Ohdearohdearohdearohdear… One little worry in this new place and it instantly multiplies into a thousand little fret babies.
We moved apartments earlier this week. Well, to be specific, we moved from an itsy bitsy sweatbox of an apartment (with a great view) into a slick three-bedroom house with a gorgeous porch, a barbeque, and not one but two bathrooms. It also is covered in a house-wide mosaic of glittery tile! Fancy!
As we are now just a stone’s throw away from the Graeme Hall nature reserve, drifting out of sleep is like getting a wakeup call from the cast of The Lion King: Caws, screeches, and tootles from the birds and monkeys flitting between here and the nature sanctuary ring out through the morning.
Pair that with the tiled-ness of the place, and what you get is a Phil Spector-like wall of sound. Cheeps and tweets bounce off the shimmery floor and then back against the shimmery stairs and back and up and zip and zap and so on.
It’s really, really gorgeous. And surreal. But also, when combined with my particular set of neuroses, insanity producing.
A weird freneticity. A new place. No set routines yet. And I am a lady who LOVES routines.
This is paired with a lack of consistent internet in the home, which is my lifeline to my work but also to my family via Skype and whatnot. Internet cutoff makes me feel crazy in the best of circumstances.
But now, here I am, mostly severed from my work life I so thrive on and from my family/friend connections on the Skype… but isolated in this way in a lovely house, surrounded by bird calls and monkeys in the bushes. Oh, and there was another lizard in our sink today. (This one was quite alive, though. He said he liked my new way of making coffee in a pot on the stove.)
I found myself sitting on an incredibly comfortable leather sofa in this gorgeous house, listening to the wildlife cacophony, looking out my window to see the most fantastical black-and-turquoise hummingbird… and worrying about not getting out the emails I needed to send today.
It is more than a bit sad. I have been trying very hard to cultivate myself as a person of adventure since I started on this whole Moving South thing. I definitely never thought of myself as such before, but I find the idea romantic and exciting and think it’s something I would really like to take on as a characteristic.
As we look ahead into the months and years of our careers, the man-friend and I have been discussing next steps. Sure, I’d be glad to get some more international experience. What I’ve had of it so far has been amazing and has agreed with me creatively, personally, professionally– the whole deal.
And yet on that leather sofa I wasn’t appreciating the splendour– I was adding a chorus of stressish chaos to the morning symphony.
Part of me is embarrassed. And another part is pleased that I can at least admit to myself: It’s HARD to try new things. But, yeah, I want to be a person who does it anyway.
And I wonder (and I’m hopeful) that I am only this irritatingly A-type and fretful because in this gorgeous and developed country, I can sort of allow myself to be.
I was just chatting with the man-friend the other day about whether we think it is better that we’ve tried out international careers in this economic halfway point between Canada and The Rest Of The World… or if it would have been emotionally easier to adjust by ripping off the Band-Aid of Canadian expectations about life and work by going to a place far more remote and less-developed. I wonder if we had done that, if I wouldn’t feel so free to sit and fret here on the beach, as I have been for several months now.
I hope at least that such stressing has led to at least some entertainment for you. It has certainly led to much learning about myself for me… and that’s really the point of this whole thing, y’know. The blog. And that whole “life” thing.
For now I will send my slew of emails in the short spurt of internet I have available. And hope that even though I feel ridiculous about fretting close to the equator, it is hopefully preparing me with strength, humour, and humility for even greater adventures yet to come.
At the very least it is preparing me to appreciate the vocal range of whatever that bird is that’s trilling like a soprano out there, even now, in the late afternoon. Good gracious, madame! Brava!
