The Story Thus Far

Countdown to departure: 18 days
Countdown to culture shock: 203 days

The story thus far is that every day I wake up, my life gets more complicated. While walking home from work, I found the solution to a lot of the questions I've been asking myself in the same place I usually do (and yet it somehow always seems to surprise me) - I took a different route. With all of the things on my plate, it dawned on me on this particular walk (amid the smells of gravel and cherry trees) that I need to start laughing stuff off. When I first started studying Taoism, I jotted down these lines:

To learn a little about Tao
Take what I write into your heart
And laugh

To learn much about Tao
Take what I don't write into your heart
And laugh some more

And this is the thing. I can look at the things in my life and justly classify them as irksome, interesting, providential or all-too-typical, but unless "funny" is in that list, I'm not going to know peace. And frankly, it is funny that just when I thought I would have enough money to make all this work, I went and did a few hundred dollars of damage to my parents' car. It's funny that my visa application has gotten so wrapped up in red tape that I may have to rethink all of my plans. And it's certainly funny that worrying about these things has left me so scatterbrained that I tried to order a lunch special from a restaurant at 8:15 this evening, and then had to be reminded by the waiter to pay a tip when I left.

And I'm not being sarcastic in the least. Whatever comes of these plotlines, they'll bust a gut when I tell my grandchildren about them.

UPDATE: I think this is an apt illustration of what I've been thinking about.

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.

Sunny side

Countdown to departure: 23 days
Countdown to culture shock: 208 days

So it's party day today, and I've got food to make. I suppose it's a commentary on the state of Western culture that the "Western dish" I was asked to bring will in fact be a (westernized) Thai dish.

Concerning the events of yesterday, pursuant to a good long nap immediately after my last post, a very pleasant evening with my family, and a weekend-sized sleeping-in last night, I feel my brain and spirits have recovered.

I thought it was "the thing to do" to place all of these expectations and anxieties on myself now that the big date is approaching, but I think I need to take a more Daoist approach here. A conversation with my parents elucidated that, as little as yesterday's interactions may have done for my conversational Mandarin abilities, they offered me invaluable cultural insights. (We were talking mostly about lifestyles, politics, philosophy and religion.)

The benefits of living in the moment will be spoiled for me if I set too rigid of a definition of what it means to be responsible. I need to relax and play things by ear and get back to thinking of life in terms of relationships instead of timelines.