Julie, rory and
Ramona left chongqing a while ago. Which
made/makes me sad. there’s been a lot to
process here—my relationship with them, my relationship with others, how
dependent the former has been on the latter, how to actually start trusting
other humans again, how to be a social person, what I’m doing in china, what my
career path is. and on and on….is it
possible to examine and explore all of these things simultaneously? How [im]possible is the notion of
balance?
Quitting the old
job is a testament to how far i’ve come career-wise (outgrowing something that
was your existence for so long), but it’s still bittersweet to feel forced to
move beyond the thing that you helped shape, and that helped shaped you. I guess the last job is the longest
relationship i’ve ever been in. it
definitely feels comparable to a demanding significant other, but with more
emotional abuse.
you don’t really get to
have “feelings” in management. So after
suppressing them for so long, it’s scary not to suddenly not have to do that
anymore. Again with the trust issues…
of course i
needed some sort of change to happen, but things sucking very very badly is
what ultimately forced me to sever the limb of the old school. it’s still twitching. particularly recently when I, in theory,
would have returned to work on wednesdays, but instead I tend to have 4 days
off in a row. that’s now my new
normal. but the ache and dread of the
old job hover on the periphery, never actualizing. this will take some getting used to—waking up
and not immediately dreading all of my interactions that will take place in a
given day. a lack of drama in my
life. only worrying about myself. making schloads (by my standards) of money
for not a lot of effort. i hesitate to
say I “deserve” these things. but I will
say I’ve earned them. i've put in the time and effort.
in a way I’ve
gotten exactly what i thought I wanted, to be alone, separate from, other than. and yet here I am, alone.
what it all boils
down to for me is the toll the past year has taken on my humanity. and at a certain point I had to be able to
say, “I don’t have to do this” and let go. i'm a real glutton for punishment, because the “greater good” isn’t
something to be taken lightly. i destroy
myself to uphold it, even if i don’t know exactly what it is or when I’ll get
there. this feeds off of and fuels my sporadic and skewed
sense of loyalty. when others don’t have
the same values then the discontent (and the disconnect) festers. generally speaking, anything that “festers”
probably isn’t a good thing.
i feel like i’m
floating in this in between space, some sort of existential purgatory between
the past and the future. i know this is
not unique to me. i know it is not
unique to use “existential” to qualify every probably-less-than profound thought a person
writes down. i know these things. i also acknowledge that acknowledging all of this doesn't absolve me. smiley face emoticon. :)
the overriding
questions are what and why. i can’t go
back to where i came from, but I don’t really know where i want to be. i only
know that i don’t have the greatest impression of china, but i like only
working 2.5 days a week. i feel a sense
of urgency to document all of my “feelings” about this. the sense of impending doom still hasn’t
left, because in theory, I should have gone to work today. Or started preparing a workshop, or should be
thinking about a teacher’s flight reimbursement, or figuring out how to
discipline a teacher, or not sound like a complete asshole to a terrible human
armed with a distorted ego, sense of entitlement and unfounded vitriolic
aggression. i don’t have to do any of
those things anymore, and the reality of not having to do that has not sunk
in. i don’t know how long it will take,
but right now it’s just this lurking thing that i can’t talk about enough.
in other news, i’ll
be starting the Distance DELTA in march. it puts off the questions of “what’s next” for a while, because it had
always been the abstract goal on the horizon.
It was surprisingly easy to make concrete. i just applied online. that was
it. i can do that. i did do that. we’ll see how/when it starts to kick my ass (or if
my books ever show up).
some friends came
to visit over the chinese new year. it was
exactly what i needed to put an end to the shittiness of the past year or
so. some sort of purge in the form of food, drink, travel and good company. i’ll expound upon that separately. jake, yui and asha deserve their own
post.
