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Update? I left my job teaching Mandarin and being an RA for Chinese high school students in Chicago in February of 2013. I went back to Philadelphia, where my parents and little brother live, to find another job.
I left Philly for St. Petersburg, Florida at the beginning of April, with the goal of finding a job on a yacht. Thus began an adventure that involved... a lot. I slept in the airport in Tampa, and I slept in the airport in Fort Lauderdale... for a week. I took a fire safety course and broke an immersion suit. I hit golf balls into a swamp at sunset. I couchsurfed. I made good friends and feared for my life. The highs were high and the lows were low. No joke, Jack Kerouac would be jealous.
All of the adventuring yielded, among other things, a job. I began working on an estate in the Hamptons on Long Island in May of 2013 as a "deckhand". I washed cars and windows, carried heavy things, and basically did anything I was asked to do. I loved it. At the end of the summer, the owners asked me to stay on and continue working for them, and I did. I continued with the family over the winter season and into this summer of 2014, my responsibilities increasing as time went on.
With the summer over and me sensing that it was time to move on again, I submitted my two weeks' notice in the middle of September and my last day was on Sunday, two days ago. So, once again, I write you as a free man. Jobless, but free.
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I fly to China in the middle of October to visit friends and be in the wedding of my friends, Rock and Vivian. I haven't seen many of these people in 2+ years, so I am excited.
After that, the plan is to return to the states and head back to Honduras, where my sister and brother-in-law live and work. The idea is that I'll do something similar to what I did when I visited in 2012- accompany them as they do ministry in the community they work in. I also intend to be a bit more proactive about seeking part-time employment and learning Spanish to potentially make my time there a bit more sustainable.
All of that being said, anything could happen. I'm on the loose once again, and I could end up anywhere. I've missed this fluidity quite sincerely.
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I just realized that I can gloss over the past two years quite easily with my words. Hindsight is like that- I can knock out a synopsis of that two year period pretty quickly and easily, and it's because it's in the past for me, I'm moving away from it.
The reality is, though... it hasn't been easy. Especially the last six months... It's been really, really tough at times. I've felt clouds in my rib cage. I've felt near constant stress and perpetual anxiety. I've felt morally torn and morally compromised. I've felt forlorn and utterly defeated and lost. In fact, I'm being false by saying "it hasn't been easy". It's more truthful to say that it's been heart-breakingly dismal at times. I'm banking on the fact that most of you rarely hear my say things like this and you recognize what a state I've been in.
I'm resisting the urge to balance this out by writing a paragraph about how great and high things have also been at times, and it's because of this- the best thing about the dreary time(s) I've passed through is the hope that exists despite all of the awfulness. I have no problem mentioning rather cliche sayings and ideas like "it's passing through the worst times that helps us realize how good things really are", and it's because I believe it. That hope is the only reason that "passing through" can even exist. Hope can set you apart. Hope doesn't make sense and, I believe, in it's truest form, it is often exceedingly illogical. But it works. The hope of change changes everything.
So, hope. That's what I've learned over the past few years. I feel like I spent the first twenty-something years of my life learning theoretically about hope, and I finally started doing my practical training just a few years ago. The training's not easy, but it is good.
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I know it's a bit corny, but I have some random lyrics from songs that I enjoy that have jumped out at me as being particularly descriptive of some of my feelings during that rough period. I'm rearranging them to read less like lyrics.
"Here in a familiar place, we've got our heads down and we pretend it's because the night is dark and running out of space for us to run around, but it's a dead end, and money's tight, and it's been a long time of this. Something has got to give. Everyone here is ready to go, it's been a hard year with nothing to show, from down this road, it's only up we go.
Nothing gives easy, easy gives nothing. Dawn is bound to break when the night is done, always darker days before brighter ones."
..........
"Have you got something to prove? This place will suck the life out of you. You seem to be confused. There’s nothing left to lose. The depths of your heart are sinking like an anchor.
In the center of the mirror, you just watch where you fall. You’ve got a disconnection with yourself, and the emptiness fills until it all makes you crumble down, until you feel like there’s no way out. And you started to waste away, cause something led your heart astray, and inside it’s pulling you down. It's time to take a different view- there's no one looking out for you."
These ones are always favorites:
"Can love, even in times uncertain, be the thing that carries us through?
Can love open a heart that's frozen and be there when there's nothing left for you?
This is what it feels to be alive, even though we stumble our way through.
One chance and then another one appears, and then again another comes to view."
I TOLD YOU these would be corny! I told you!
Lights- Up We Go
Kito and Reija Lee- Starting Line
Falling in Love with Brazil- Kaskade Mashup
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I may not technically be an MK or a TCK, but this article sounds familiar. Thanks to whoever posted this on FB.
