This is my first blog entry since a compulsory college assignment senior year. I make no promises about the makeup of the proceeding passages, especially any grammar flaws. I am in my mid twenties and the few promises I have made carry a lot of weight and will behind them. I cannot guarantee anything about the frequency, my transparency or any overarching structure in the following ramblings. Only that this the cliche thing to do when you move abroad. And I am at a point in life where I am reconnecting with my writing. Lastly, I have people in my life, self included, that are not entirely social media savvy or inclined and this seems the most effective way to communicate with them when I move to India. Besides its impossible to convey your experiences over weeks and months without a form of communication. When I came back from a year of volunteering in Denver, I got tired of "oh that's right, what were you doing again?" and me "I was a volunteer teacher," and the "oh wow that's cool." I'm writing for myself but to share my story with those I love...
Since I found out I would be moving to India for six months just a little over a month ago, there has been a range of emotions and unforeseen changes that I can only draw parallels to the knots I had leaving my home in Southern California to go to college outside Boston. That was six years ago to the week. I have been leaning on my friends and family as I navigate this transition. Of all the words that have poured in, some just right, some way off, some too soon, and silence from one who I needed support, one of the best came from a friend in Chicago: Just pack your bags. Focus on what you need to back in the next 8 days. Just get yourself there. That is all you need to do right now.
The 13 months of my life have been the most stationary since I was in high school. Just a few months back I moved into my old room that I had not lived alone in since I was 2. After several years of paring down my stuff, I decorated it with discarded posters and books. And on summer afternoons I would play the Beach Boy records and repeat the song "In My Room." Now the bags are coming out from under my bed and I am moving again.
As I pack I am replaying the words of one of my volunteer director's who I spoke with last week. I called him to tell him of the recent developments in my life, pausing to reflect how it has been two years now since moving to Denver and meeting him outside in the garden with a rake in hand on move in day. You are not going there alone, he said. You are taking everyone that has played a part in your life with you. Even the people who you want to know so badly what their role will turn out to be. I am carrying those stories, and I thought immediately of the kindergartners now second graders I taught and that I miss in Denver.
In the little over two years since college, the anxiety I had entering the final semester about my future seems like a distant inner struggle. I could not have imagined my life in Denver, falling in love, meeting my goddaughter, and even moving home and feeling like my life was on pause at times.
I'm ready for a shakeup, and though the plans I have made around people, a place and a passion have not changed, I know from the risks I have taken in my life that this is exactly what I am suppose to be doing. As much I am trying to get my life in order, if there were such a thing, before leaving, student loans, banking, the cell phone situation, RELATIONSHIPS etc. as I look at my backpack in the corner of the room, I am letting go a little of my desire to control and know. Instead choosing to lean forward and hope.
This past weekend I spent the entire time with my family and a few friends at Carlsbad beach camping, with a vantage point from the coastal bluffs dotted in sage brush and of the sunsets each night after spending the entire day on the beach below. My dad and I discovered each day a handful of Velella velella's or "by-the wind sailors." These jellyfish like creatures that fit in the palm of your hand, that look like a translucent cobalt-blue Lay's chip, with a sail on top. They have been washing up in the thousands on So. Cal beaches all summer. They have no propulsion system, and I say they because each one is a colony of microorganisms that band to form this alien vessel. They rely solely on the sail they form to go with the current and wind. As these shift they can end up washed up on shore, or across the world. Submission to fate. Just passing through. "Imagine?" My dad said as we held one and if wasn't for the NPR story I heard about them, would have thought it was a plastic wrapper of some sort. "What a hell of a way to live."
So this little velella velella is off for now. But not without taking me the image of sitting by the campfire Saturday night with my niece in my arms, slouched over and mesmerized by the fire, exhausted by a day of laughs running along the tide. She was running her little fingers over the watch on my arm and all I could hear was the crackling of the wood and roar of the waves below. Time is a most peculiar thing.
Since I found out I would be moving to India for six months just a little over a month ago, there has been a range of emotions and unforeseen changes that I can only draw parallels to the knots I had leaving my home in Southern California to go to college outside Boston. That was six years ago to the week. I have been leaning on my friends and family as I navigate this transition. Of all the words that have poured in, some just right, some way off, some too soon, and silence from one who I needed support, one of the best came from a friend in Chicago: Just pack your bags. Focus on what you need to back in the next 8 days. Just get yourself there. That is all you need to do right now.
The 13 months of my life have been the most stationary since I was in high school. Just a few months back I moved into my old room that I had not lived alone in since I was 2. After several years of paring down my stuff, I decorated it with discarded posters and books. And on summer afternoons I would play the Beach Boy records and repeat the song "In My Room." Now the bags are coming out from under my bed and I am moving again.
As I pack I am replaying the words of one of my volunteer director's who I spoke with last week. I called him to tell him of the recent developments in my life, pausing to reflect how it has been two years now since moving to Denver and meeting him outside in the garden with a rake in hand on move in day. You are not going there alone, he said. You are taking everyone that has played a part in your life with you. Even the people who you want to know so badly what their role will turn out to be. I am carrying those stories, and I thought immediately of the kindergartners now second graders I taught and that I miss in Denver.
In the little over two years since college, the anxiety I had entering the final semester about my future seems like a distant inner struggle. I could not have imagined my life in Denver, falling in love, meeting my goddaughter, and even moving home and feeling like my life was on pause at times.
I'm ready for a shakeup, and though the plans I have made around people, a place and a passion have not changed, I know from the risks I have taken in my life that this is exactly what I am suppose to be doing. As much I am trying to get my life in order, if there were such a thing, before leaving, student loans, banking, the cell phone situation, RELATIONSHIPS etc. as I look at my backpack in the corner of the room, I am letting go a little of my desire to control and know. Instead choosing to lean forward and hope.
This past weekend I spent the entire time with my family and a few friends at Carlsbad beach camping, with a vantage point from the coastal bluffs dotted in sage brush and of the sunsets each night after spending the entire day on the beach below. My dad and I discovered each day a handful of Velella velella's or "by-the wind sailors." These jellyfish like creatures that fit in the palm of your hand, that look like a translucent cobalt-blue Lay's chip, with a sail on top. They have been washing up in the thousands on So. Cal beaches all summer. They have no propulsion system, and I say they because each one is a colony of microorganisms that band to form this alien vessel. They rely solely on the sail they form to go with the current and wind. As these shift they can end up washed up on shore, or across the world. Submission to fate. Just passing through. "Imagine?" My dad said as we held one and if wasn't for the NPR story I heard about them, would have thought it was a plastic wrapper of some sort. "What a hell of a way to live."
So this little velella velella is off for now. But not without taking me the image of sitting by the campfire Saturday night with my niece in my arms, slouched over and mesmerized by the fire, exhausted by a day of laughs running along the tide. She was running her little fingers over the watch on my arm and all I could hear was the crackling of the wood and roar of the waves below. Time is a most peculiar thing.
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