Social networking means that you never lose track of anyone.
I know because this is the field I work in now. I spend the majority of my time on the page I work for, and then, in my free time, I click over to Facebook. I receive updates from people from all over the world, people who make me wonder 'Who the hell is that guy?' until I remember sitting across from him in 7th grade math class. It's strange, and many people bemoan this collection of fake friends we're all collecting.
I'm in favor of it. It's my own personal sociology news scanner. I am watching my old classmates and acquaintances grow into adulthood. And of course, they're watching me, too.
What is odd for me is that with each passing year, my life becomes further and further off kilter from my social news blotter. I haven't fully unpacked my suitcases since the end of 2006. My new career involves communal living, global travel, uncomfortable mattresses, and strangers that come to live with me as friends nearly constantly.
I love it.
But my Facebook news has turned into the equivalent of the "Births and Brides" section in a local newspaper. Now, I know what you're waiting for: here's where the travel snob goes off about the simple-mindedness of those who settle down, and congratulates herself for her sense of adventure and cultural nuance. Not so. The actual truth is far more complex.
Right before leaving for Chile, I was working at the wonderful Newtonville Books just outside Boston. One of my coworkers there was about my age, studying for her masters, and engaged. She had plans to open a children's book store someday, and was picking out her wedding invitations with a healthy sense of amusement. I was scrounging up my money, first for a job in Paris and then, within a week, for one in Chile. I lived out of a pile of clothing in my parents' house and considered a monthly public transit pass to be a considerable commitment. You would think that we would have hated each other, but we didn't. She knew someone 'like me,' she said, and would laugh in a head-shaking way about my wanderlust as I climbed the ladder once again to rearrange the travel books. And me -- well, that's the complicated part.
Her fiance would come to pick her up from work with takeout food and silly anecdotes. He'd prank call her during the day, pretending to be looking for some obscure book, and end up all sweet. They were house hunting. They were secure. They had a planned course. I respected it, often so much that I found it painful to be around. It was something I could have pursued, but at the same time, couldn't.
The path I've chosen, meanwhile, is like crossing a river while hiking. You jump from stone to stone, but you can only eyeball the next one. You can't predict how it will actually hold up under your pressure. Not blind leaps, but leaps of faith. Sometimes you find yourself on the tip of a deeply submerged, immovable boulder. Sometimes you find yourself teetering precariously on an unpredictable but at least temporarily dry surface. Sometimes you hit and immediately find yourself thrown sideways into the water.
Sounds exotic and exciting to some. Sounds idiotic to others. To me, there's no other way because this is how I live. But that doesn't mean I don't feel envy.
Some days, I want that prank call from the boyfriend who's known me forever and knows how to tease without making me angry. I want the silly Facebook pictures of the ring and the sunset and the surprise champagne. I want the ugly bridesmaid dresses, the baby nieces and nephews, the back porches, the season ball game tickets, the inside jokes.
Sometimes, I want security.
It is a trade off. Many of my friends sigh and tell me how they'd love to do the things I do, if only it were possible. It is possible, and I tell them so --but I've come to believe that the real reason they don't is not lack of ability, time, or resources. It's that they're able to get a little taste of my lifestyle from time to time, even if I wouldn't consider it as such. A person can have a stable, established life and take 2 weeks or a month to travel and come home feeling road-weary and global. And so both goals are satisfied.
The problem is that when your primary need is curiosity and travel, there's no equivalent voyage into the world of the rooted. I can't get a fiance and an apartment on a two week loan. As things in my family life have changed recently, I can't even name a place that would be a home to visit. There is no anchor, and it can't be summoned up for the fulfillment of a brief need.
