A Nether Ending Story

I’m sure I say this every year - and really, if you can’t say this every year you’re doing something wrong - but 2010 is certainly a year I will remember. The date stamped in my mind with major milestones, like the true beginning of my teaching career, my trans-Atlantic move, and my continuing battle to be a successful expat in a new country. 

As is to be expected in a 365-day swath of time, there’s a lot about this year I’d like to forget and move past, mainly the creepy, hermit-like existence I’ve been living since moving to The Netherlands. Part of my hermitdom has been a result of secondary circumstances, like money problems, no job, snow, and ice. But I know much of this has come from my fear of truly stepping out on my own in a new place. There are pros and cons of moving abroad for the sake of your love of a foreign partner. Having a native by my side is comforting, reassuring, and gives me a little window into a social network I might otherwise have to build on my own from scratch. The dark side, however, is using this person as a crutch. Thomas has been the blanket to my Linus for the last few months and I can’t ignore that anymore. Photo by Tim Hamilton.

Thomas and I both struggle with the 20-something feelings of having not created enough or done anything big by this time in our lives. Rather than focus on our successes, we’ve dipped into self-loathing about what could have been - who we could have been. It’s bullshit and a waste of time, certainly, but that doesn’t make the feelings go away. Oh common sense and logic, how I wish you were more powerful in the face of angst and emotion. I’m sure these tinges come from living in a world where kids run multi-million dollar companies or have traveled the world by the time they’re 14. You can’t help but feel a little pale in comparison and wonder why you didn’t take certain paths or why you were so careful when you had the freedom to be wild. Insecurity is powerful, but we both made a pact to move past it this year, or at least fill our lives with hobbies and passions that bring us happiness in hopes of drowning it out.

We can only move one way through time and there’s no way around that (yet…still waiting for a 15-year-old to figure out time travel). In the face of that fact, I’m gathering a short list of new year’s resolutions that I hope will help me, at the very least, see what I’ve done, be happy about it, and use that positive energy to push me toward something better. Let’s face it - you can only wallow for so long before you start to annoy yourself and the people around you. For the most part I find resolutions to be less constructive and more destructive in our lives, but I’m avoiding the typical “lose weight, eat healthier, etc.” resolutions for more broad and, dare I say accomplishable ones like:

- Try to spend at least 15 minutes a day writing for no one but yourself and without any kind of publication in mind. If it goes longer, awesome, if you miss a day, no biggie - make up for it with some extra time on the next day. 

- Study Dutch, some how some way, every single day. Even if it’s learning one word and using it in a sentence and that’s as far as you get, it’s a success. This is a firm one, though - you have to do it every day. 

- Finally do that podcast you’ve been talking about for so long. 

- Do some sort of physical activity once a day, even if it’s just biking around the neighborhood or dancing to music for 10 minutes in the apartment. Get into some yoga. 

- Finish Couch to 5k program and keep running! Aim for at least three times a week, or more if you’re up for it. 

- Try to work up to at least one, real, on-your-toes push-up with good form and everything.

- Try to grow some food, even if it’s a small herb pot or two on the patio.  

- Commit to a big knitting project, like that light spring cardigan on Ravelry. 

- Go to a MeetUp group meeting in The Netherlands. 

These may not all start the morning of January 1, 2011, but I’m writing them out and keeping them close by to remind myself of what I’ve committed to and who I want to strive to be this year. On the top of my list should be “GET A JOB,” but I don’t think of things like that as resolutions but rather necessities like “eat food” and “bath regularly.” I will have a job this year, sooner rather than later, and I don’t need to see it on a list of resolutions to feel the pressure to search and apply. 

And on one last note about changes in my life, I’ve decided to block myself from Facebook and disable my account. I’m still considering not disabling it so I can have links from my blogs appear in my feed, but I’m certainly blocking myself from the site through my MacTerminal. At first I felt like Facebook was connecting me to my friends and family a world away, but really it’s isolating me from the world around me here, now, in The Netherlands. Thomas and I took the plunge last night (sheesh, why is it such a big deal?) and blocked our accounts and deleted the apps from our devices. I really love social networks and advocate for them often in education and my personal life, but this one has been toxic for me personally. I’ll still be connecting on other networks, like Twitter, but for now Facebook is gone and it feels good. 

Cheers to a new and fulfilling year. 

I’ve always been one of those people that starts things and never finishes them, whether it’s new year’s resolutions, plans to study Dutch every day, or promises to write every morning. Without a job to rush to and a sun to wake up to, it’s quite easy for the hours in my day to wither away. With every dusting of snow and blanket of gray, I seem to yawn endlessly, coaxing myself to “just get through these months.” 

