Seasons and motion

As I'd mentioned some months ago (back in December, to be exact), in light of my leaving Friday, this will mark my last entry using this blog.  Since I don't immediately know whether I'll return to Viet Nam in the future, the fact this blog itself exists to share about myself while I've been in the country also needs to come to an end. 

However, I still plan to continue blogging as long as I feel like it serves some purpose in the expression and movement of thoughts and ideas.  So, I'll include below the name and link to the blog I'll be using.  It will be what it will be as a blog, and will be deliberately much simpler and focused more on life and less like a failed submission to Lonely Planet:  Vietnam. 

With that . . .

The Self-Examined Life

As I write this, to the right of me I have five grocery bags full of clothes that I'll be giving away for charity this afternoon.  Near those bags is an Aquafina box full of books I'll be shipping because I won't need them anytime soon (they're mostly leisure books).  Flanking me on my left is my sturdy blue duffle bag that I'll likely be using to load up with books and other heavy stuff unless I end up needing to use my military-style duffle bag instead.  Beside it is my black suitcase, soon to be filled with something (I'm still sorting out the details). 

It's a curious thing, really.  In many ways, this feels like things are ending in the way they began:  in a room full of a hodge-podge of things, recovering from times that felt off.  You leave something that isn't itself bad, but would be bad to continue with it.  At the same time, what you're moving onto is no more certain except in it also being something you should do.  The only difference for me is that seems to involve more boxes, more bags, more plane tickets, and more time zones. 

These aren't things as usual, but they're still faintly familiar.  There seems to be some quietness haunting moments like these, where what you've known becomes a little less trustworthy while what's new remains no less mysterious.  This is not an adventure or an exercise in faith, really.  I simply consider this life, and how the choices we make often take us very different places.  The only difference might really be the muse (so to speak) of inspiration.  Why do this?

The front window is open, as are the doors and windows in the back of my room.  Outside it has finished raining and little is getting in the way of a breeze from moving through my room.  These sort of things happen if we allow them.  You just have to make the necessary changes to prepare the way. 

With things being on their way to getting wrapped up and finished here, it's been less of the "big things" that I look for than the simple and essential.  If I had to apply that with the average views about life in a different country, though, that is really counter to such expectations.  I tried expressing that idea last night with fellow foreigners here, but I hadn't quite touched on where my mind was at (probably because my mind was becoming increasingly tired).  So, here's a new go at it. 

When I first went overseas, the most common description of the act of going overseas was something in the category of "adventure."  I've still heard that at different times from others during the times when I'd been back in the States, and maybe that's also encouraged by some overseas workers who volunteer to go overseas.  The trouble is, and perhaps I've mentioned it at different times in the past, that these are all very simple choices we make.  The lives we choose, the choices that define them, and what we allow to influence us—all of those things are ultimately quite simple. 

Then I look at where I'm at now and a season of my life ending, and it's still full of very simple things.  There's no view I have of "my adventure" ending since that was never the stake I claimed.  Once I get off the plane in Charlotte and collect my (literal) baggage, it will have been a life I've known that has ended, not an idea of a life.  It's just that the next time overseas will look different.  At least, I hope so. 

The things I will miss when I leave will have more to do with people than ideas and views.  At the same time, the quiet frustration will remain of opportunities that could have been had if business and logistics were less important than one's inspired calling.  I'll miss what could have been while have made the best of something else.  I'll hope to never begrudge the people I've come to care about over the past couple of years, but will quietly hold the wonder about what could have been if the logistics of others didn't choke out my personal vision for the future. 

Life is simple, but becomes complicated when it's followed by human-made ideas of what is right rather than inspiration from what Is. 

There's now only three weeks left until I return to the U.S.  For some reason today was just a challenge to get through and to do things.  I was wrestling with lacking motivation and inspiration, but also how to get things done done.  In my head, leaving and three weeks don't fit together.  The reality of leaving seems so much greater than three weeks, and it is.  Why it bothers me is, even though I feel like I'll be able to leave when the time comes, it's that feeling of uncertainty that still lingers. 

But how.  I don't have the details for what's next.  This isn't something where I want to give some trite response about "having faith" because of the limits of words with this.  The consequences of my actions feel more real now, and I wonder about how I've handled other choices in the past that also had gravity to them. 

Problems from inhabiting your own head for too long. 

At this point, as far as I'm concerned I'm ultimately finished with teaching.  Even though there is still next week's review/"wrap-up" classes for the semester and assignments yet to be marked, my known and established responsibilities as they've existed for teaching are pretty much concluded.  Nothing new to impart, so, now . . . I'm done. 

And that's okay.  I say that because I've been anxious this week, sort of a steady-boil and a lid barely kept over it.  I realize now that much of what I've had difficulty with has been emotionally-heightened from the reality of leaving.  This time of the year is already a wearying period for me, often punctuated by the fact my brain feels a little like an elastic band that has progressively lost its elasticity month by month of continual stretching and use (note I don't add "and eventually snaps," just so you know I ain't on my way to the loony bin!). 

Part of the problem with teaching for me is it's too cerebral of a work.  At the same time I'm continually around people and how that feeds my extroverted side (yes, as those of you who know me can attest, it exists), I very often feel like I occupy my own head more than is healthy.  That might just be the downside of living overseas in circumstances not of my own choosing—the heart and mind reacting against it and the draining that results—but to conclude with teaching permits me a little more wiggle room with other, more emotional realities than just dealing with them half-heartedly as something else to juggle.  Now I can discard a couple of the flaming swords and chainsaws I've been playing with and allow a form of simplicity to settle back into place before I leave on June 5th. 

So, I feel okay about this, but am drained by it all.  I wonder whether some of this isn't made more complex by me, but I guess it couldn't be any different if it wasn't me being affected by them.  Myself and teaching, myself and leaving Viet Nam, myself and returning to the U.S., myself and contentions I have—I'll be glad to see a few of those putter away and dealt with a little more naturally, a little more healthily . . .

Here's hoping.