So I read the daily engagement announcements on Facebook with a mixed heart. Most of me knows I would lose my mind if I were to trade shoes. The other part knows the same but wishes I could lose that trait. In the end, I'm happy with who I am and the life that I'm living. I know that if I could have held this picture up to myself at ten years younger, I would have died of joy and awe. I treasure this: the fact that my life has turned out more ME than I ever imagined it could have been. Even a year ago, my life today would have been unimaginable. I write this from my living room in Costa Rica, the place where I'll be working for the next 2.5 months. Every morning at 7am a troupe of howler monkeys passes through my backyard. I swim in the ocean nearly every day, as it's about 500 meters from my house, and I'm even learning to surf. I'm practicing my Spanish again. Geckos are as common on my bedroom walls as flies would be in other places (and would be here, if the geckos weren't eating them). I now know what a "tree chicken" is, and I've rode on a tiny motorbike through torrential tropical downpour.
Life is good. But the internet provides this incredible one-way mirror onto the lives of others. At the end of the day, though, I have to know that while I'm sitting here feeling pangs over someone else's settled and orderly life, someone else is envying my nomadicism. The information age, indeed.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Midnight Thoughts
There's been very little in this blog; quite a change from the last one.
In my Chile blogging life, I wrote every two to three days. I'd like to replicate that pattern in this blog, eventually. At the moment it doesn't seem possible. Possibly because I'm quite fulfilled with my writing, and possibly because after 3 months everything is still quite new.
Living in the moment is the most over-played philosophical concept of my generation. We want to 'live the dream,' we want to 'be here now,' we want to 'just breathe.' The fact that we harp on it so much seems a clear indication that we have trouble finding it.
From a mirror perspective, the realization that you are in fact living that way occurs slowly, through signs. The 11 voicemails on my phone, at least half of which I heard ring but didn't bother to answer because I was otherwise occupied - maybe with nothing. The TV shows, movies and music that I've missed out on for years on end. The need to remind myself that this life is new to me in order to appreciate what it is.
The fact that this is an insubstantial, sub-rate blog entry, but I'm posting it anyway.
In my Chile blogging life, I wrote every two to three days. I'd like to replicate that pattern in this blog, eventually. At the moment it doesn't seem possible. Possibly because I'm quite fulfilled with my writing, and possibly because after 3 months everything is still quite new.
Living in the moment is the most over-played philosophical concept of my generation. We want to 'live the dream,' we want to 'be here now,' we want to 'just breathe.' The fact that we harp on it so much seems a clear indication that we have trouble finding it.
From a mirror perspective, the realization that you are in fact living that way occurs slowly, through signs. The 11 voicemails on my phone, at least half of which I heard ring but didn't bother to answer because I was otherwise occupied - maybe with nothing. The TV shows, movies and music that I've missed out on for years on end. The need to remind myself that this life is new to me in order to appreciate what it is.
The fact that this is an insubstantial, sub-rate blog entry, but I'm posting it anyway.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
The birds are flying north
This morning I woke up early to the sound of birds and the feeling of my muscles contracting in that cyclical way. The birds are calling out ancient territory patterns in the midst of the suburban fences, and my body is working away phantom children in an era that considers me nearly a child myself. I guess two hundred years ago these birds would have been staking out redwoods and eating plants that don't grow here anymore, bugs that don't fly here anymore. And I would have been raising children on an island in the North Sea, or I suppose maybe in some part of the American South, depending on how I deconstruct myself. Instead, after listening to the morning songs and rubbing my belly for an hour or so, I put on a sweatshirt that used to belong to an ex-boyfriend. I came downstairs with my laptop and made some coffee using the unlikely combination of my housemate's gourmet-style coffee grinder and the Mr. Coffee that's dependent on duct tape in order to function. I took some ibuprofen and settled in on the couch. It's 7am in Berkeley, California. San Francisco is turning pink across the bay, but here the light is still slate blue.
Lately I've been nostalgic for Pennsylvania. Northwestern Pennsylvania, to be exact, south of Erie and north of Pittsburgh. I went to school there for three years, once you subtract my JYA. It was a place of long snows and rampant rust belt style decay. Forty minutes away from my town with its small commercial toe-hold on the world, the mansions of the US' first oil barons slumped lazily under the care those left by the dried up wells. Where I lived, apparently the train used to stop between Chicago and New York. There was an opera house. Now there are a few local businesses that are slowly closing out to the chain stores, and two factories outside of town that keep the employment rate at least above 50%. It doesn't sound like the kind of place you'd miss, but it is. It's a location I struggled with, and came to love in a barbed and protective way.
