bung ujan (today's rain is cancelled)

12:46am Pacific Time June 30th, 2009

Maybe I’ll just live blog this whole thing. I’m sitting, exhausted, in a departures lounge at SFO, waiting for my 1:20am flight to Hong Kong and then connecting flight to Denpasar, Indonesia. And I’ve just realized that, after a week of phone calls from her, I have forgotten to call my grandmother back. I feel like a jerk.

This is how things have been going for me recently. A normally organized, upstanding, responsible, reliable person, I’ve started to surprise myself. I’m forgetful, unsteady, foggy, unfocused. I say things without thinking, sticking my foot firmly in my mouth on a regular basis, or berating myself for days after for that *particular* choice of phrase. And driving! Normally I’m an excellent driver. A confident driver, not unnecessarily aggressive, a lead foot for sure, but not foolhardy. Lately, however, I’ll think I’m going the speed limit or over, but I’m driving like a little old lady in the fast lane. I hesitate to make lane changes or turns, I miss exits, and don’t see people in my blind spot. I nearly got into a fistfight with a guy who cut me off two days ago. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

I want to think its growing pains. Though acting like a befuddled elderly person seems odd for someone who is otherwise struggling with her maturity.

I’ve totally blown it getting ready for this trip. When I went to Senegal, I planned everything to the tiniest last detail. This time, I barely had time to pack, let alone spend quality time with my loved ones. I’m embarrassed. At first, I took my lack of planning as a good sign –proof that my trip to Africa had further cured me of my life long obsessive compulsiveness, that I didn’t have to insulate myself from the things that scare me by over-thinking and over-preparing. I boasted that I’d done “nothing” to get ready. Boasted! And now, I’m worn out. The last person to board the plane because I’m so tired I don’t want to get up yet. Unwashed, un-made up, and worried that as soon as I sit my happy butt on that huge plane outside, I’m going to realize I forgot something crucial.

Like calling my Grandmother back.

I have to go board the plane. Here we go… into the sky.


8:33am Hong Kong, PRC July 1, 2009

I’ve lost a day. Or three. Jet lag is a bizarre state of being. If you consider that I woke up early Monday morning in California, and haven’t slept fully since then, I’ve been more or less awake for the last 36 hours. Its 5:30pm at home on Tuesday, and Wednesday morning where I am currently. And I’ve got another 6 hours of travel ahead of me, plus my goal of remaining upright and alert until a reasonable bedtime here, sometime around 8pm my time tonight. So I’ve got another 11 hours of wakefulness, and still another ocean and country’s worth of travel. I may actually die of exhaustion before I arrive.

So I want to re-introduce this blog. It felt appropriate to resurrect the Africa blog because, while this is a totally different trip, the intention of this trip to Indonesia is the same. And, honestly, I needed an excuse to come back to this blog –I have not actually looked at it since I posted the last entry back in December.

In truth, it is painful to return here, to my virtual memory store, in a number of ways. I blogged while I was in Africa because it was an exceptional experience and I wanted to share it. Also, because I felt alone and homesick and I needed to feel I remained connected by sharing what I was doing and seeing with my loved ones at home in “real time.” Writing is what I do --it is how I process, how I communicate the best, and it comes naturally to me. But I don’t necessarily write to remember. I left Africa feeling complete with my experience there, and yet the experience of it didn’t end when I left. It stays with you after you’re home. I returned to America at Christmastime, my culture sitting opposed in stark relief to what I had just left in both the consumer and religious senses. It is true that I left Senegal with a greater understanding of poverty in the 3rd world and how most of the rest of the world lives and that the poverty I see in America is relative wealth, comparatively. I also came away with a much deeper appreciation and respect for the kind of worship that Muslims practice and it left me further stranded in my search for meaning around God, my childhood faith of Catholicism, and my burgeoning interest in Buddhism. The blog also represents a time in my personal life that I’m feeling detached from these days but not yet so far removed from that I’m eager to revisit it –re-reading old entries inevitably brings back memories, feelings, etc. that I liken to time travel. And time travel is not always the easiest on your heart. It took me several months to really “unpack” psychically from my time in Senegal, and it took a toll on everything else around me too. I think I just feel unready to revisit what I wrote here, to think about the path my life was taking at that time but still unknown to be then, if that makes any sense. So I’m actually not going to read back on what I wrote. I had a vision that I’d re-read, edit, revise, correct. But I’m not going to. Not yet anyway. I’m just going to ignore it for now, pick up where I left off, and, as Pema Chodron suggests, start where I am.

