more personal, less tangible. It's not about where you are necessarily, but about what you do there. I live in a nice apartment that I've made quite comfortable (those who've seen my old places can imagine). I have good friends here. I live in a fairly cool town, by local standards. I have internet and a cell. I travel. Comfort, comfort, comfort. Not change, change, change.

I came here for change - I've even found a good bit of it. I've been earnestly working on myself for almost 9 months. I'm in a different head space. I'm coming into feeling and being more me than I have in years. I even suspect that I may leave here feeling more like the real me than I ever have... it just requires this next step. True change.

Faithful readers will note that after pushing aside this blog every so often I "recommit" to it. I make it seem like it's a person. An obligation. That's not change for me. I commit to people and to felt obligations all the time (*psst* you can guilt me on just about anything - I'm a pushover like that). That's the old me pretending to be a new me. That's not change - that's smoke and mirrors. Change for me is simple: it's not moving 1/2 way around the world, it's not adding on another task. It's committing. Committing to me. For me.

Why do I keep committing to do this? It's a blog. Lots of people dump their blogs for quite some time. No one dies. It's not a lifeline....wait. It is. For me, yes, it is. I've spent some time thinking this weekend about who I am and who I "wanted to be when I grew up" - I began to wonder if I'm honoring that. My biggest goal in high school was to get out. I wanted that bigger, better, more that I mentioned. I was going to find it. I conscientiously made a choice. I remember making it. It was the 8th grade. I was a straight-A student. I was popular. I was involved in lots of social and extracurricular activities. I loved art and writing. I wanted to never live in poverty again. My mind took over my heart. It told me: you want out? Study, poor people don't get rich through art and writing. I haven't touched a paintbrush since, and my proverbial pen has been all but exclusively reserved for work and academics. As the saying goes, I died a little bit that day.

This blog is a first attempt at resuscitating that girl. That dream. I never dreamed of working at a desk. Of writing reports. Of fluorescent lighting. I never wanted to be a spreadsheet slut when I grew up. In middle school I had a slumber party every year for my birthday. I do not exaggerate when I say that it was the party of the year. Who was invited was a big social call on my part: don't hurt people's feelings, but don't invite the annoying girls either. It started Friday and went until Sunday evening. Non-stop middle school fun. One year I wrote the invitation. It was in the form of a story or something. I don't fully remember. I typed it up and gave it out. It was about 3/4 of a page long. I wish I still had that, as inspiration. Whatever it was, it was laugh-out-loud funny to everyone. People were quoting it for months afterwards. I don't remember the party that year, or whom I invited but I remember writing that invitation and the response it got. That writer - that's who I wanted to be when I grew up.

In high school I was an REM girl. It was the beginning of my obsession with lyrics - poetry with music. I can't imagine that anyone who knew me at that time doesn't associate me with their music - I listened to it all the time. My favorite album was "Life's Rich Pageant". I don't listen to it much these days, but I do recall the richness of the lyrics. In fact, when I was thinking about this post the following verse came to me:

Trust in your calling, make sure your calling's true
Think of others, the others think of you
Silly rule golden words make. Practice - practice makes perfect
Perfect is a fault, and fault lines change

I haven't trusted my calling, although I now think it's true and I forget sometimes that the others think of me....I did practice. I spent many years learning the rules and trying to be perfect only to realize perfection is a fault. Who wants to be perfect? That's damn boring and I have no toleration for boring.

Doing this blog is change - the biggest change I've made in some time. It's not about keeping on task or even about the writing. It's about me - about honoring my calling, what I can and want to be. It's about accepting that I'm not perfect (perhaps even a little messy) and I don't really want to be (I don't want to be messy either, but that's another struggle).

I used to have this rule of thumb that I followed: be where you want to be and be fully present when you're there. If you can't be where you want, do whatever you can to get there. Don't dishonor the people in your life by asking them to help you kill time - truly want to be with them or leave. I've followed the rule fairly well, though there were certain loopholes I gave myself. My dating life has been pretty non-existent -- I was never someplace I didn't want to be, I just wasn't where I wanted. My dating life is still non-existent. There's no external change there, though there has been enormous internal change. For the first time in my life I am single not because I think I am unworthy of being cared for, but because I know I am worthy - of myself foremost. I want to invest in caring for me. In knowing me. I want to develop the richness I know is inside and I want it to be self-defined. I deserve to give myself that - and time for that process. I want to really enjoy my own company (again). I want to be with me.