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My friend Ryan said something a few years ago that I've never forgotten and I've found it to be true. He basically said, regarding music and music performance, "People want to be moved, whether it's to feel immense elation or depths of emotional sadness or anything in between, people want to be moved." I've addressed many creative genres and mediums with the same attitude, and I find it to be true. That's ultimately one manner of describing what we are looking for as audiences (and creators, for that matter) of almost any creative outlet, right? To feel our heart shake within us.
It can also initiate grace and patience toward genres and mediums one does not naturally feel inclined toward, e.g. I may not particularly enjoy the musical genre of _____, but I can see that it makes some people feel the same way as I do about music from this other genre that I love, therefore it may be easier for me to be patient and more gracious toward that genre and it's followers.
Hahahahahaha that's a joke by the way... what genre of music do I not like?
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Another recent discovery is this:
Our greatest move on this earth is to strive to live this life in such a manner that our "last check bounces", but in an economy of mercy, in which our gifts include all of our resources... all of them. When someone dies an untimely death, does a healthy soul mourn the loss of the man-hours that person could have contributed to the regional economy? Surely not. It's the loss of the potential positive change and influence the individual could have enacted that is mourned, the memory of the laughter they caused or the care they showed, the "sharing of their resources", one could say. To make that last check bounce, to completely expend our every resource... this idea has been in my mind.
I never understood the desire to increase one's own influence or reach in this world until I understood it in that context-
How do I increase my giving (of everything)? How can I give more of myself? How do I increase the number of people who truly benefit from my work, from my very presence? If I feel confident that I have something to contribute as an individual, how does that alter my worldview and my understanding of my role in my community and in this world?
These questions don't need answers, but, for the first time ever, I am actually taking real delight in dwelling on them. I have no hesitation in admitting that these questions have arisen out of the fact that I have recently been earning a very reasonable amount of money for a single male a lot of money, the highest salary I've ever made, more than I "need", so to speak. Yes, I donated, and yes, I tipped a lot, and yes, I gave more freely than before, and yet I realized that it's not enough. In the realm of financial giving, I considered myself healthy and probably wouldn't have done things too differently if I did it all over again, but in the realm of my other resources, I was constipated. You laugh, but I'm serious.
It's like having a brain surgeon apply band-aids to paper cuts all day. It's absolutely important to have someone to apply the band-aids with tenderness and loving care, and I've no doubt that a brain surgeon would be good at that, but I'd propose that the surgeon is going to feel broken and dead inside at some point, knowing that they've been equipped with other resources that are at their disposal, if only they had the opportunity to use them. My angle here is not about individual potential and achievement so much as it's about finding a place and a way for someone to give of their resources in a way that resonates within them and makes them "come alive". Could it be that we all have giving "wheelhouses", particular manners or situations in which we both achieve a major impact while also feeling a true "aliveness"?
In my recent job, only a portion of my resources were being used (some of them were being abused), and all of them went to but a handful of people. No doubt, those people greatly appreciated me, but the brokenness and constipation and feeling of death and stagnation crept in ever so slowly. It's no one's fault, but it was a good thing for me to learn and now be aware of.
Disclaimer: I'm not advocating for manipulation and the wrestling of emotional or other resources from any entity. There's a difference between giving of one's self willingly and being manipulated to the point of feeling guilty or otherwise obligated to give.
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Something bad happened when I tried to grow up too quickly. I don't think it's a secret that males in my age group get chastised quite regularly for being immature, with examples like simultaneously sporting facial hair and a backward baseball cap depicting our desire to gain the best of both the child and adult worlds at the same time. Well, I only realize it now, but I made a semi-sub-conscious effort to expedite that maturing process over the past year and a half and I feel like it kind of backfired on me. I grew up faster than I ever have before. It was painful, but I also recognize a meaninglessness in it.
Maybe some would say that it all needed to happen, maybe I "needed a dose of reality", maybe maybe maybe... I'll be quick to say that I don't rue the growth that I've undergone or the events that brought that growth about, but I also believe that it wasn't necessary for any of it to happen, so to speak. That could dwindle into a discussion about fate and destiny and will and predestination, but I'll let that go and say that, for me, it comes down to this: the people who are older than me that I most wish to emulate all tend to be ones who have never worried about making sure their maturity narrative is on schedule. Besides, I can agree with the idea that "Maturity simply means knowing when it's okay to be immature". I like that.
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It may sound like "eat, drink, and be merry"ing, but understand when I write that I think some of the most underestimated powers in this world are the abilities to laugh and to evoke laughter. Think of a world without laughter! How wretched.
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Maybe it's just me coming back from blog-hiatus, but this one has been especially lengthy and wordy. I won't apologize. In fact, I am going to make an effort to be a bit less censored with my writing. Why not? This is my blog, after all, and it's not like you can't challenge anything I've written!
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-OH DARN I'm posting on October 1st, not September 30. Oh well!