Location nostalgia is a normal state of being for me, at this stage. I've lived in enough places now that my idea of home is all mixed up with elements of each one. In France, I once met an artist--an American expatriate, in his late 70s, who had been in France for several decades. "I don't travel anymore," he told me. "Everywhere you go, you leave a piece of your heart. I'm too old for that now. I can't give away any more of my heart."
I thought I knew what he meant then, but the peculiar kind of pain he was describing becomes clearer to me every year that I continue to live the way I do. For the most part, though, it's a pleasant ache. I'm only 25 and I can live with the fallout of movement: lost people, lost places. Sometimes, all I want in the world is to see a certain street, or smell a particular plant, and I know that that thing I am craving is thousands of miles away. Sometimes all I want to do is talk to someone in person who is farther away than my mind grasps. It's nostalgia though, not pain: nostalgia is semi-sweet because it relates also to knowing that you had something once, and you are thankful enough to want it again. The sharp part comes from always feeling like a piece of you is missing. A piece of your heart, maybe, if we are to believe my artist, and I think that I do.
So it comes in waves, and these days it's Pennsylvania. Over all of the starkness of that part of the world, the beauty is entering my recent days. This weekend, at a gathering in Golden Gate Park, some Canada geese flew overhead. I remembered going to the bird sanctuary outside of town one day in the fall in Pennsylvania to watch the migrants passing. The geese were the only ones I saw, floating in a pond by the entrance, because I came from a world with no hunting season. It was only after I arrived at the sanctuary that I looked down and realized that I was, for all intents and purposes, disguised as a deer in my nice little brown suede jacket. So I watched the orange-covered walkers come and go, and I watched the geese, and I listened to the gun shots echoing in the hills, and I thought about how little I'd seen compared to those birds.
Then last night, grating potatoes, a friend put on a singer I hadn't heard before. It was Pennsylvania Music, to me, although I don't quite know how to describe that. Heart lyrics, poetic. Celtic and bluegrass, folk. It made me want to call someone from that time in my life, but I didn't. I would have wanted to talk about nostalgia, but that's a hard thing to share over the phone.
So many other things are in my head recently. Fresh tomatoes from the farmer's market, which is still the best market I've ever been to (it's what all these urban markets are trying to copy, but they'll never get it down). The way that the first day of spring feels after going so long without any nourishment from the atmosphere. The crispness of fall. And the people I knew: my friends, my professors, and somehow most of all the family that ran the sandwich shop I worked at. These things are on my mind. Then, this morning, I woke up and all that I could think about as I lay there aching and listening to birds was the Sand County Almanac. So I got out of bed, because I craved silence for the first time in months.
Lately I've been nostalgic for Pennsylvania. Northwestern Pennsylvania, to be exact, south of Erie and north of Pittsburgh. I went to school there for three years, once you subtract my JYA. It was a place of long snows and rampant rust belt style decay. Forty minutes away from my town with its small commercial toe-hold on the world, the mansions of the US' first oil barons slumped lazily under the care those left by the dried up wells. Where I lived, apparently the train used to stop between Chicago and New York. There was an opera house. Now there are a few local businesses that are slowly closing out to the chain stores, and two factories outside of town that keep the employment rate at least above 50%. It doesn't sound like the kind of place you'd miss, but it is. It's a location I struggled with, and came to love in a barbed and protective way.
Location nostalgia is a normal state of being for me, at this stage. I've lived in enough places now that my idea of home is all mixed up with elements of each one. In France, I once met an artist--an American expatriate, in his late 70s, who had been in France for several decades. "I don't travel anymore," he told me. "Everywhere you go, you leave a piece of your heart. I'm too old for that now. I can't give away any more of my heart."