On the outside I must look the same. Still in Bulgaria, still single, still writing. On the inside though, it's a different ballgame. It's not about proving to people that I can stick it out. It's not about fearing rejection. It's not about just putting words out there. It's about honoring and developing me. Me for me is so new and inviting. Turns out I'm not a total asshole (shut up), change is what I believe in.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it

2005-04-16T10:06:00.000-05:00

It's Saturday. I feel a little hungover. Sounds seem too loud or as if they are coming through a muffled tunnel (yes, I know - those are my ears). My head feels clogged. I'm a little achy. And tired.

You might be wondering what I did last night - sounds like I had quite a time, right? Well, I watched "Being Julia" and ate popcorn. No alcohol. I was hungover then too. The night before?? Nothing...I drank Wednesday night. Seriously - WEDNESDAY. I met a friend for drinks and was looking to get a little tipsy. Well, I skipped that part (once an overachiever, always one) and went straight for deliriously intoxicated. And sick. So very sick. I have no idea how I got through that night - it was quite a mess. I will spare you the details....let's just say my body rapidly started detoxifying itself. I have never been that sick or drunk in my life. Ever.

For those who don't know me, this may make me seem like quite the lightweight. Friends back home can testify, however, that I can hold my own with the best of them (well, ok, not my mom who has a special compartment or something that I didn't inherit). There were times when I was quite the drinker indeed. There are two changes here: 1) Bulgarian alcohol is really, really low-grade, bottom-shelf stuff. I'm not being catty, just honest. My dad wouldn't strip a deck with this stuff. When I drank in the States I was more of a top-shelf gal (surprise!). That difference couldn't not have helped matters. 2) Ick. As I approach my 29th birthday, I am reminded that I am getting older and perhaps I just shouldn't assume I can pound them back as well or as quickly as before. I don't mind the aging process (in general) and even look forward to turning 30 (and getting out of the 20s, which I consider dreadful) . It's just hard to think that I'm reaching that watch-what-you-drink-and-take-your-pill stage. I have no pills...yet.

So, this is my theory: my body (light on food) didn't take well to low-grade gin (and quite a sum of it). It rejected it and in the process took a swing at my immune system. That's what I'm fighting - a weakened immune system. Not a 2.5 day hangover. Not my age... Makes sense.

All this theorizing and explaining is making me tired. I think I need a nap.

Life's candy: Finding and capturing the moment

2005-04-12T12:08:00.000-05:00

My counterpart (Peace Corps speak for colleague-type person) came back from a trip to France today. With her she brought French candies (when people travel here they always bring back candy to share - it's a nice tradition and it brings people in to hear your stories) along with small gifts for the department staff. And, of course, stories.

I've spent some time, I admit, making fun of how Bulgarians tell stories. They're not actually stories - they tend to be a statement of fact about something or a retelling of a thirty second exchange. My counterpart happens to be a great non-storyteller. Even with my limited Bulgarian I know that she's damn funny. She gets really excited and builds up to the end. She has the right timing and knows her audience. All traits of a good storyteller. As I'm listening to her non-stories I'm thinking: Well, these are good. What's wrong with the other ones? I thought that maybe there are just a lot of bad storytellers here, but that seemed really narrow-minded. Then, I though about it and realized there aren't very many good American storytellers either (see, I'm not narrow-minded - just snotty... and yes, your stories are TOTALLY interesting, really). Hearing good non-stories forced me to ponder what was in them - there's something there that they are conveying. And then it hit me: they are sharing their moments, not their stories.

We Americans, even if we understand nothing else, understand marketing. We understand the buildup and the punchline and attaching descriptors to every aspect. We dress things up. We make it look meaty. I think Bulgarians don't quite get the marketing aspect of stories. But just because it doesn't come out with all the right bells and whistles doesn't mean nothing's there. Her stories were about fighting with a waiter. About how she knew they spoke English, but wouldn't (and she's a Bulgarian - so it's not just us). About how someone brought cheese on the bus and everyone assumed someone hadn't showered. Lots of little things. Moments. As the moment-telling realization hit me, it also hit me that these things were really personal. They were entertaining, sure, but moreover they were the snapshots she took in her head - the moments that she fully remembered and that she really responded to. The simpleness of these non-stories went from feeling really distant to being really intimate. It said: this is what happened. You know how I feel. It was pure...and unmarketed.

After lunch, I went to my other job with a package I got today. They asked what was in it and I ripped open a bag of Jelly Bellys (thanks, Diana) which was among the lot of snacks and things in the box. They insisted that I not share - that they were for me and that I missed those things. I insisted back (something I've learned here) and poured them some. They each took one politely and bit into the JB. Instantly their eyes lit up and big smiles came across their faces. They loved them. They were so happy. Each one, a different and wonderful flavor - as you know - provided them with renewed joy. They told me how great and inventive my country was. That I was so kind and giving to share with them. Somehow the JBs were like a fruity, slushy beverage which greased the conversation enough to allow them to tell me that Taureans (my sign) are the best lovers - that you'd never know it because they don't advertise it, but they are incredibly attentive and exciting. Perhaps all the unexpected yumminess of the JBs started the conversation, perhaps it just came from no where. Having your colleagues suspect you of being a great lover though is quite a moment indeed.

