having to go in to work tomorrow. what?! i leave in less than 5 days. my shit is in boxes in storage and in suitcases. i have nothing in the fridge and nothing in the cupboards. my cat is now living with my parents and my car is insured to my sister. it seems so wrong that i have to return to normalcy and work my ass off for two days. why again did i agree to this?
eh, anyway.
biggest challenge these days is to streamline the packing. i am going from arguably one of the most aesthetics-driven countries (france) to inarguably one of the least (china) and need to be both practical for hot weather (which i've visited but never lived in) but still need to hang with the chic in the south of france. what's a girl to do... and why the hell do i have so many jackets. and hats. and jeans. jesus christ, the second coming in denim. the thing that i try to keep in mind is what my best friend did when she left for shanghai. granted, she still had a room at her parents that she didn't need to clear out and rent to someone else, but she's also tremendously good at not buying / accumulating stacks of expensive denim. and military-esque jackets. and gold or bronze sandals. she literally took with her one backpack and one small suitcase when she moved. i'm forcing myself to keep it down to an enormous duffle (one i can practically stretch out in and i'm 5'7") and a suitcase that could house a family. she's trying to help me with this by telling me to visualize my small bedroom with nowhere to hang stuff and reminding me that this may just be a 6-month thing (god, i hope not. i'm going to stay 2 years just because i don't want to have to move again).
self: visualize mixing and matching. channel a monk or something. take it down a notch.
i guess this is not necessarily a bad problem to have. if i ever wonder where my salary went, i now know. but i don't because i already knew.
off to bed. must be able to analyze very small data in a very precise way in about 8 hours.
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
40 countries in 40 years
a friend of mine had this goal of visiting 40 countries by her 40th birthday. i thought this an awesome idea.
well, i'm only at... 11? and that includes canada and mexico, unfortunately.
- japan - 2006 and 2002-ish (go snowboarding in niseko. you'll be glad you did.)
- korea - 2004 (um, half my peeps originated here, but i found the local custom of running into people to be jarring. and you can only eat barbequed squid so many times a day.)
- china - 2004, 1991, 1987. see xiao long bao on the left. good shit.
- brazil - 2004 (incredible incredible. be prepared to be mugged if you're in rio. carry only small amounts of cash and lip gloss. ladies, butt crack is an accessory. the pic on the right is of me in rio. i like the blurry look.)
- thailand - 2003 (you need to go diving if you haven't already. get custom-made clothes in bankok. try not to cry when a 12-year old bar girl walks off with a 75-year old tourist.)
- france - 1998
- holland - 1998 (people seriously ride bikes here. i got passed up constantly by grandmas toting their grandkids. also, the dutch are tall and have big feet, which made me feel pretty good whilst shopping for shoes.)
- spain - 1998 (hard time with racial shit here, especially in madrid. i hear it's better, but we were ready to throw down at one point.)
ok, so that was only 10. maybe i'll remember another one later. my passport is at the chinese consulate, alas.
top-5 anticipatory-country list:
- costa rica - surfing and coffee? hells yeah.
- italy - i work with lots of italians and find their schedules appealing. not as a business partner, but for myself. espresso all day long? wine and a nap? why not?
- australia - great barrier reef. i like fish and moray eels and leopard sharks. plus i met some very nice aussies in japan. i'd been nonplussed on the subject before then. you know, you hear stories about racism and shit, which is not a friendly subject.
- vietnam
- hmm. a toss up between peru and laos. i think machu picchu wins.
joining a fan club at 28
written 7/9/06:
A lot of leaving has to do with letting go. I feel that I’ve been so focused on success – what success means, I’m still not sure, but it had to do with getting more money this year than I got last year – that I forgot about what it was I gravitated naturally towards when left to my own devices. What I’d think about periodically was an article I read in ‘National Geographic’ some time ago about a people that lived in some wholly exotic jungle. Anthropologists had studied these people and determined that the amount of hours that each member contributed towards a livelihood – that is, food, shelter, relative safety – totaled approximately four hours a day (you’ll forgive the lack of details and bibliography – it’s past 5 AM and I’ve been drinking) whereas the average American devotes about 10+ hours to the same end. So what if their diet may include insects and they perhaps think that a nose pierced with bone is pretty cool? Half of us have random piercings anyway.
I decided that after 28 years, I would give in and join this fan club. I’ve been alarmingly obsessed with this band recently – the world ‘band’ being relatively new to my vocabulary in the first place – and have been secretly googling them and haunting their website and re-playing their videos on mtv.com… it’s embarrassing but kind of fun. It’s the teenager I never let exist. The funniest part to me is that I never let a ‘band’ enter my repertoire as a teenager. I was pretty much a hip hop girl and now at 28, finally admitting that I’ve always had a penchant for dark-haired boys in eyeliner, well, it’s just interesting and rather hilarious. You should check them out – they fucking rock – although I’m not positive I’m listening to rock . The songs involve some screaming. I was pretty alarmed by that when I first heard it, but you kinda get used to it and now I’m on their forums like all the other 18-year olds in Missouri and Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico. www.afireinside.net. Release that inner teenager, man.
Pay the $39.99 and get your t-shirt and wrist band and sticker or whatever the hell.
One of the things that I am fascinated by – besides the fact that they live in Oakland and East Bay, holla! – is the fact the band is vegetarian and vegan. What is THAT all about? A couple of them are sXe – fucking straight-edge. No booze, no drugs. Have I ever met someone like that? I worked with this lady at the library whose teenage son was into that scene… but how the hell you manage? Is caffeine a drug? What do you do when you smell pork chops cookin? Is soy a sustainable option? I’ve been around a fair share of vegans – I am a Berkeley Co-op alum – but no one that actually avoided ALL the deadly sins. Most of the vegans I knew were busy shoving coke up their noses and gobbling down shrooms and MDMH like no other. I’m no stranger to staving off of things I don’t believe in – religion being one – but my god (pun intended… sort of. Caught in editing at least.). I couldn’t have avoided bomb if I wore a fucking helmet and hockey mask throughout my high school years.