I thought I knew what he meant then, but the peculiar kind of pain he was describing becomes clearer to me every year that I continue to live the way I do. For the most part, though, it's a pleasant ache. I'm only 25 and I can live with the fallout of movement: lost people, lost places. Sometimes, all I want in the world is to see a certain street, or smell a particular plant, and I know that that thing I am craving is thousands of miles away. Sometimes all I want to do is talk to someone in person who is farther away than my mind grasps. It's nostalgia though, not pain: nostalgia is semi-sweet because it relates also to knowing that you had something once, and you are thankful enough to want it again. The sharp part comes from always feeling like a piece of you is missing. A piece of your heart, maybe, if we are to believe my artist, and I think that I do.
So it comes in waves, and these days it's Pennsylvania. Over all of the starkness of that part of the world, the beauty is entering my recent days. This weekend, at a gathering in Golden Gate Park, some Canada geese flew overhead. I remembered going to the bird sanctuary outside of town one day in the fall in Pennsylvania to watch the migrants passing. The geese were the only ones I saw, floating in a pond by the entrance, because I came from a world with no hunting season. It was only after I arrived at the sanctuary that I looked down and realized that I was, for all intents and purposes, disguised as a deer in my nice little brown suede jacket. So I watched the orange-covered walkers come and go, and I watched the geese, and I listened to the gun shots echoing in the hills, and I thought about how little I'd seen compared to those birds.
Then last night, grating potatoes, a friend put on a singer I hadn't heard before. It was Pennsylvania Music, to me, although I don't quite know how to describe that. Heart lyrics, poetic. Celtic and bluegrass, folk. It made me want to call someone from that time in my life, but I didn't. I would have wanted to talk about nostalgia, but that's a hard thing to share over the phone.
So many other things are in my head recently. Fresh tomatoes from the farmer's market, which is still the best market I've ever been to (it's what all these urban markets are trying to copy, but they'll never get it down). The way that the first day of spring feels after going so long without any nourishment from the atmosphere. The crispness of fall. And the people I knew: my friends, my professors, and somehow most of all the family that ran the sandwich shop I worked at. These things are on my mind. Then, this morning, I woke up and all that I could think about as I lay there aching and listening to birds was the Sand County Almanac. So I got out of bed, because I craved silence for the first time in months.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
EFL Recovery
I will not lie: teaching English as a Foreign Language was tough for me.
I don't like grammar. In fact, I pretty much hate it. I love editing, but this could be seen as a form of aggression against grammar: if it's wrong, it makes itself obvious. Kill the bad grammar, and it turns back into a harmless sentence again.
But--grammar theory? I spent 7 years studying French, and spent most of my time drawing comic books. Direct object pronoun, indirect object pronoun, subjunctive, conditional...horrific. It's like talking about the shapes of lines in a painting but never getting to see the work itself.
I took summer classes in college just so I could spend a year studying in France, which gave me no credit towards my major, because I realized finally that there was no way in hell that I was going to learn French unless I got out of the classroom. I moved to Chile to learn Spanish. Basically, I can't learn a language unless I use my obsessive urge to socialize against myself. Even then, I only get so far.
All this means that coming up with either the enthusiasm or the creative lesson plan I needed to teach well was a miss more than hit situation for me. Half the time, when trying to prep for a lesson, I found myself thinking, "They should just get a book, what am I supposed to do about it?"
Anyone who followed my last blog, if there are any of you left, will know that this lead to a severe period of permanent irritability.
So having an actual job, that I actually care about, has been a relief. But there's another side to that coin.
English teaching is unpredictable in many ways. You have no idea what's going to happen in your class. Class 1 might get through your lesson plan in half the time you expected and leave you flapping your mouth like a fish for 45 minutes while you stall. Then Class 2 might spend the entire 90 minutes on your warm-up exercise, after which time your whiteboard will be covered with arrows, stick figures, and other useless illustrations. Put these two together, and it adds up to an hour and a half of misery (generally for the students as well, I'll be fair).
Whatever happens though, it's an hour and a half. Time-wise, English teaching is very predictable. And your lesson planning can vary somewhat, but not wildly. Grading can be disastrously time-consuming, but it too is a limited time. The semester ends. You breathe.
