About four months ago, in a fit, I made the definitive decision to start blogging again, and of course, nothing more came of it than a faint determination, lingering in the recessives of my daydreams. I fussed to myself about how to make my re-entrance, what new direction I would take, and even how many blogs I should maintain to keep my divergent endeavors organized and structured.
Yeah.
Taking my inflated ambitions back a notch, I thought I'd make things easier on myself and start off with a narrative (generally an easier format to write), a summation of where those four months went:
What was intended to be a temporary circumstance became a year and a half in a blink. I had been living on the hipster fringe of Logan Square: Schwinn riding, coffee house hopping, yoga practicing, and happily underemployed, reaping the gluttonous benefits of a borderline-vegan working at a certain natural food megastore. I occupied a barren room in a couple's barren apartment, where we clandestinely used a neighbor's secure network for internet and our electricity came free of charge via an extension cord out the back door (I never bothered to look where it led), but a break up and family issues lead to my getting the boot. I was steadily growing weary of the redundancy of my job, and the mundanity of my nowhere-going routine. I had only intended to come back to Chicago for a short while to settle my own ambiguous relationship, and meet my niece, who was born while I was backpacking through Southeast Asia. But the longer I stayed, the more irrevocably attached I became to my beloved niece and nephew, and the more irreversibly destructive my rapport became with my dearest, and perhaps only, close friend.
Taking my inflated ambitions back a notch, I thought I'd make things easier on myself and start off with a narrative (generally an easier format to write), a summation of where those four months went:
What was intended to be a temporary circumstance became a year and a half in a blink. I had been living on the hipster fringe of Logan Square: Schwinn riding, coffee house hopping, yoga practicing, and happily underemployed, reaping the gluttonous benefits of a borderline-vegan working at a certain natural food megastore. I occupied a barren room in a couple's barren apartment, where we clandestinely used a neighbor's secure network for internet and our electricity came free of charge via an extension cord out the back door (I never bothered to look where it led), but a break up and family issues lead to my getting the boot. I was steadily growing weary of the redundancy of my job, and the mundanity of my nowhere-going routine. I had only intended to come back to Chicago for a short while to settle my own ambiguous relationship, and meet my niece, who was born while I was backpacking through Southeast Asia. But the longer I stayed, the more irrevocably attached I became to my beloved niece and nephew, and the more irreversibly destructive my rapport became with my dearest, and perhaps only, close friend.
I found another temporary sublet to get me through the holidays, hastily finalizing a resume and sending out applications (a process that I had already started a year ago at snail's pace). My latest sublease booted me out at the end of January, and my last day of cashing and bagging followed soon after. I made one final trip back to St. Louis to say goodbye to two friends, seemingly from another lifetime, and to pack up yet another car-load of dusty boxes in the hopes of consolidating all my piles of past lives, perhaps fittingly, to the basement of the house I grew up in.
On Valentine's Day (a holiday I've always ignored but oddly this one seemed celebratory), I boarded a plane for Taiwan, and it is here in the outskirts of Taipei that I write from. I've grown rather fond of traveling over the past few years but tired of living out of a backpack, always on the move. So I signed a one-year contract with a buxiban (cram school), teaching English for lack of any other life skill to impart. Being reticent and introverted by nature, I feel a bit at odds in a job that requires energy and charisma (obvious deficiencies that haven't gone unnoticed), but these are attributes I wanted to put into practice, and perhaps one day glean minor pleasure from exerting.
Apart from teaching, I brought along the same cumbersome mental catalogue I've been dragging around for years, riddled with objectives both new and long overdue. Navigating my new job and environment has consumed most of my time in these prior two months, but now the requirements are settling into a reliable routine, and I feel like I can re-establish my studies without setting myself up for failure.
I spent this rainy morning curled up with Proust, and already I feel revitalized. May my next entry not take 4+ months to come.
I spent this rainy morning curled up with Proust, and already I feel revitalized. May my next entry not take 4+ months to come.
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