That last bit: that was a fully marketed story. Seeing the explosive flavor of a Jelly Belly in someone's eyes who is tasting it for the first time, that was a moment. Knowing that I was sharing something common to me, but that was really grand to someone else...that was a moment too. Having your co-workers talk about the sex life of your astrological sign only to pause, scan you and conclude "yep, you too" was, of course, another.

Listing those three moments was much more personal than telling the story. And they said more, if you really took them in. It's easy to conclude that Bulgarians are distant and closed, but I think their willingness to share their moments is evidence of the contrary. If we shared our moments more openly - more simply - we'd show a lot more of ourselves. We'd put it out there in a really naked way, but only for those thoughtful and insightful enough to see it. Are we afraid of being naked? Or that people aren't tuned in enough to see it? Perhaps that we'd be expected to tune in right back?

Moments, unlike stories, are purely accidental, or at least unplanned. They come and go quickly, but leave a lasting impression. You can construct a situation enough to get a story out of it, but will you get a moment? A moment is a connection - be it with your heart, your mind, your soul or just your funny bone. Knowing that people here cherish the moments makes me like them more. It makes me connect with them more. It also makes a few things make sense. If you cherish moments, changing situations and constructing a new way of life can seem pointless - the good things come when they come. I don't live that way - I think making changes creates more moments, good and bad - but I see how people could, especially people who are avoiding bad moments.

I tell lots of stories (and, yes, they are good - thank you), but to be sincere, my fondest and most important memories are moments. You'll know what they are when I tell a story. I'll dwell on the details. I get glassy-eyed as I remember the sounds and the scents and the textures around me. Some I don't share - they'd be Bulgarian non-stories...I just can't imagine cloaking them in anything or connecting them to conversation in some meaningful way, so they remain private. Private treasures. My secret stash of candy. I'd share, but I don't know what you'd do with unwrapped candy.

Daily boringness, followed by friendly goodness.

2005-04-11T14:47:00.000-05:00

Recommitting to writing in this thing on a daily basis, I sit here at close to 10pm and wonder what to write about. Not every day can be deep and earth-shattering. Thank God! Today was no exception: I went to work #1 (the municipality) killed time until lunch....went to work #2 (the NGO) chatted for a bit about actually trying to do something meaningful while I'm here (God forbid). Then I came home, chatted online a bit with some friends, talked to the Peace Corps staff about being placed in a project factory that doesn't actually do or change anything and then watched "Hidalgo" while eating chicken parm. Yeah, I could have done that anywhere.

After all of that though I caught my friend Meg online. Meg rocks, that's the gist of it. I want to meet more of my future friends the way I met her: by interviewing her. See, I don't follow those interview rules of asking questions like "what is your biggest weakness?" No, I make the person keep up with me in conversation. It requires someone to be quick and smart and to not annoy the crap out of me (the last being the most important and most rare). I can work with most shortcomings beyond that. So, the person I interviewed before Meg was perfectly smart and lovely, but she would have been more comfortable working with someone more, er, tactful. I test for that too. I get riled up about work sometimes and I need someone who can hack it. Also, I like relaxed work environments and in a relaxed setting conversation can get pretty darn candid. A person doesn't have to contribute to bawdy conversation, but they can't be offended either. Luckily I had a good example to offer: the day before the staff was engaged in a conversation about high colonics. It got detailed and loud and we were laughing our asses off. I mention this to girl #1 and her eyes got really big and she squirmed. Um, no. Mentioned it to Meg and she leaned forward and said "Really? Like what about them?" That's when I knew. Meg and I were meant to be.

Our work relationship was really casual and included a lot of laughing and just having a good time. Well, tonight's conversation was no exception. Meg knows me pretty well - she knows when to push things or poke fun, when to sympathize and when to just say "that's fucked up". It's like a good counselor mixed with a drinking buddy. Actually, it's just like a really amazing drinking buddy. God, I wish Meg was here (and brought good beer with her). I could really use a good drinking buddy right about now. Someone to piss and moan and laugh with. Here's to Meg. Cheers!

PS - As a further ode to Meg: In our IMs tonight, I mentioned this posting to her, esp. the high colonic part, and among her comments were: "is a high colonic more 'cathartic' than a regular colonic?" Nice.
PPS - Yes, yes, I know. My hiring practices are totally illegal. Luckily, the only people bold enough to sue me are those I'd hire.