Which leads me to a disclaimer that I was using a French keyboard in Senegal and a nearly worthless internet connection on prehistoric computers. So should you choose to read through the old entries I posted there, please excuse the grammar errors, spelling errors, omissions, and occasional lack of punctuation –I never did find the apostrophe. I also wanted to mention that I did NOT blog for a wide audience, and so it was a surprise to me when, during the trip and after, I began to get emails from people I had not shared the link to my blog with, often individuals I wouldn’t *dream* of using some of the language I used in the blog in front of. It had not occurred to me that people might share my blog and that those people might share it. My parents apparently sent the link to my grandparents, and they in turn, PRINTED by blog entries to share with their bridge group. As flattering and heartwarming as that is to me, if I’d considered a wider audience I NEVER would have used such charming phrases as “I’d f**k me.” It was a valuable lesson in grace, maturity, and consideration of the potential reach of your words –one that I’m still absorbing.

I spent 10 days earlier this year at a retreat given by the Hoffman Institute, known as “The Process.” It was sort of the next stop on the world tour of spiritual and emotional growth that I’m apparently conducting. While at the Process, my teacher Laurel suggested that it might be time for me to “claim my adult womanhood.” A suggestion I was initially offended by, and balked at, but have come to consider with much seriousness. But, assuming I even understand what that means, how do I actually do it?

I have generally regarded myself as being pretty mature for my age but in the last year or two, I’ve run face first into some situations that have called my maturity into question. Situations in my professional life, in my relationships, in normal day-to-day activity that have forced me to examine this divide I’m straddling between being a “woman” and a “girl.” On one hand, I’m living and functioning pretty much totally as an independent adult woman. On the other hand, I’m still holding onto some of the pretenses of an extended adolescence. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of being almost professionally offensive. Being tattooed, using vulgar language, the way I usually dress, the way I spend my free time, all point to a continued attachment to being Young. Which I don’t mean as the opposite of “Old” but that I am usually mostly excused for behavior or appearance that would constitute social faux pas for “normal adult people.” Or at least I think I’m excused. It has started to occur to me that I may be getting Too Old to look, talk, or act like someone in her twenties. Even though I am in my twenties, I’m not necessarily always doing Someone In Her Twenties things. I’m kind of abrasive, I say things for shock value, I’m larger than life. But none of that is necessary to be successful, or loved, or not alone. And I’m struggling a little bit with how to give up those last remnants of being a punk rock teenager, without feeling like I’ve sold myself out. Because, while I realize the lifestyle totally works for and feels right for many really awesome people, I’m not interested in a soccer mom lifestyle. I’m not interested in a Banana Republic wardrobe, vanilla manners, aspirations to a vacation home. That’s not who I am. But I also don’t think its fair to keep myself stuck in the stereotype of a loudmouthed rebellious cuss-happy overgrown punker teen. There’s got to be something that suits me somewhere on the spectrum, but I don’t know how to reconcile the two. How I do I cultivate an image for myself where I am respectable as an adult professional woman, but can ALSO not sacrifice the sparkle of my sometimes-edgy personality, without being offensive?

I don’t know.

I’m considering this question as I travel to Indonesia –unquestionably the furthest I’ve ever traveled from home, for the longest period of time I’ve ever been away from home—to do some pretty adult work, for the second time. And recognizing that, like it or not, I’m pretty much a grown up, and responsible for myself. I have no strings attached to me at all. And after this trip, I have no plans. The last 8 years of my life have been pretty much dictated on a time table, or shaped by a relationship, keeping me in a single trajectory or in a single location.. But, assuming I can get myself qualified to sit for my license exam in February, I have nothing beyond this on the horizon. I am absolutely free to determine what I want the next stage of my life to look like and I’m finding that, for the first time, I don’t know. I don’t know what comes next. I move back into my apartment on September 10th and start re-building. But re-building what? It’s a daunting question.

Blame the jet lag that we got from a re-introduction of my blog from Senegal being re-christened as my blog from Bali to a rumination on how to become a post-punk adult without feeling like a sap, to wondering what I’m doing with my life. But I guess it makes sense because, while the language will be cleaner, I suspect my soul-searching will come out in these pages over the next 6 weeks, and I thought I’d give you some context. I’m a little soul sick , and I think you might see that. But soul-sickness is okay. I’m okay. I’m sitting in an airport outside of China, by myself, getting ready to board the plane that delivers me to a totally unknown journey. But I’m okay.