Just trying to find my way home

1/19/07

So I realized this morning that I’m restless. All week I’ve felt funky, not quite content, but not sure why. I have felt unmotivated and barely able to concentrate for more than like 15 minutes at a time. Then this morning I realized that nearly all of this week has been spent in front of my computer in Andreia’s office, typing and sitting, and typing and sitting. Then when I get home I want to do anything but think about work things, so I’ll read a book or put on a DVD on my computer, more sitting. Sure, I sometimes go running in the mornings, but that hasn’t seemed to shake this feeling that I just now have put a word to: restlessness. I’m bored in a weird sense. Not bored because nothing’s going on, not bored because I don’t have anything to do (quite the contrary), but needing to get up and do something different, something creative. I need to sing, write a song, dance in my room, something. And so when I get home today, that’s what I plan to do. Shut myself in my room and turn on the salsa music. Bring on the reckless abandon. Even as I’m typing this, my foot is incessantly tapping, needing to break away from this awful screen I’ve been staring at for too long. With that I’m putting the computer away for a few minutes. That’s it. Cold turkey. It’s gotta be done.

But before I officially quit, I wanted to include a passage I just recently read in a book about youth at disadvantage that is kind of relevant to the topic, regarding how we run our days and compartmentalize time and people.

“’We have been fooled into believing time is real; it isn’t, of course. It is an invention of the human mind for describing change and motion. Not until very recently have humans ever tried to govern their life activity by numbers generated by a tiny machine. The great cycle of seasons and of the day, the natural development of growth, these were time. The rest is only as real as we want it to be. And as demanding.’
In contrast to time, relationships are real. They exist in the intimate spaces of our lives where we narrow the distance between ourselves and others. Family, friendship, community—these are the bonds of reality.
Today these bonds are being torn apart by the hands of Western time. We have a new idiom for that…to mask the continued destruction of love in our society: it is called ‘quality’ time. Now not only are we quantifying time, we are qualifying it. We are willing into existence the illusion that love can be measured by seconds or minutes; that ‘human relationships can be made warm in the microwave of quick encounters.’
We cannot care for children in convenient time; we cannot learn from our elders in convenient time; we cannot maintain marriages in convenient time. The result of adjusting our lives to the fiction of time will inevitably be empty adults, lonely elders, and neglected children.” (Reclaiming Youth at Risk: Our hope for the future, Brendtro, Brokenleg, and Van Bockern, 1998)

And living by this fiction of time makes you ignore the creative moments, which can be had outside of the “after 5:30pm” timeframe. Hence journaling in the middle of “work time”. Ha!


1/24/07

Lately I have been missing home a lot. Not just wishing my family was here, but wishing I was there. My head has lately convinced itself that everything was paradise in my life in the States (which it wasn’t) and that everything here is ten times harder (which is only partly true), and things that I didn’t like at the time have become fond memories that make me long to go back. Lately it just seems like everything is so much harder than it needs to be here, and I find myself becoming apathetic. I dread going to work everyday, and when I’m there I count the hours until I don’t have to pretend like I’m doing something so I can go home and retreat into my solitude. How miserable does that sound? And it’s not that bad, it’s just that I think I’m realizing that part (or much) of why I am shut up in front of a computer every day is my own doing. I realized I am afraid of venturing away to do the things I want to do because it requires so much effort, patience, and competencies that I’m beginning to convince myself I don’t have. My language is suffering because I’m not using it as much and don’t have the drive to make it better, try to explain myself, or try to learn. And this week my heart is just being weighed down with this indefinable yet distinct sadness, one that won’t go away no matter what half-hearted attempts I make to force it out of my system. I can’t find my “happy place”, and it’s a familiar feeling. Everywhere I go in life I come across the same feeling once in awhile, that feeling that you’re not quite where you want or need to be, that you’re continually searching and not finding that final place that feels right.