Typecasting...myself

2005-04-09T19:26:00.000-05:00

I've mentioned that I believe people join the Peace Corps to help others, but to mainly help themselves. We've all jumped out of a life of comfort (varying degrees, of course) and safety to the great unknown to wrestle with things. I am most certainly no exception. The two biggest things I've come to tackle here are my perceptions of myself (and how they limit me) and the roles that I play (and how they limit me). How I see myself helps determine the roles I play, and my roles help influence how I see myself. It's all a big, nasty, circular mess. That's what I'm here for.

I've shed some of my roles and I'm working on others. If I can get out of even a few self-doubts and confining roles in my two years, it will be two years well spent (personally well spent ...Professionally? I'm still not sure about that). One of my trickiest struggles is with gender. On one hand, I think it's fun and I like playing with it a bit - not being "the girl". On the other hand, I think it's scary, uncharted territory. By not being "the girl" I've often been one of the guys. By often, I mean pretty much always. It started in the 3rd grade. Tony, Gary, Chris and I played ball together and eventually Tony and I became closer friends. Then, one day, Tony started talking to me about Sandy and how pretty and great she was. And I listened, as friends do, gave advice, didn't say that she was a twit...whatever. That was the beginning of my non-Sandy career. I've been trying to shed it ever since.

There've been many Tonys - some I was attracted to, some I wasn't. But the end is pretty much the same: "you're a great friend...so there's this Sandy character..." It happens too often. I know it's my fault. I have to own that. I just need to figure out why - what do I do to cause this? I act like myself and am honest about who I am. I don't like games. I let my personality represent myself. These are all good things, and things I don't intend to change. But there are bad things I do too: I don't have a lot of physical self-confidence, so I hide in non-descript clothes and tuck myself away whenever I can. I don't flirt - ever. I play one of the guys, or at least the non-girl. A friend said to me the other day, "you emit this 'just the friend' scent and I see all of this charm and beauty and energy and desire, but you let them pat you on the back like one of the boys." She's right, I do.

I do other things too, things that are a mixed bag - they're things that I do and feel honestly but I know hinder me in some way. I rarely am initially attracted to a guy. I can't even remember the last time I was. It's possible for me to find a guy physically attractive and not have any attraction to him. I need time. I need to know him. I need to see his character in his face, in his movements, before I know. I'd like him to see and process that way too. I just think most people (men and women) don't. Most people process: attraction, connection, closeness. I do the reverse. I just always have. Can't say that I recommend it.

It's a lot to overcome, but something I know I have to. I can't let this one go - the weight is too much. Where do I start? How do I convince me that I'm *gulp* attractive? What do I do with my current Tonys? How do I prevent future ones? How do I stop being a non-Sandy without becoming a Sandy? Without losing me?

Friends: Girlfriends and finding qualified applicants

2005-04-08T23:43:00.000-05:00

Throughout my life I've had about equal number of male and female friends. There have even been periods where my number of male friends has far exceeded the number of female friends (I hung out at a lot of Irish pubs, developed an ability to drink an absurd amount of Guinness and learned a bit about hockey during that time). While currently keeping my tradition of befriending both sexes, I must say that the past few weeks have brought some significant advances in the number of women in my life. Recent times have also brought a few friends to send various "don't forget your girlfriends" forwards. I'm not a fan of men vs. women (everyone knows women are better, why gloat?), but I've had more than a few moments, be they in person, on the phone, via online chat, in emails, or what-have-you that so incredibly capture the joy and understanding that women bring to women, that just remembering some of them now make me smile. These little events, moments, connections are the kind of things that even if retold wouldn't warrant more than a eyebrow raise and a skeptical "ok". You really did just have to be there. There's not a single woman in my life I don't have private little jokes with - jokes we can share in a room and no one else knows what in the hell we are talking about. Most women I know can hyperlink our current conversation to a previous one with just a word, or even a gesture and I know exactly what they mean. When I'm rambling for hours or even days about something - they get it and understand that I'm trying to get there too. This isn't to say that I don't appreciate the men in my life (I know some pretty terrific ones), just to say that girlfriends are...special and oh-so needed.

My social circle slowly is slowly expanding. Most people would see this as a good thing, perhaps even ask "why slowly?". Here's the deal: I'm a quality-over-quantity gal. I'd rather fully explore and expand the friendships I have than to gather more friends. This is to the point that when I start to develop a friendship with someone I think something along the lines of "Are you worth it, really?" The more people I add to my life, the less time I get to spend with those friends I currently have. And the friends I already have are pretty damn fantastic, so Dance, Monkey! Dance!! Just kidding (sort of). I'm picky, that's the short of it.

