(Continued from previous post...)
This is the story I didn't want to write. This is stuff you don't actually tell people. This is a hashtag - #FirstWorldProblem. Nonetheless, it's my story and my blog for that matter and in the spirit of transparency, I'm going to share something with you about the crappier side of long term travel: Re-entry.
When I returned to NY, I was on such a high. I had lost 50 pounds while abroad and I was knee deep in buying a new wardrobe for my new body and my new job. I was also intent on picking up my career and on duplicating my adventurous lifestyle abroad while I'm NY. If there was an event that I was invited to, then I was there. Happy hour after work? Regularly there! Gallery openings, concerts, museums, the theater, and fabulous new restaurants? All over it! I was going to explore NYC in the same vein that I had explored other cities around the world.
Day in and day out, I'd try to balance this need for adventure and newness with the expanding hours I was spending at work. I was learning my role, my coworkers, and my new company and the more I poured into work, the more miserable I became. The more miserable I became the more I tried to offset it with excitement. I was clearly unhappy, but caught In a circle jerk of denial. Denial of the fact that things weren't really the same.
In leaving and setting out on this wild adventure, I had opened a proverbial Pandora's box, allowing all those elements that garner my sense of self to break free and conquer dreams and entertain desires. Once I came back, I found myself trying to reign everything in and put it back neatly into that box, so that I could function the way I had before I left. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Nothing fit and the things I wanted before I left, no longer seemed sufficient.
So there I was forty days into my new job telling my direct supervisor that this wasn't a good fit and that I needed to resign before things went too far. He convinced me that I should stay and that things would turn around in due time. My intuition, which I'd spent the last eight months honing, was screaming and throwing up red flags life a MF! Did I listen? No. "We're back in the 'real world' again, we'll just have to make sacrifices," I said to myself.
And sacrifice I did... I would literally cry everyday on the public bus on the way to work and everyday on the way back. On really bad days, my husband would pick me up from work in the middle of the day and simply drive around Manhattan giving me the opportunity to cry without an audience of coworkers to witness. Fridays at 5pm were like Shawshank; I'd crawled though tunnels of crap and had finally seen the light! But on Sunday evenings, someone pressed rewind and I'd rage about being dragged back in.
To make matters more complicated, my husband and I were fighting all of the time. Listen to me... ALL OF THE TIME. He'd have to write his own blog to give you his side of the story, but for the most part I am now a firm believer in the old adage "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." Little things would have me seeing red. It didn't matter that he had always done them. I was now in a "Don't nobody put baby in a corner" kind of mindset, where I was trying to protect what was left of my 'travel persona.' So I interpreted every action as a slight, as him challenging my new found strength, my intelligence, my ability to stand on my own. Add this to the constant crying and you could imagine how frustrated and confused he was.
So after 90 days in my shiny new job, 90 days trying to get things to fit, 90 days of crying and fighting, I quit. Again.
Now when I tell you that I quit, I mean that I quit everything. Listen to me... EVERYTHING! I'd stay in bed for weeks, cry even longer, and I surely gained every last pound, plus some, back. I had stopped going out, stopped returning calls to friends and I can recall months where I didn't even leave the apartment. I wasn't traveling. I wasn't going to school. I wasn't going to church. I did nothing!
Occasionally, I'd put on a face and attend whatever event that required our attendance, but as soon as humanly possible I wanted to get away. It was difficult to be around people and to be introduced as 'the girl who just traveled around the world.' After the mirage of questions about where I went and why, the question of 'what I was doing now' would always rear its ugly head and embarrassingly I'd have to respond "nothing." I had never been a 'nothing.' Never had to identify with doing nothing, making nothing kind of money, or having nothing to contribute to society. This was new. This was a MF!
"If you're so upset about doing nothing, then choose something, ANYTHING, and do it," my husband would always say. He actually didn't care if I made money or not; that was my guilt, my hang up. He just wanted out from under this dark cloud that had descended upon our lives.
So I started taking random classes. No pressure, no intent, just bliss. Started taking care of my health. Started traveling with hubby on his jobs and collecting things and creating things as we went. Bliss! Somewhere in the midst of all of this, we were smiling and having fun again and I realized that I was truly at my best when I was creating and moving. I was at peace.
The funny thing, though, is that I've always been at my best when creating and moving; that's a part of my core. My core, those elements of me that I was desperately trying to shove back into that proverbial Pandora's box, were left whole. The pieces hadn't changed, the box had! The container that held my essence was now lined in gold and sprinkled with diamonds; it had become more valuable, more precious to me. At the end of the day, that trip had taught me to covet myself; to continue to break free, conquer dreams and entertain desires because I now saw myself as worth it. Ahhh.... Nirvana. Things started to fall in place.
Last week, a friend put this meme on her Facebook wall.
As soon as I saw it, I almost did a church faint. Seriously... break out that sheet and cover my legs because this spoke to me like a MF! This was my story! This was my journey! Every move I make going forward, including traveling again and writing this blog or collecting and creating things, selling them and writing another blog, is me chasing my bliss and putting her to work! It's me creating the job that will manifest the life that I want to live far beyond 33 countries.
