Hiding my last post until I can revise it, partly because it was a mess and also because it hurts too much to recall my joyous optimism as to my theoretical moving date. It turns out that when you have no car, no stable income, no ability to secure a viable remote position, no reliable computer or laptop, no ride sharing options, no way to walk or bike anywhere, and no authority to make demands from the people you do depend on, you do not actually get to determine anything about your life. This has been a very hard pill to swallow, but everyone in my immediate vicinity seems baffled that I’m constantly on edge. I often think about how badly I want to go back to 2020 to warn myself that my fear of COVID would ultimately lead to this, which has turned out to be even scarier. If 2020 me had known, I am certain she would have risked death instead!
Ah, the power of hindsight…but it’s too late for that. I have always been prone to existential crises and rumination, but the older I’ve gotten, the less productive I’ve found it. I feel less and less connected to previous versions of myself, and to the past in general. I guess I have started giving myself permission to let things go if they can’t be changed. I think I was afraid that if I ever allowed myself to forget, then it would make all the time I spent living in that past a waste, or somehow invalidate what I was feeling then. It’s like an emotional sunk-cost fallacy. “I can’t just get over it now, because then that would mean I spent all that time being upset and hurt for no reason.” I imagine this is a common pitfall for people who are obsessed with sense-making. Clinging to the worst memories you have because you want to use them for nourishment, to make them worth something. There has to be some grand narrative justification. Suffering has to be somehow meaningful, because if it isn’t, isn’t that just too fucked up and senseless?
I am slow to accept things like that. Truthfully, I don’t think I would have been able to accept this idea if I was at any other point in my life. So, perhaps that is one thing I can be grateful to have learned here in this beautiful tropical purgatory. I wonder if I would have ever realized how easy and natural it feels to amputate the past like a rotting appendage if I wasn’t pushed to this point. Chop it off before it kills you, and whatnot. So, I have coped by using all my energy planning for the future. I used to see no future for myself at all, but now I have Pinterest boards and flow charts. Imagine that! I will secure my metropolitan Japandi female living space at all costs.
I think my circumstances have held me back quite a lot, and now that I am more than eager–somewhere between determined and desperate–to realize my plans, these setbacks are beyond frustrating. Realistically, I know I will be able to start sometime in the next month, but I want it all to have already started yesterday, last week, a year ago, four years ago. I’m just so restless. When you’re in this mindset and someone tells you, “There’s no real deadline you have to meet, settle down and stay put,” it is very hard to nod and sit patiently. It feels like when you’re pacing in the waiting room because your doctor is hours late, but every time you speak to the front desk people, they tell you to just wait a little longer. How much longer?! Bah!
I’ve started applying to jobs in the town I’m moving to. Everything is out of sequence, which is more upsetting to me than I’d like to admit (I was supposed to move, then set up the apartment, then get a car, then buy new clothes, then apply for jobs once I was settled and had my head on straight), but what can you do? I have to just keep pushing. Things will work out one way or another. The time will pass.
To try and force myself to stop freaking out, I was thinking about trying to read real books again. I thought I could try catching up on the months of missed BookBug books (whoops), but I’ve amassed a rather impressive backlog of philosophy books that I might get to first. We will see. There’s an Alan Watts epub calling my name right this very moment, but I want to get some planner stuff done first.
In other news, the new baby kittens are very cute. I’ve named the girls Anise and Poppy. I already want to whisk them away along with Nutmeg and Licorice. Butterscotch can hardly be bothered to show up these days, and when he does, it’s just to pee on things. Hmph. I will offer El Corillo updates sometime soon, when I’m a little less frenzied.
Alright! Enough procrastinating…