I've never really fully gotten what I am picky about - I mean my friends are all so different and unique that it's been hard to find a common thread. Then, a weekend ago, on a long bus ride following me begrudgingly allowing more people into the circle I figured it out: I like characters. Perhaps this sounds trite. Let me explain. I like people who, when they walk into a room you know they are there and who they are. The kind of people you don't say "Is that Joe or Jack? I get them confused" about. With my friends, you know Joe is nothing like Jack. When I meet people I end up becoming friends with, I always have a reaction, even if it's a wrong one. Admittedly, I don't often like future friends when I first meet them - they just seem like too much. In the end, it is precisely this "too much" that I adore and bond with. There's something more than that though. I like people with internal fire - with, as Scott would say, a thirst for life. I heart life forces. I like people who are hungry (not necessarily physically, but a taste for good food is appreciated) and people who genuinely struggle with who they are and the world they live in. I like genuineness - in fact, I demand it (along with kindness and humanity and wit and...). I relish the company of questioners. Of thinkers. Of feelers. Of wanters.

There are people you meet, we all know these people, and everyone says how "cool" or "nice" or "cute" or "fun" or [some other mealy adjective] the person is. People can't think of anything bad to say about them, but they can't think of anything stellar either. Yeah, those people: not my friends. It might make me a fastidious snob, but that's part of my character. And who doesn't love character?

Mapquestless

2005-04-08T02:22:00.000-05:00

There are times when I feel like something is so distinct and peculiar there must be a metaphor hidden there somewhere. Other times, something is just so damn obvious that I am a victim of a metaphor bitch slap. The other day was one of those times.

OK, so this is cheesy and obvious. Don't think "Jen's turned into Kitchen Soup for the Soul or something" I need something to write about. This blogging thing is a big personal goal, and this is just a place to restart - you metaphor snobs, you.

So, back to my story... I was walking alone in the local park (Kenana). I was keeping a good pace, heart rate was up, I was enjoying the Robert Frost-like trails surrounded by bare trees and crisp air. I am trying to get to know this park better - there are tons of trails going in every direction and I want to know them well enough that I can walk in the park, decide I want, say, a 3-hour walk and know what trails will give me that. Actually, every time I go I get annoyed. Annoyed that the trails aren't marked or colored or something, so that a simple map could tell me this information without me spending all my time trying to figure it out (put me in a city or town and I always know my way...if lost in the woods I'd be one of those people walking in circles for days. I never remember where a trail goes. It's sad, I know.) . I follow a trail I think I know and suddenly find myself in an open field with a lot of standing water and mud. My pace grinds to a halt as I scan what is before me: mud and dung (Robert never mentioned dung, the dick) or returning the way I came. That's when I saw the symbolism that was too obvious to ignore.

I came here to get off the marked trails - I didn't really want to, I mean it would be sort of comforting to be fulfilled by the path most traveled by - you know where it leads and what to do. You just enjoy the walk. But I was drowning in sadness and anger and frustration (I just got my personal passport from Peace Corps and my photo from 1998 looks like I am ten years older than I look now). I needed a new trail - my own. BUT, and there always is one...I still want that comfort, that knowledge that the marked trails provide. Even after jumping across the ocean and landing in a random town where no one knows me, or my former creation of me, I am still fighting what I know I need. That full plunge is so...overwhelming.

The field was the end of even the unmarked trail - just openness with a lot of mess and I really had to just slosh around a bit until I found and opening that looked like it could lead some place. Like I said, I went from this brisk pace to almost a dead stop. I am at that "almost dead stop" now. Every day passes by me with lightning speed. I don't feel like I do anything or accomplish anything from when I wake to when I sleep. My former self still hangs around screaming about to-do lists and goals. I mentioned in a previous post what I felt like upper-class and working-class women do to avoid dealing with their lives. I didn't mention the middle-class. It was too true, too painful to admit. This is what middle-class women do: we become workaholics. We eat and drink and breathe to-do list and meetings and lots of busyness. I DO still want that, but not as a means of avoidance. And I want to let myself stand or slow down, if that's what I need to do. I just don't know when goals are there for my self-growth and when they are there for avoidance. And I don't know when standing is processing or checking-out. I'm hard on myself - it feels like I go from avoidance to checking-out. Perhaps I do.