The sun’s coming up – I need to sleep to be worth a damn tomorrow. Packing.
A lot of leaving has to do with letting go. I feel that I’ve been so focused on success – what success means, I’m still not sure, but it had to do with getting more money this year than I got last year – that I forgot about what it was I gravitated naturally towards when left to my own devices. What I’d think about periodically was an article I read in ‘National Geographic’ some time ago about a people that lived in some wholly exotic jungle. Anthropologists had studied these people and determined that the amount of hours that each member contributed towards a livelihood – that is, food, shelter, relative safety – totaled approximately four hours a day (you’ll forgive the lack of details and bibliography – it’s past 5 AM and I’ve been drinking) whereas the average American devotes about 10+ hours to the same end. So what if their diet may include insects and they perhaps think that a nose pierced with bone is pretty cool? Half of us have random piercings anyway.
I decided that after 28 years, I would give in and join this fan club. I’ve been alarmingly obsessed with this band recently – the world ‘band’ being relatively new to my vocabulary in the first place – and have been secretly googling them and haunting their website and re-playing their videos on mtv.com… it’s embarrassing but kind of fun. It’s the teenager I never let exist. The funniest part to me is that I never let a ‘band’ enter my repertoire as a teenager. I was pretty much a hip hop girl and now at 28, finally admitting that I’ve always had a penchant for dark-haired boys in eyeliner, well, it’s just interesting and rather hilarious. You should check them out – they fucking rock – although I’m not positive I’m listening to rock . The songs involve some screaming. I was pretty alarmed by that when I first heard it, but you kinda get used to it and now I’m on their forums like all the other 18-year olds in Missouri and Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico. www.afireinside.net. Release that inner teenager, man.
Pay the $39.99 and get your t-shirt and wrist band and sticker or whatever the hell.
One of the things that I am fascinated by – besides the fact that they live in Oakland and East Bay, holla! – is the fact the band is vegetarian and vegan. What is THAT all about? A couple of them are sXe – fucking straight-edge. No booze, no drugs. Have I ever met someone like that? I worked with this lady at the library whose teenage son was into that scene… but how the hell you manage? Is caffeine a drug? What do you do when you smell pork chops cookin? Is soy a sustainable option? I’ve been around a fair share of vegans – I am a Berkeley Co-op alum – but no one that actually avoided ALL the deadly sins. Most of the vegans I knew were busy shoving coke up their noses and gobbling down shrooms and MDMH like no other. I’m no stranger to staving off of things I don’t believe in – religion being one – but my god (pun intended… sort of. Caught in editing at least.). I couldn’t have avoided bomb if I wore a fucking helmet and hockey mask throughout my high school years.
The sun’s coming up – I need to sleep to be worth a damn tomorrow. Packing.
letting go - am i making the right choice?
Reaching the end of what I’ve worked so long to build. I can’t really describe in one word what it is I’m feeling; there are so many parts. Regret for leaving behind so many things that I take pleasure in. Wide-eyed denial of the impending doom of being illiterate and unable to communicate. Excitement about putting an end to what I’ve considered to be the most difficult fulfilling destructive stable phases of my life. Fear about my grandmother and perhaps never seeing her again. Guilt for abandoning those that depend on me.
One of the fascinating things is the excitement that everyone expresses for me. I wonder if that’s what people would really choose if they were in my shoes. Because I know that if the stars hadn’t aligned in the way they did several months ago – the last rejection email from Harvard, getting berated in a meeting by my VP, getting berated in another meeting by my director, driving the same street every weekend and realizing it made me tired, seeing people from my high school and not wanting to even though they were actually pretty nice back then, feeling that I’ve never been lost in my life and suddenly wanting to see what it felt like – I’d still be bleeping into the lobby every morning, saying hi to Alan the receptionist, and trying to walk quietly past my director’s office because I’m the usual 30-45 minutes late. I’d still be sitting down at my desk, turning on the computer, checking voicemail. I’d still have voicemail. I’d listen to my iPod with the volume on low so I could hear my phone ringing, my colleagues coming up behind me to talk about the delivery slide on our newest product. I’d decide each day what to get for lunch. Are we feeling a salad today or possibly a burrito? Does the weather suck? Do my feet hurt?
One of the frightening things to me is that I didn’t feel suffocated. It was just what I did every day. It afforded me my own condo at 26, nice things to fill it with, and occasional travel to anthropologically fascinating places such as Hickory, NC, and Harrisburg, PA. And, my friends, let’s be truthful, sometimes those things count. Enough to distract for a while, at least. Sometimes you check into a hotel paid for by the company and are pleasantly surprised by its grandiosity. Sometimes you think about your job and your life and your work conversations, your friends that you like at work and the funny times you’ve had, and it makes it okay. You make each morning manageable, then you make each afternoon manageable. And suddenly, four years have gone by and you’re still not convinced you want to be there.
What makes people feel secure, really? It is routine that enforces security. Knowing that you have the same answer to that question each day, and can continue to have that answer if you continue holding up your end of the deal. I’ve been holding up that end of the deal since I was fifteen, always worrying about money. Worrying that if I asked for too much, my family wouldn’t be able to afford anything. I'm serious. So scared of not having anything that my first job was almost a gift, a way of knowing that my independence and my wants would never come at the expense of anyone else but me.
Part of my leaving is the need to separate my life from it’s foundation of what security has come to represent for me. I need to eliminate that variable. I’m going to do this.
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