Not so in the normal world of work (to the extent that my situation can be called "normal"). All of a sudden I'm back in the zone of unexpected projects, unexpected bumps in the road, unexpected complaints....just general day-to-day unpredictability. Add to this the fact that I care about my job, and the fact that I live in my workplace, and then I find myself randomly working for 10 hours straight before I notice what's happening and remember that I need to prioritize. A year of a very patterned work life, preceded by several months of an hour-to-hour job at a bookstore, preceded by unemployment, preceded by six months of wandering...well, it's fair to say that my time management muscles have atrophied, if I had any to begin with.
I'd be lying if I said I missed teaching. Last year taught me that, at least when it comes to foreign languages, that is not the path I belong on. In fact, I'm pretty much thrilled to be where I am: busy, interested, working hard.
I'm sure I'll appreciate it once my head stops spinning.
I don't like grammar. In fact, I pretty much hate it. I love editing, but this could be seen as a form of aggression against grammar: if it's wrong, it makes itself obvious. Kill the bad grammar, and it turns back into a harmless sentence again.
But--grammar theory? I spent 7 years studying French, and spent most of my time drawing comic books. Direct object pronoun, indirect object pronoun, subjunctive, conditional...horrific. It's like talking about the shapes of lines in a painting but never getting to see the work itself.
I took summer classes in college just so I could spend a year studying in France, which gave me no credit towards my major, because I realized finally that there was no way in hell that I was going to learn French unless I got out of the classroom. I moved to Chile to learn Spanish. Basically, I can't learn a language unless I use my obsessive urge to socialize against myself. Even then, I only get so far.
All this means that coming up with either the enthusiasm or the creative lesson plan I needed to teach well was a miss more than hit situation for me. Half the time, when trying to prep for a lesson, I found myself thinking, "They should just get a book, what am I supposed to do about it?"
Anyone who followed my last blog, if there are any of you left, will know that this lead to a severe period of permanent irritability.
So having an actual job, that I actually care about, has been a relief. But there's another side to that coin.
English teaching is unpredictable in many ways. You have no idea what's going to happen in your class. Class 1 might get through your lesson plan in half the time you expected and leave you flapping your mouth like a fish for 45 minutes while you stall. Then Class 2 might spend the entire 90 minutes on your warm-up exercise, after which time your whiteboard will be covered with arrows, stick figures, and other useless illustrations. Put these two together, and it adds up to an hour and a half of misery (generally for the students as well, I'll be fair).
Whatever happens though, it's an hour and a half. Time-wise, English teaching is very predictable. And your lesson planning can vary somewhat, but not wildly. Grading can be disastrously time-consuming, but it too is a limited time. The semester ends. You breathe.
Not so in the normal world of work (to the extent that my situation can be called "normal"). All of a sudden I'm back in the zone of unexpected projects, unexpected bumps in the road, unexpected complaints....just general day-to-day unpredictability. Add to this the fact that I care about my job, and the fact that I live in my workplace, and then I find myself randomly working for 10 hours straight before I notice what's happening and remember that I need to prioritize. A year of a very patterned work life, preceded by several months of an hour-to-hour job at a bookstore, preceded by unemployment, preceded by six months of wandering...well, it's fair to say that my time management muscles have atrophied, if I had any to begin with.
I'd be lying if I said I missed teaching. Last year taught me that, at least when it comes to foreign languages, that is not the path I belong on. In fact, I'm pretty much thrilled to be where I am: busy, interested, working hard.
I'm sure I'll appreciate it once my head stops spinning.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Honeymooning
Moving to a new city is always exciting, particularly if you happen to be an experience junkie (who, me?). About a year ago at this time I was falling madly in love with Valparaiso, Chile.
Now I'm losing my heart to San Francisco.
Unfortunately, I don't actually live in the city, I live in the East Bay. This may change soon. In any event, every time I get the motivation up to head into town, I get that high that comes with a new relationship (with city or person).