In the end I found a way out without going backwards, though my running shoes were mud-soaked in the process. I walked back home through the main strip in the park. Everyone stared at my shoes - I mean, they were COVERED in mud. This is not something people do here, like it's not something people do often in the States - you stick to the clean trails, the trails you know. My reaction to their reaction was two-fold. One, I was proud that I got off the beaten path and was showing people there were other things to do in the park but stick to the safe grounds. Two, I was ashamed. It was clear. It was all over my shoes. I fucked up and had no idea where I was going. I've never been that girl. It's hard. It's hard to wear that truth on your sleeve, or in this case, on my shoes.

Deep roots, an attached heart and a wandering soul

2005-03-29T09:58:00.000-06:00

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

2005-03-13T02:00:00.000-06:00

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?

2005-03-13T01:28:00.000-06:00

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?

Goal Orientation

2005-02-06T14:43:00.000-06:00

Big press release: I'm goal oriented. Sometimes it gives me focus, sometimes it just makes me question everything. Secretly, it can drive me crazy, but it has its uses. Like now. It helps me sort through what I want to do and figure out how to do it. It helps me think (and often helps me over think - not good). Here are some of my current goals and some ideas about how to do them (Putting goals in writing is also good. It helps me see them. And I know that once released people will ask me about it, which holds me to them):

Seriously do something everyday that scares the hell out of me.
Commit to learning the language by learning 20 words a day, seeing my tutor more often and speaking more.
Stop complaining about not having work and start looking for it. Start finding it!
Visit a volunteer in another town at least once a month, preferably not just repeating the same locations.
Join a gym, eventually go to fitness classes. I need to get back in shape (after not working out for 6 months!) and I think it's a good place to meet people - it's best to meet people who like doing what you like to do.
Stop complaining about Peace Corps to random people and start sending my complaints and suggestions to HQ, where someone will possibly do something about it!
Listen to more music! I love music and have been introduced to some new, really great stuff. It's a great energy and thought source.
Read more. I came here with a reading list and have barely touched it. Crying shame.
Take inventory of my day. Remember the bad AND the good.
Stop complaining so damn much!
Remember and honor the goals I set in the beginning:

Laugh deeply and often.
Affect and be affected.
Acknowledge and appreciate joy.
Explore and expand in every way.
Establish and challenge personal truths.

Protons and Electrons

2005-02-06T12:40:00.000-06:00

I'm getting old. At least older. It sucks. I forget things. I walk into rooms and by the time I get there I forget why I went in the first place. I lose my keys and various parts of my winter outerwear. I frantically look for my scarf only to realize it's on my neck. But, sometimes, out of the mental murk, come random facts - at least I thought for a long time they were random. Now, I think they're my subconscious throwing crap at me saying "Hel-lo! Let's go already!"

Today, as I sat to write in my blog, in yet another attempt to make this habitual, I thought about what to write. And from the depths of my delusion came this: proton, electron. What?! I'm 28 (nearly 29) and despite my high school dedication to science (and a promise to my physics teacher to continue it), I haven't taken a serious science course in *gulp* almost a decade. Where did this come from?! As I have accepted the challenge (somewhat begrudgingly) of wrestling with the pests that populate my psyche I had to ask what this was, what it meant. So, thinking back, and digging through the mental cobwebs, I recall that protons are positively charged and reside in nucleus. Electrons are negatively charged and circle the nucleus. OK, so still....What the hell?!

Giving myself a moment before I call the medical officer and ask for some nice pills, I realize that it makes sense. Well, at least to me. See, the core is positive and all the crap circling it can be negative, but it's still positive. Granted, generally, this all balances out to neutrality - like some kind of atomic Valium - but the image I delivered to myself (thanks, self!) was that the core is positive. Duh.

There's this song/"commencement speech" that has been around for awhile. I recalled that today too (self, you rock!) . It's sort of cheesy-inspirational, but hell, at some point who's to decline inspiration?! The following lines catch me today:

Do one thing every day that scares you.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Don't waste your time on jealousy.
Remember compliments you receive.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life.
Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on.

I need to work on a few of these, and a few of the others too.
My protons need a lot of work, but they're still my center.

*Link above is to the text mentioned and two very worthy parodies.*

Topsy-Turvy

2005-02-05T18:06:00.000-06:00

Friendships in the Peace Corps are a odd breed. Don't get me wrong - the people here are some of the bravest, most interesting, most caring people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting and befriending. I've been here but six months, and I feel like I've known several people for a lifetime, just like the propaganda said I would. But things are out of order. You see people in their most uncomfortable, at their worst, almost right from the start. Nervousness, frustration, sadness, anger, resignation, disorientation all find a way to jump from the back of the head to the eyes almost instantly. It bonds people. You quickly learn who to lean on, who can (and will) discuss issues at length with you, who takes your mind away from your problems, who "gets it". You share and share some more, yet there's still more to share. You know people's secrets, their worst fears and memories, their insecurities, their drawbacks - and you still adore them, and they you. The fact that it happens, and so quickly, makes it all feel magical. And it is. Those bonds and links and trust are real. They are hyper-connections.