But the other day, in the midst of one of those nothing days I was sure I’d forget even happened, I decided to put on my running shoes. I’ve gone running in sweltering, 100-degree temperatures with the help of a water-filled backpack, but never have I faced running during sub-freezing temperatures, surrounded by fields of untouched snow. This is beginning to sound like I’m an actual “runner” when in reality I’m one of those people that has bouts of running before faltering and going without fitness for months at a time. Another one of those things I start and never finish. 

Despite being a lethargic couch potato that would much rather write, listen to podcasts, and knit during the winter, I ventured out with a Couch to 5k podcast and bundled myself up as best I could. It was cold during my brisk warm-up walk and the first few minutes of running felt like icicles were piercing my lungs, but I pushed on, determined to feel productive somehow and not let that day become another forgotten memory. 

As I listened to bad hip-hop and powered through intervals of running and walking, I took in the scenery around me. At one point on the run the path follows a cow pasture on the left and a duck-filled canal on the right. The snow on the field was completely untouched and looked like cake icing while the fog floated just above it making you feel like you’d just woken up, making me rub my eyes just a bit in hopes of a focus that would never come. While his work isn’t really my taste, it looked like a Thomas Kincaid holiday card you’d receive from your car dealer or some other empty sender. In that moment, for the first time in quite a while, I was appreciating the beauty of this winter, something I’ve wished away every morning when I check the forecast. As I ran and my hands began to sweat inside my newly-knit mittens, I was warm enough to enjoy the world around me. I stopped for a moment to stare at the sad black cows I usually see in the pasture. They huddled together in the snow, eating hay, their breaths forming puffs of smoke with every chew. 

At that point I turned around to make the run back home. In that first run after so many months there is a hope that almost certainly dissipates the moment you recognize it. A hope that maybe I’ll be something I’ve never been after so many years of trying. 

Winter is just not my season. Try as I might, I just can’t learn to love sweater weather, gray skies, and holiday music. My first inclination is to stay in the apartment on the couch reading or writing and wait it out. But then I feel guilty about turning into a hermit and I try to pull myself out of it, often unsuccessfully. 

However, I did have a wonderful day recently where I managed to yank myself out of hibernation to meet some new people and saw, for just a moment, what kind of life could be possible if I would just push myself to live it. I traveled by train (all by myself!) to Rotterdam to meet with a friend I met on Twitter. Back in America I was part of an art and craft collective known as the 7 Cities Crafters and was always around someone making something. I’ve been missing that and set about searching for similar groups in The Netherlands. I bombed Etsy and Ravelry boards and connected with Ballee. We decided to meet up for some tea and knitting in Rotterdam. 

I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to be doing something so familiar in my new, still very unfamiliar, country. I battle often with trying to make myself comfortable, as if I were back home, and embracing the novelty of my new home. But sometimes, in a rare moment, the two just mesh perfectly into a hybrid existence that’s comfortable and new at the same time. My hope is to find that feeling in other parts of my life, but knitting and chatting at a cafe in Rotterdam over tea gave me a taste of what could be - I just have to be willing to climb out of my shell and do it. 

That same day I met with a teacher from an international school in Rotterdam to chat education and the challenges of being a foreigner in a new place. It felt right to be around another educator, sharing my ideas and fears. I got a lot of practical, veteran advice about job hunting and working in an international school, which is something I can now do legally thanks to my residency permit. Though I haven’t actually gotten the card since the postal system has been on strike here. Still waiting. 

I’ve found my old passion of knitting and crochet and I’m taking this time I have and using it to try new things. So often I was content with making scarves and dish towels because they’re easy and square and mindless, but I’ve reached beyond those things to challenge myself with a cowl and a set of mittens. Maybe I’ll try socks next. Or even a sweater. I’m at a point in this craft where I’m starting to understand how certain stitches work to create objects and garments. Before I was just the sort of knitter that learned a stitch and did it when I came across it in a pattern, not really understanding why the author included that stitch where she did. Now I’m starting to get those decisions, which is quite freeing. It’s the same feeling I got in cooking when I discovered I’d turned into one of those people who could cook just by feel and taste rather than follow a recipe. Instead of seeing a pattern as a limiting thing that I must absolutely follow, I’m now seeing a pattern as a guide within which I can make my own decisions. I will refrain from making some sort of metaphor about my evolving experience and worldview here, but just know I’m thinking about it. 

PS: If you’re ever hungry in Rotterdam, check out De Oude Plek. It’s near the Lombardijen station and you can fill your belly with delicious, vegetarian Chinese food for a decent price. It’s on my list of places to take mom when she visits next year. 

Well, I got approval. Now I’m waiting for the paperwork to arrive in the mail and to pick up my actual card. I’m a little, legal immigrant! I’ll ruminate more on this development later, but for now I’m going to bask in this new day. 