While Boston and many other cities I know have come to feel a bit like outdoor malls, with chain stores dominating the landscape, San Francisco has maintained a local feel. Even better, the local locales are loco and lovely (don't worry, I hate me too sometimes).
One example would be the overwhelming number of independent bookstores. I passed at least 4 this past weekend. I've already found my current favorite: Dog Eared Books, a great and inexpensive store with book clubs and other events. Selecting a favorite bookstore, for me, is an absolutely essential step in bonding with a place. In Paris, it was W.H. Smith, across from the Jardin de Tuileries. In New Zealand, it was a used book shop in Kaikoura. In Boston, it was Trinity Books on Newbury Street and of course my former employer, Newtonville Books. In Meadville, my college's bookstore was thankfully independent and stocked well. And in Valpo, it was the multi-lingual bookstore on Cummings, just off of Anibal Pinto.
There are also incredible events and organizations here. I've just found out about one that I'm very excited about: The Bike Kitchen. I've wanted to learn about bicycles for several years now, but there are two major problems: 1. Books about bikes are impenetrable, 2. People who know a lot about bikes tend to get snobby about it and make you regret you ever asked. So when I found out about this place, I was thrilled. For a low membership rate and parts fee, you can build your own bike with the guidance of volunteers. I've been told that there is little to no snobbiness involved. More on this as I get myself involved.
So yes: Valparaiso, I will always love you, but you can really never trust a romantic, now can you?
Now I'm losing my heart to San Francisco.
Unfortunately, I don't actually live in the city, I live in the East Bay. This may change soon. In any event, every time I get the motivation up to head into town, I get that high that comes with a new relationship (with city or person).
While Boston and many other cities I know have come to feel a bit like outdoor malls, with chain stores dominating the landscape, San Francisco has maintained a local feel. Even better, the local locales are loco and lovely (don't worry, I hate me too sometimes).
One example would be the overwhelming number of independent bookstores. I passed at least 4 this past weekend. I've already found my current favorite: Dog Eared Books, a great and inexpensive store with book clubs and other events. Selecting a favorite bookstore, for me, is an absolutely essential step in bonding with a place. In Paris, it was W.H. Smith, across from the Jardin de Tuileries. In New Zealand, it was a used book shop in Kaikoura. In Boston, it was Trinity Books on Newbury Street and of course my former employer, Newtonville Books. In Meadville, my college's bookstore was thankfully independent and stocked well. And in Valpo, it was the multi-lingual bookstore on Cummings, just off of Anibal Pinto.
There are also incredible events and organizations here. I've just found out about one that I'm very excited about: The Bike Kitchen. I've wanted to learn about bicycles for several years now, but there are two major problems: 1. Books about bikes are impenetrable, 2. People who know a lot about bikes tend to get snobby about it and make you regret you ever asked. So when I found out about this place, I was thrilled. For a low membership rate and parts fee, you can build your own bike with the guidance of volunteers. I've been told that there is little to no snobbiness involved. More on this as I get myself involved.
So yes: Valparaiso, I will always love you, but you can really never trust a romantic, now can you?
Alterna-Family
I recently started a new job. One aspect of this position is that my employer emphasizes an alternative work environment. This is probably giving you a mental image of 90's dot coms with pool tables and funky interior decorating. What I'm actually talking about, though, is on a totally different end of the new-workspace spectrum.
I live and work in a home with all of my coworkers--which fluctuates based on who's working abroad at any given time, but when I moved in was at 18.
When I found out that I'd gotten the position, I made a point of enjoying this as much as possible. I cannot tell you the fun that is involved in telling people in a somewhat conservative country, "I'm going to live in a commune." People in Chile thought I was crazy for being a vegetarian--dropping the C word definitely pushed me over into the "insane hippy" category for a few of the people I talked to. Which is a fun thing to accomplish for someone who hasn't owned anything patchwork since the 10th grade.