But sharing your darkness constantly, and receiving someone else's, creates an abyss. You can get lost there - and hearing a familiar, comforting voice just keeps you from realizing you're falling further and further. Some of that falling is necessary. Some of it is inertia. It's hard to stop - all of those things you're feeling (nervousness, frustration, sadness, anger, resignation, disorientation - among others) are real - because the line between honoring those feelings and feeding them is so incredibly unclear. I believe in honoring feelings, and generally I think I am, but I have also become guilty of feeding them.

I had an online chat with Ellen the other day that really helped me (thanks, El!) think about who I am and what I am doing. She reminded me of why I'd made some of my life choices. It sounds funny, but I had honestly forgotten. So willing to admit cowardice, I'd forgotten that I'd chosen some roads with great thought and courage. I told Ellen of the shadows and ghosts I'd shared with people here and she pointed out that if in six months people knew all those things that there was no way they could also know what was truly great about me. She's right. Lost in my abyss, I'd forgotten what was great about me - how could I share it if I couldn't even see it myself?!

There is a dark cavern in me, at times it can be quite large, but it's not an abyss. It has a beginning and an end, even if I haven't found it. I know I have great things to share and great people in my life. I know I have talent and heart. I know I try to honor my feelings, even if they are messy, confusing and sometimes completely overwhelming. I know that I am growing and transforming instead of settling and quietly dying, even if it feels like I'm self-administering a root canal. I know that I can do this.

I will still explore my darkness, and still look for and cherish friends who are willing to help me explore it and who want to include me in their own journeys. However, I want to also remember what I'm good at - what I'm great at. I want to remember what I really like about me. I want to share that. I want to see other people's greatness too. It took me six months, but I am finally ready to see people's good side. I'm hungry for greatness.

A funny thing happened on the way to the post office

2005-01-20T07:54:00.000-06:00

Enough soul searching. Here's a story: a few weeks ago I got a notice that I had received a package, but that it was being held in Svilengrad - a town on the Turkish border. Working for a wealthy municipality and in a department with some pull, the head of administration offered to have the municipal car drive me there the following week. Super! I mention to a colleague that I have no idea what to say to fight (and yes, a fight is expected) with customs and she generously agrees to go with me. Despite the annoyance, all seems like it will end well.

So, the next week comes and goes. Then this Monday a colleague asks when I want to go to Svilengrad - today or Tuesday or later in the week. Being American I say "today! Let's do it today!" and an hour later someone else comes back to me and says "That's great. You'll go tomorrow." On Tuesday the municipal driver, my colleague Maria and I all drive to retrieve my package. Upon arrival to town, Maria and I look at my claim slip - it has no phone number, no address, no name. It just says I have a package. So, we go to the train station (and what seems to be the largest building in town) and ask where to go. Go to the post office, they say. OK, so we go to the post office and ask the same round of questions. Go to customs, they say, so we head to the building where customs is supposed to be. First job: find customs.

We go to the place we were told was customs and look all around this large concrete building with lots of poorly or unmarked doors. After cleverly piecing together several ill-worded signs, Maria finds the right door. Now, this is something you will have to imagine - it's very Bulgarian and I'd love to capture it on film, if I didn't suspect I'd be kicked out of the country for it: you walk into the reception area (a small, room-size hallway) that is surrounded by opaque or shaded glass and little 1'x2' doors at about chest level. And you stand there and wait. And wait. Now, the glass isn't so shaded or opaque that you can't see that there are people behind it - which means they can see you too. But there's this little game, this little power play that the officials behind the glass play - you wait until THEY are ready. So, in this particular instance, not only are we and one other man standing there waiting, but there is a customs agent cleaning, opening and closing the blinds. This one is bent. Straighten. Should we tint them up or down? Up. Down. Up. Down. Down? No, up. Up. Now that one's bent. Straighten. This goes on for what must have been ten minutes. Finally, one of the small doors opens. You bend over (in so very many ways) and begin to explain your situation to the official. They tell you why it cannot be solved. And then you argue.