Everything I want to do at the Center feels impossible to me right now, partly because I have little real experience in getting some of these things underway, and partly because I mostly feel like I’m doing it on my own, without anyone else motivated enough to help me. It’s so frustrating trying to get the monitoras to help you out with anything, like planning a trip to the beach or a hike to the big tree. Even though the girls want to, the monitoras won’t make the effort. And I know that’s my job: I’m supposed to be a mobilizer, find ways to get people doing things, getting interested. But sometimes it feels impossible! And sometimes I wonder if even I am motivated enough to do it. You can’t motivate anyone by sitting behind a computer all day; but sometimes the feeling of it all is too daunting, too easy to run away from. Every day I fight myself to keep from saying that Cape Verdeans are lazy, don’t want change, and take for granted the level of support and development assistance they have and are receiving. They’re not in that desperate state that makes them appreciate much of anything, they have come to expect it, the worst kind of apathy. And I don’t want that attitude to be fostered in the girls at the Center, though I can see it happening. I know that given the right circumstances, maybe I could make a difference, change even one person’s attitude, but suddenly I have lost what it takes to try. I don’t know where it went, it just left. And I’m starting to see why Peace Corps in Cape Verde has such a high ET (early termination) rate, because people just start to lose that motivation. They’re not continually reminded of why they’re even needed there in the first place, because Cape Verde has such a relatively elevated level of development (we’re nowhere near sub-Saharan Africa standards), which also allows for an environment similar enough to their comfortable American lives that they no longer see the difference between living here and living at home. Plus it’s a pain in the ass to get yourself pumped up every day and motivated to make a difference in a country of people that often don’t seem to want things badly enough to do it themselves. Some foreigner has always come in and done it for them. They just want their new mp3 players and 50 Cent albums to come in from the outside so they can look like the modern world without having to really do anything for it. And maybe this is just my perspective because I don’t live in the fora, in the rural areas, where maybe they work hard and recognize more needs that exist, but here it often just feels like materialistic city living. The exact things I didn’t like about living in the US.

It’s no longer that I’m not getting things done because I’m too busy, but simply because I’m not motivated enough. I know I could manage my time much better and take care of my mental health so that I can be fired up to go out and make a difference, making mistakes and learning as I go. But somewhere along the way I lost the will to tell myself these things over and over again. Maybe it’s lack of emotional support from the outside, maybe I just let feelings of inadequacy take over, maybe I just don’t feel good about myself anymore, maybe I just don’t know what I want anymore. Whatever it is, it has to change if I want to stay here and get things done. If I went back to the States I would be miserable. If I stay here without changing my attitude, I have the same situation. And so I need a kick in the ass, I suppose, something to wake me up and cure that piece of my heart that is bleeding.

* * *

About that kick in the ass…though not enough to entirely remove me from my funk, my call was answered with a brief surprise. I was just called downstairs because we received four more packages of donations from the States, the three that my aunt and uncle sent, and one from my dad. So I went through all of the beautiful, wonderful, and thoughtful things that were collected to be given to these forgotten girls, and as I counted the blessings, I felt ashamed that I couldn’t even get up the motivation to organize simple activities for them. And I think I’m scared. Scared to go into the unknown territory that I thought I wanted for so long but never fully embraced. I spent all this time in school and traveling learning what it was I had a passion for, learning what beautiful things I wanted to see done, but never actually stepping in to do them. Never being thrown in to gain the experience that would make all these beautiful things happen, never truly leaving what was comfortable and safe for long enough to feel the pain of empty loneliness or hopelessness. It’s easy to feel idealistic and hopeful when you sit at home in comfort and think up wonderful ideas of how to save the world. It’s easy and motivating when you’re surrounded by people who also want to save the world, who can relate to you and share your mission, and speak your language. I miss LASP, and even some parts of grad school in Missoula. Out here actually doing it, struggling through each day is another story. Some days you can clearly think through all the things you want to see done, envisioning them being carried out. Other days you can’t seem to put one foot in front of the other, don’t know exactly what to do next. Most days are like the latter for me. I know abstractly (and even in some cases concretely) what I want to happen, what the end result should be, but getting there seems sometimes like a nightmare. And I’m always wanting, always trying to escape reality, to run away from the fear of actually doing. Wanting to go back to those times I’ve enjoyed. I have this picture of myself drinking a big cup of coffee, driving on the open road, music blaring, totally free, and this picture always pops up into my mind on those days when I want to get away. Because those were simple happy times that I want back. Times that don’t make the pain go away, and don’t make the world better, and that don’t give me life satisfaction, but things that I want back. Sometimes I just feel so unprepared, so naïve, so alone. Like I’m making it up as I go along. Maybe that’s life, but I don’t like feeling like I have no idea what I’m doing. It pushes me back into my turtle shell, sitting where I’m safe and protected, here in front of the computer screen.