The truth is though, even my liberal friends were somewhat skeptical of this workspace/living space idea. Frankly, so was I. Imagine any work environment you've ever been in. Dramarama, correct? I worked as an apple-picker for awhile when I was living in New Zealand, and I discovered that it is possible to have office drama even when you have no office, work alone in a row of trees all day, and generally have your iPod on the whole time. (My favorite: "long-arming," which is when someone in the row next to you picks good clusters of apples from your side of the tree. Known long-armers became social pariahs...but we all did it on the sly.)
Now think about any living situation you've had that involved a high number of roommates. Chances are you still hate one of them. I know that I'm carrying around a couple of grudges; one for the girl who created insane house policies by posting angry announcements in the kitchen, one for the woman who would play music outside my door until 4 in the morning, and a big one for all of the people in hostels who pack each of their belongings in its own plastic bag and then pack at 5am. Or the ones who don't bring a flashlight when they know they're coming in late. Or the ones who talk when the other people staying in the room are sleeping. I guess I'll save this for a hostel manifesto.
I digress.
In any event, there are three areas of social contact that are extremely loaded: working together, living together, and traveling together. I have never had a friend with whom I was compatible on all three points. So signing up for a situation in which I would be doing all of these things with the same 20-odd people was a bit daunting.
And by daunting I mean, it sounded like a recipe for making my social life a living hell.
Well, thankfully, I was wrong. Way wrong. And what's followed in the three weeks since I arrived here has been one of those moments in your life when you realize that you've got yourself figured out wrong.
I think it may come down to having a weird set of genes. My father's family is full of loud social people--the kind of people where you pick up the phone and don't have to say your first word for at least 10 minutes. My mother's family, meanwhile, is full of people so reserved that conversation can be a matter of intense effort. So I wound up a little odd, as I see it. With people I know, I am extremely outgoing and almost never shut up. However, for most of my childhood I was so incredibly shy that I preferred dark colored clothing on the grounds that it would make me less noticeable. I pulled a little vigilante Cognitive Behavioral Training on myself, and by now I only feel shy when meeting a large group of new people--but even then I can generally fake comfort until it actually becomes real.
So that's what I did when I arrived in California. Surprisingly, the comfort became real within a few days, thanks to a truly incredible group of people who are accepting of themselves and of others. And that's when the realization settled in: I was made for this kind of situation.
In short, I'm a social addict, and someone let me into the catnip.
At any time of day, if I want to socialize, I wander around until I find someone who isn't working. At the same time, if you're visibly being productive, no one bothers you, so I never feel interfered with. I have dinner every day with at least 10 people. Whenever I want to leave the house, I usually have at least a few options for people to tag along with. Meanwhile, I'm getting to know people socially while also developing an understanding of and respect for them as professionals. The lack of boundary on that front means that compliments flow like water around here, and disputes are dealt with with the frankness you'd use in a social setting. Meanwhile, I laugh more often every day than I ever have.
Today was the first time I've spent time alone since January 31st. I was tired and run down after a bit of an overdone weekend, so I worked in bed (in my pajamas). It was a nice break, but I'll be back in the common areas tomorrow. Yes, I'm honeymooning right now. My blood content of warm fuzzies is probably off the charts. In any case, though, my new living situation has caused me to rethink my perspectives on communities. In Chile, everyone lives with their (often extended) family, and the feeling was extremely claustrophobic to me. Meanwhile, the typical studio-for-one goal that many young North Americans share felt cold and isolating, but roommates seemed like bad news. So here's a middle ground: a group of people who came together over shared ideals and lifestyle goals, living together family style.
So I just may be a way bigger hippy than I thought, because moving into a semi-commune has been the best living situation I've gotten into yet. Now if I could just make friends I don't live with...
I live and work in a home with all of my coworkers--which fluctuates based on who's working abroad at any given time, but when I moved in was at 18.
When I found out that I'd gotten the position, I made a point of enjoying this as much as possible. I cannot tell you the fun that is involved in telling people in a somewhat conservative country, "I'm going to live in a commune." People in Chile thought I was crazy for being a vegetarian--dropping the C word definitely pushed me over into the "insane hippy" category for a few of the people I talked to. Which is a fun thing to accomplish for someone who hasn't owned anything patchwork since the 10th grade.