The dialogue begins with Maria explaining that I have a package. First hurdle: the official argues that I don't. He thinks the municipality has a package (my mail currently, or formerly, went to the municipality) under my name and so to retrieve it I need to be there with an official letter (meaning a letter with about 5 inked stamps on it) from the municipality saying it's OK for me to claim the package. Maria explains the situation (personal package, volunteer, uses business address, etc) and he says "OK, let me chat with 'my boss'" and closes the little door. Personally, I think this means "I need more coffee" but I don't know, because my window into the world behind the glass has just been closed. So, he comes back and gives the same party line. Maria again gives her same story (I think they want to see if the story changes - or they are just bored like the rest of us and want something to do). Again the door closes. When it opens a book appears with lots of handwritten entries and photocopies of custom slips that have been methodically trimmed to their form size. He finds my entry and my custom slip. It's my package from Monica. Form perfectly filled out. Again he argues for the same thing and Maria argues back and then he asks her to translate the customs form for him, meaning he wants to know what I am getting. "Book, foot lotion, foot scrub, foot soak." So, beyond the embarrassment of a custom agent now knowing I have crusty feet (hey, at least I do something about it!) I realize that two of my colleagues are spending their day helping me retrieve my skin care products. It's all so bizarre.

The customs agent finally agrees that the story must be credible (or maybe he just gave up or needed more coffee) so we were sent back to the post office. We walk into the post office (it's a tiny room) and the two women manning it walk into the back, even though they just saw us walk in and customs must have just called and OK'ed the release of the package. They return a couple of minutes later and ask what we want. Maria explains (never mentioning my name), they say OK and magically know what name to look for. Hmmm. Anyway, so placed before me, just beyond the glass, is my package, my package from my sister. So, I look at Maria and say, "Hey, that's my package, but it's not the same one that the other guy listed." She tells the woman there is another package. The woman argues. Maria argues back. The women goes to find my other package. So, just beyond the glass I have two packages. The two women start to discuss if I need to pay taxes. Maybe I need to pay Haskovo taxes, if so, maybe they should ship the packages to me in Haskovo. I suddenly fear that I will never touch my treasures. This goes on for awhile. Then it stops. Much like the last office, there is this critical point where they just give up, for no clear reason. In an instant, my packages are handed to me and we are on our way.

The end. (It's supposed to be an adventure, right?!)

Interdependence

2005-01-17T14:08:00.000-06:00

I've been pretty open about all my preconceived notions about what this whole experience would be like. Those notions, though, keep surfacing. One of the major ones I had was that I would come here to be more independent. That I would learn to live from the land and more fully rely on myself for my own well-being. That is the American dream: self-reliance. My destiny, however, has been quite different.

A few days ago I was in a bit of a quote war (that's swapping quotes in rapid fire with another person - think Nerd Fighter) with a friend and I was supplying a lot of quotes by G. B. Shaw - one of my favorite playwrights and thinkers. I came across this quote:

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

I never threw it in to the mix - thinking it too hokey and sentimental. But days after, when all the quotes about society and art and truth had passed from my memory, it was still there. The tsunami and 9/11 were moments in our life where that seemed to be true - the capacity to feel pain and sadness for the loss of strangers was tangible because the number was so great, the event so colossal it was almost surreal. But other than that, we don't want to be connected any more - we strive to be strong and tough and boldly self-defined. I really wanted more of that.

Here I am, in a culture that still values the collective and where self-reliance is really not in the reality of a foreigner. I don't know where things happen. I don't know what the best of anything here is. I don't know how to be polite or even insistent. Beyond gathering the survival basics, I've learned that I need people more than I formerly admitted. My connections, however brief, with family and friends recharge me for a remarkably long time. Sharing my experiences with new friends makes them more meaningful, more fun and more real. Letting people into my world expands it exponentially.

To be perfectly honest, this sharing scares the living hell out of me. In many ways I'd rather learn to live alone, to be more self-sufficient, to not care so much. But I know now that I don't want this because it is better or stronger or more pure - I want it because it's safe. Love, in any form, is not ambivalent - and caring is a hard business.

On another day, a comment from a friend's friend was passed to me: that we all die alone, that we basically live alone and that we, as individuals, are all we really have. I want to agree, as scary as that statement is, but I don't think I do. I think that who we are is out there for people to use and abuse and cherish and adore - and they are out there for us. Perhaps they aren't permanent, but those exchanges - and their potential for greatness - merit our bravery, and should give us more in return.

I've known so many poor matches: people who were overly dependent on someone else, people who allowed themselves to be defined by someone else, people who gave and gave without any expectations, people who made others depend on them. Those matches are part of the reason I wanted to be more "self-reliant" - I didn't want to make those mistakes or be on either side of those equations. But, those pairings are missed shots, followed by the wrongful pursuit of security. Being depended on by someone you also depend on - for something other than scripts and role playing - is like adding another dimension to your world. It's frightening and exhilarating and joyous and mindblowing. We take it with us everywhere - the good and the bad. It is both weight and freedom, rub and gem. As Thoreau said: "The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend." Opening those doors of exchange is the most I can do for me too.