I know, it's been forever. I'm sorry I haven't written more, and I'm sorry I haven't put up more pictures. If you're my facebook friend, you can see them, or you can email me and I'll send you a link. But the internet at my house isn't strong enough to upload to blogger at the moment.
I also haven't written lately because there has been so much in my head that I've been too overwhelmed to get it out in so many outlets. I talk about it with my parents and friends, I write in my journal about it, and at the end of the day the blogging gets postponed.
I wrote a post a while back discussing my general feeling that this time in Vietnam, while it is my life right now, doesn’t feel like my real life, the way I imagine my life to be. I’m not saying that this experience doesn’t “count”, I am incredibly grateful to have had this opportunity and I think that it has helped me evolve into the person that I am always striving to be. However…
I’m ready to move on. I’ve already stayed longer than I expected to, having extended my contract six months past the expected end date in order to gain more work and life experience. But what I’m feeling now is that I’m approaching the limit where the experience can be growth-inducing and where it can be detrimental to who I am. In essence, it’s wearing me down. My tolerance for culture clash is growing smaller and smaller, reducing me to feeling like a racist asshole who can’t stand “the Asians”, which just isn’t me. As I’ve explored before on this blog, it’s a constant battle between my occasional frustration with this foreign culture and then my immediate guilt trip and self-consciousness at feeling said frustration. And it’s exhausting.
Of course, I have a lot of dreams and ambitions for the future, some that have only developed recently. I now know that I like working in publishing (albeit not in…certain circumstances), and would like to keep trying it, in different genres, working my way towards getting involved in the fiction world. And I know that I need to go to New York, and I’m impatient about getting there and starting a new adventure. And now that I know these things, being here just feels like I’m stagnant.
And much of it has to do with culture. I’ve said to my friends (with a deep guilt at saying so, mind you) that I look forward to having first-world problems again. These are problems I know how to manage: having little money, working all the time to pay rent, finding an apartment or room to live in, finding a job, writing cover letters, getting around places, managing my time to work, see friends, relax. I look forward to being able to focus on these challenges without, say, the constant fear of being hit by a motorbike while walking on the sidewalk. Or the annoyance of having “Hello! Where you from! Motobike you?” shouted at me five times daily. I look forward to being able to pay my own bills because I will be able to read them, and not have to ask the neighbor for help to order more drinking water.
As anyone who knows me is aware, I’m a control freak. When I’m not in control of a situation, I go a bit bananas. The more control I have over a situation, the better I feel about it. I recognize when I don’t have control, and as long as I’m aware that I don’t, I can adapt myself to keep control over the things that I can, and accept the things that I can’t. Here, the things that I can’t control seem far more than I’ve handled before, in Chicago, Paris, and Los Angeles, and they are more constant. Here I am constantly assaulted by the things I can’t control, and it’s tough.
I know when I get back to the states, I will once again be overwhelmed, less with traffic and food choices and communication, and more with reverse culture shock and unemployment and moving to New York. But these are things that, in some form or another, I have dealt with before, and I am ready for it.
As far as specifics goes, this is my “plan”. My last day of work is April 5 (Wooooooooo! Sorry, had to get that out). My parents will be here April 3 to the 23, and we’ll be travelling a bit in Vietnam, and they’ll go to Angkor Wat to get all templed out. Once they leave, I will (Visa providing) head to Laos for a week or so, then back to Saigon to gather my belongs, and fly home to LA the first week of May. Once home, I plan to do many things, such as: sleep on my tiny twin bed, surround by stuffed animals and pillows, for at least 2 days; play with my puppy; have a welcome back party for myself at my house; overdose on In-n-Out (sp?), Mexican food, and diners; drive around LA a lot; and—most importantly—plan for the future. In a perfect world, I would somehow figure out how to do a cross-country road trip with NY as the final destination: I’m thinking drive up the coast, then over the Northwest, stop in Chicago for a bit, then over to NY. However, the logistics are tricky, as I have no car, I don’t want to buy a car only to sell it in NY, and renting one is pricey. So it probably won’t happen. Yet. Eventually, yes. (Have I talked about this on here before? I feel like I’m repeating myself. Oh, well.)
In any event, this is my plan. And I’m excited about it, and thus my excitement about being in Vietnam is waning. Has waned. You get it.
But I don’t want any of the negativity that I may feel towards being here to overwhelm my last months. I want to end on a high note. I think having my parents here will help greatly, as I will get to show them things, and participate in their experience of a new place (they’ve never been to Asia before), as well as have some family adventures (hopefully all good ones). We’ll see.
For now, I am working on dividing my thoughts between the future and the present. On the one hand, I am excited about my New York adventure, and on the other, I want to enjoy my remaining time here, one day at a time. So I am doing that, while still preparing myself to depart and embark on a new journey.
Ok, I think that’s enough for now. Love!
A
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