The truth is though, even my liberal friends were somewhat skeptical of this workspace/living space idea. Frankly, so was I. Imagine any work environment you've ever been in. Dramarama, correct? I worked as an apple-picker for awhile when I was living in New Zealand, and I discovered that it is possible to have office drama even when you have no office, work alone in a row of trees all day, and generally have your iPod on the whole time. (My favorite: "long-arming," which is when someone in the row next to you picks good clusters of apples from your side of the tree. Known long-armers became social pariahs...but we all did it on the sly.)
Now think about any living situation you've had that involved a high number of roommates. Chances are you still hate one of them. I know that I'm carrying around a couple of grudges; one for the girl who created insane house policies by posting angry announcements in the kitchen, one for the woman who would play music outside my door until 4 in the morning, and a big one for all of the people in hostels who pack each of their belongings in its own plastic bag and then pack at 5am. Or the ones who don't bring a flashlight when they know they're coming in late. Or the ones who talk when the other people staying in the room are sleeping. I guess I'll save this for a hostel manifesto.
I digress.
In any event, there are three areas of social contact that are extremely loaded: working together, living together, and traveling together. I have never had a friend with whom I was compatible on all three points. So signing up for a situation in which I would be doing all of these things with the same 20-odd people was a bit daunting.
And by daunting I mean, it sounded like a recipe for making my social life a living hell.
Well, thankfully, I was wrong. Way wrong. And what's followed in the three weeks since I arrived here has been one of those moments in your life when you realize that you've got yourself figured out wrong.
I think it may come down to having a weird set of genes. My father's family is full of loud social people--the kind of people where you pick up the phone and don't have to say your first word for at least 10 minutes. My mother's family, meanwhile, is full of people so reserved that conversation can be a matter of intense effort. So I wound up a little odd, as I see it. With people I know, I am extremely outgoing and almost never shut up. However, for most of my childhood I was so incredibly shy that I preferred dark colored clothing on the grounds that it would make me less noticeable. I pulled a little vigilante Cognitive Behavioral Training on myself, and by now I only feel shy when meeting a large group of new people--but even then I can generally fake comfort until it actually becomes real.
So that's what I did when I arrived in California. Surprisingly, the comfort became real within a few days, thanks to a truly incredible group of people who are accepting of themselves and of others. And that's when the realization settled in: I was made for this kind of situation.
In short, I'm a social addict, and someone let me into the catnip.
At any time of day, if I want to socialize, I wander around until I find someone who isn't working. At the same time, if you're visibly being productive, no one bothers you, so I never feel interfered with. I have dinner every day with at least 10 people. Whenever I want to leave the house, I usually have at least a few options for people to tag along with. Meanwhile, I'm getting to know people socially while also developing an understanding of and respect for them as professionals. The lack of boundary on that front means that compliments flow like water around here, and disputes are dealt with with the frankness you'd use in a social setting. Meanwhile, I laugh more often every day than I ever have.
Today was the first time I've spent time alone since January 31st. I was tired and run down after a bit of an overdone weekend, so I worked in bed (in my pajamas). It was a nice break, but I'll be back in the common areas tomorrow. Yes, I'm honeymooning right now. My blood content of warm fuzzies is probably off the charts. In any case, though, my new living situation has caused me to rethink my perspectives on communities. In Chile, everyone lives with their (often extended) family, and the feeling was extremely claustrophobic to me. Meanwhile, the typical studio-for-one goal that many young North Americans share felt cold and isolating, but roommates seemed like bad news. So here's a middle ground: a group of people who came together over shared ideals and lifestyle goals, living together family style.
So I just may be a way bigger hippy than I thought, because moving into a semi-commune has been the best living situation I've gotten into yet. Now if I could just make friends I don't live with...
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
It's the new rage
Watch this video. Then vote for it. Featuring several of my coworkers and my supervisor.
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