Finding JC in Beijing

It was bright and smoggy as I wound through the backstreets of Beijing's historical district, the HuTongs. Littered with red gates, exposed rebar and cement walls this is the place people to to get a 'real look' at life. JC had arrived two days earlier and emailed through directions so I wouldn't get terribly lost.

Picking my way through the construction rubble I approached a fairly non-descript wooden door. I double-checked the house number and just as I was about to ring the bell, the door swung open. JC's smiling face greeted me, he was just on his way out for a wander.

Seeing a familiar face so far away from home is always a strange kind of comfort. It starts with a little tingle in my stomach and moved up through my chest until it hits my face and comes out as a beaming smile. And this particular face was one I never dreamed I'd see outside of the US.

After I put my things in the room and had a shower, we buddied up with two Swedes and spent a few days exploring a ctiy that I had passing familiarity with and that none of the boys had been to before. It gave me the chance to see Beijing again for the first time.

Within the first day JC said something that has stuck with me throughout the years. We had been talking about his first take on Beijing. He was walking out of the subway early after his arrival, seeing people bustling about on the streets and it hit him.

"I realized that there are all these people, just getting on in their lives, and I had never thought about them before."

On the surface, it seems like such an obvious thing to say, to the point where it seems a bit daft, but the more I think about it, the more I internalize it. I'm going through some strange growing pains as I depart further from my marriage and take steps forward in other relationships, both with friends and family and romantically.

There are billions of people in this world I'll never interact with, although our lives may distantly impact each others, and it won't matter. It seems a bit defeatist to look at it that way, but that's not how I mean it to be. It's a way to remind myself that I strive to impact people in a real and positive way when possible. It's a way to remember that I won't get to everyone, or even a considerable fraction of people, so I need to work harder with the lives I know I crash into. It's the best way for me to try to better all the time.

Today is the day I finally broke down.

I've always considered myself to be pretty tough. When I was a kid I didn't cry a ton unless one of my brothers was torturing me (in that way only brothers can). As an adult I haven't cried much either. I'm more of a brush-yourself-off-and-get-on-with-it kind of person.

But today was different. Today was the day I layed face down and cried. Hard. As though life finally caught up with me and forced me to face the gross fucking facts of it all. And you know what? It is shit, but it's not like there aren't way worse possibilities. The reality of it is that I'm pretty lucky. And still there's this little bitchy part of me that wants to have the permission to fall apart and never get picked up again. I guess self-pity is stronger than I imagined.

The end result is this: I've talked through some steps I'm gonna take to make things better. I've already started doing some and I'll keep going until shit's right again. Because I can. I have a lot of people who have my back, and it really is all situational, but not irrepairable.

Don't date a girl who travels. Blech.

After a lack of good sleep last night, I woke up to see this hanging out on my facebook feed. It was posted by two very different women, but both that definitely love to travel, are young and beautiful. So manybe I'm somehow not in that boat, but I have a lot of criticisms about this whole idea.

Maybe it's along the same lines of why I dislike when women say things like, "I hang out with dudes because girls suck." There's this idea that somehow all of the other women out there fit into some mold, but not I, not someone "cool" enough to hang with guys. It puts us all back into a very misogynistic place, where being a guy is the ideal and being a stereotypical woman is the obvious lesser.

This statement of why traveling women are amazing isn't exactly the same, as it doesn't directly throw shade at women as a whole, but it sure  shows non-traveling women why they must suck. Non-traveling women: are obsessed with looking perfect, enjoy a boring date, get hung up on materialistic things, never fly to exotic places, are not at all creative.. They're stable (read: boring), they're unopinionated and they're obviously co-dependant. Only some of those truly seem like terrible things though.

Maybe my dislike for this is that I relate to a large part of the list for traveling women, but I also feel like all women do. And the bigger part is probably that I relate pretty strongly to the negative aspects of it. Namely the part about being unstable.

In September I was married, living in a small town in Thailand and had a job as a teacher in a camp working with outstanding students. By October I was officially seperated and crashing on a friend's couch, deciding whether or not to go back to work. In November I was riding on overnight buses through Burma. In December I jetted off to Hong Kong, then came back to the US. And now I'm resettling myself. Here. Where I didn't think I'd ever live again. Maybe that jam-packed few months makes me dislike this idea more than I would if I were still living the life I had a few months back.

But maybe I just think she's spewing trite hatred to those that she think are beneath her for valuing different kinds of experiences. It's probably that.

What are the chances anyone has found this?

After spending five years out of the US, I'm back. Maybe. And after over a month here, I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

I left in August '08 and have been back roughly every year for a visit. Spending weeks getting my family and friends fix and (re-)meeting all of the many small people my friends have created. It's always good when I'm here and never quite feels like enough time whilst feeling like more than enough time.

When I left for Seoul, everything happened so quickly. I was standing in my new studio apartment in Bong Cheon exactly three weeks after I first looked into jobs opportunities. I remember standing there, in a mostly empty apartment, wondering what the fuck had happened and worrying that I had made the wrong decision. I sent my sister a text message and rummaged through my suitcase. Turns out, I was living a few blocks away from where my sisters grew up. I had made the right decision and things were falling into place.

I had a great year in Seoul. The students were fun, the job was easy, and my social life was amazing. Within days of being there I had like-minded friends and because we all had money and relatively stress-free jobs, we were able to hang out and explore the city pretty much all the time.

About half way through the year I was introduced to a guy. My friend had met him travelling years before in Cambodia. He was a sweet Brit and within a year we had run off to Nepal to get married. We travelled together, went back to Korea for a bit, then headed to the UK for his Masters'. After doing a year there we moved to Thailand to volunteer and job hunt. We worked with great people doing interesting jobs that we were dedicated to. And then I left.

There are obviously many more details to be filled in, and those will come with time. Along with those there will be heaps of rambling and reflection. This is really an exercise in self absorption, so that I can avoid boring people in real life with all of this. If you're here, enjoy. Or don't, it probably won't be all that fun to read. Ta.