This is the story I didn't want to write. This is stuff you don't actually tell people. This is a hashtag - #FirstWorldProblem. Nonetheless, it's my story and my blog for that matter and in the spirit of transparency, I'm going to share something with you about the crappier side of long term travel: Re-entry.
When I returned to NY, I was on such a high. I had lost 50 pounds while abroad and I was knee deep in buying a new wardrobe for my new body and my new job. I was also intent on picking up my career and on duplicating my adventurous lifestyle abroad while I'm NY. If there was an event that I was invited to, then I was there. Happy hour after work? Regularly there! Gallery openings, concerts, museums, the theater, and fabulous new restaurants? All over it! I was going to explore NYC in the same vein that I had explored other cities around the world.
Day in and day out, I'd try to balance this need for adventure and newness with the expanding hours I was spending at work. I was learning my role, my coworkers, and my new company and the more I poured into work, the more miserable I became. The more miserable I became the more I tried to offset it with excitement. I was clearly unhappy, but caught In a circle jerk of denial. Denial of the fact that things weren't really the same.
In leaving and setting out on this wild adventure, I had opened a proverbial Pandora's box, allowing all those elements that garner my sense of self to break free and conquer dreams and entertain desires. Once I came back, I found myself trying to reign everything in and put it back neatly into that box, so that I could function the way I had before I left. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Nothing fit and the things I wanted before I left, no longer seemed sufficient.
So there I was forty days into my new job telling my direct supervisor that this wasn't a good fit and that I needed to resign before things went too far. He convinced me that I should stay and that things would turn around in due time. My intuition, which I'd spent the last eight months honing, was screaming and throwing up red flags life a MF! Did I listen? No. "We're back in the 'real world' again, we'll just have to make sacrifices," I said to myself.
And sacrifice I did... I would literally cry everyday on the public bus on the way to work and everyday on the way back. On really bad days, my husband would pick me up from work in the middle of the day and simply drive around Manhattan giving me the opportunity to cry without an audience of coworkers to witness. Fridays at 5pm were like Shawshank; I'd crawled though tunnels of crap and had finally seen the light! But on Sunday evenings, someone pressed rewind and I'd rage about being dragged back in.
To make matters more complicated, my husband and I were fighting all of the time. Listen to me... ALL OF THE TIME. He'd have to write his own blog to give you his side of the story, but for the most part I am now a firm believer in the old adage "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." Little things would have me seeing red. It didn't matter that he had always done them. I was now in a "Don't nobody put baby in a corner" kind of mindset, where I was trying to protect what was left of my 'travel persona.' So I interpreted every action as a slight, as him challenging my new found strength, my intelligence, my ability to stand on my own. Add this to the constant crying and you could imagine how frustrated and confused he was.
So after 90 days in my shiny new job, 90 days trying to get things to fit, 90 days of crying and fighting, I quit. Again.
Now when I tell you that I quit, I mean that I quit everything. Listen to me... EVERYTHING! I'd stay in bed for weeks, cry even longer, and I surely gained every last pound, plus some, back. I had stopped going out, stopped returning calls to friends and I can recall months where I didn't even leave the apartment. I wasn't traveling. I wasn't going to school. I wasn't going to church. I did nothing!
Occasionally, I'd put on a face and attend whatever event that required our attendance, but as soon as humanly possible I wanted to get away. It was difficult to be around people and to be introduced as 'the girl who just traveled around the world.' After the mirage of questions about where I went and why, the question of 'what I was doing now' would always rear its ugly head and embarrassingly I'd have to respond "nothing." I had never been a 'nothing.' Never had to identify with doing nothing, making nothing kind of money, or having nothing to contribute to society. This was new. This was a MF!
"If you're so upset about doing nothing, then choose something, ANYTHING, and do it," my husband would always say. He actually didn't care if I made money or not; that was my guilt, my hang up. He just wanted out from under this dark cloud that had descended upon our lives.
So I started taking random classes. No pressure, no intent, just bliss. Started taking care of my health. Started traveling with hubby on his jobs and collecting things and creating things as we went. Bliss! Somewhere in the midst of all of this, we were smiling and having fun again and I realized that I was truly at my best when I was creating and moving. I was at peace.
The funny thing, though, is that I've always been at my best when creating and moving; that's a part of my core. My core, those elements of me that I was desperately trying to shove back into that proverbial Pandora's box, were left whole. The pieces hadn't changed, the box had! The container that held my essence was now lined in gold and sprinkled with diamonds; it had become more valuable, more precious to me. At the end of the day, that trip had taught me to covet myself; to continue to break free, conquer dreams and entertain desires because I now saw myself as worth it. Ahhh.... Nirvana. Things started to fall in place.
Last week, a friend put this meme on her Facebook wall.
As soon as I saw it, I almost did a church faint. Seriously... break out that sheet and cover my legs because this spoke to me like a MF! This was my story! This was my journey! Every move I make going forward, including traveling again and writing this blog or collecting and creating things, selling them and writing another blog, is me chasing my bliss and putting her to work! It's me creating the job that will manifest the life that I want to live far beyond 33 countries.