Eating Animals
by Jonathan Safran Foer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’m saving a more in-depth review of this book since I just finished it and need some time to digest, but suffice it to say I found it to be one of the more thoughtful and effective books on why a vegetarian diet is not only the best choice for animals, but for the environment, human health, human rights, small farmers, etc.

My favorite aspect of Foer’s book is that he seamlessly weaves his beautiful writing style into a book that could have easily become a difficult-to-manage tome of statistics and graphic imagery from slaughterhouses. It’s not to say that Foer some how glosses over the atrocities of slaughterhouses - in fact, he goes into gruesome detail about the ineffectiveness of some operations that leave animals conscious and feeling of pain even as they move down the line - but he delivers this information in a sensitive way, almost like someone bringing terrible news and putting a hand on your shoulder as you try to understand it.

Another unique and quite enjoyable part of the book is Foer’s inclusion of intensely personal memories and feelings. At some times the book comes across as a memoir more than an argument for vegetarianism. As a vegan and as someone who loved the food-centric holidays of my southern family, the choice to change my diet carried much more weight. Foer asks himself the same questions I did as I started this journey. Will I have the same connection with my family if I don’t eat grandma’s goulash or chicken casserole? Will my food choices alienate me? The answers to both of those questions, if you’re wondering, are no. In the end Foer decides, while thinking of his Jewish grandmother’s words about having to care about something in order to justify saving anything, that vegetarianism is the most ethical choice for him and his new family (he talks in great length about his young son’s influence on writing this book).

While he doesn’t go into much discussion of dairy or egg production (it’s already a lengthy book), which can be just as vile and gruesome and torturous for the animals, his take on meat production is enough to jar even the most dedicated carnivore into considering a more plant-centric diet. The book that pushed me over the line into veganism is “Mad Cowboy” by Howard Lyman and I think it did so because Lyman also used his personal narrative rather than extensive statistics to make his point. Sometimes it is the stories that can be the biggest agents for change and I think Foer used his talent to do just that.

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My partner and I are off to celebrate a romantic (and undoubtedly cold) weekend in Maastricht. This is my first time visiting the city, but everyone assures me it’s beautiful. Also looking forward to the rain snow mix in the forecast. Keeping my fingers crossed that it holds off for a day or so. Any recommendations for places to visit?

I’m wondering if I’m drifting slowly into a life crisis of sorts. My career never really started before I changed it and then my second career, if I could call it that, got off the ground right before I up and moved to another country to be with the man I’m pretty sure I want to spend my life with. I often envy people who’ve been in jobs for long periods of time. They seem to have a commitment characteristic engrained in their personality that allows them to do this. They’re most likely the same people that say they’re going to start jogging and acutally do it. I’m always thinking about the next thing or how I can grow and move on to bigger and better projects, but is this the healthiest way to be? Should I try and settle down for at least five years (Jesus, that sounds like a long time) in some sort of position so I can see what I might be missing? 

Photo by slimmer_jimmer

Time has always been a fickle reality for me. It goes by so fast, but at the same time I beat myself up for not being a completely established professional, fluent in Dutch after only being here four months. I should cut myself some slack, I know, but it’s hard when I feel the sands of time slipping through my fingers while I’m sitting on the couch watching an antique appraisal show on BBC just to hear some English. (I wish I could get some decent American English in my life, but I can’t handle another episode of MADE or 16 & Pregnant. I just can’t.). I’m only 26, I tell myself, but then I also think: Holy shit, I’m 26. So many questions are running through my mind at this point. Am I going to get married? Should I be having kids right now or is that just my reproductive system sending me weird evolutionary signals to procreate? Why haven’t I published anything creative? Why is my freelance career so fledgling? What should I be doing differently? 

These panicked moments of self reflection often send me into a tailspan of clicking embedded links endlessly on LifeHacker productivity articles. Yes, I’m one of those people that frets about productivity by procrastinating on my to-do list through reading how-tos on how to be productive. It’s shameful and yet I continue. 

So then I think again about that person in the office, having put in a good five years with the company, has a pin to show for it or something. And then I wonder, maybe that guy hates his life and wishes he’d dropped it all for something else. I go back and forth on this imaginary shmoe’s innermost feelings about his career. I suppose it boils down to my simultaneous yet conflicting desires for spontinaeity and security in my life. How does one reconcile these two longings that seem to have equally strong grasps on my life trajectory? 

I’ve just downloaded a copy of Getting Things Done by David Allen. Yes, I feel stupid about this. I’m now going to load it onto the e-reader I never feel like I read enough and get to thinking about my productivity, or lack thereof. I’m curious if this book is even made for funemployed, 20-something, expats like myself whose GTD lists involve things like starting a new blog, knitting a neck cowl, and trying my hand at homemade, vegan ba pao. We’ll see.