Ornery

Countdown to departure: 20 days
Countdown to culture shock: 205 days

I've had a reasonable few days. I think I'm emotionally drained. The party was pretty fabulous, I enjoyed myself a lot, but besides that I think I may be avoiding my immigrant friends. I haven't really been feeling positive or negative emotions about going, just mostly neutral. I wish I could just sit down, flush myself out, see this thing from all sides at once and know how to feel about it.

I don't know what it is that so gets on my nerves when people talk about things like "phases of cultural adjustment". (The theme of this blog is admittedly poking fun at the concept.) Well, I suppose if I dig deep enough, I actually do know what it is: a) I loathe determinism and b) I'm hypersensitive to perceived insults to my intelligence. When someone states that because of my station in life — because of any factor that they, not being me, could observe — that they can predict what I'm going to think, how I'm going to feel, and (most perniciously) what I'm going to do, I raise my hackles and perceive it as an assault on my free will. And when somebody insinuates that I would undertake an endeavour such as this unthinkingly, assuming perhaps that someone not paralyzed by the worst case scenario must not be aware of it, it tweaks my insecurities and provokes a rather primitive instinct to "act smart" (e.g. by writing blog posts like this).

Hmm.

I guess that's all I have to say about that. I've got issues. I want to be able to experience this without overthinking it, and that would be a rare thing for me.

I'm waiting to hear back from my boss about some changes to the visa regulations. I really hope this isn't going to be a problem.