old long since
The year switched without much fanfare. I ended up in Philadelphia on my high school friend Bridget’s sofa with Dick Clark and Maker’s Mark, and one minute it was 2007 and then we counted backwards from ten and it was 2008. We watched the fireworks, and then we watched An American in Paris. Bridget cut my hair. When I got back to Portland I found all my Happy New Year cards still sitting in the bottom of my mailbox from the week before. Apparently my postman didn’t notice them, or else he hadn’t realized it was time for the new year, either.I got a little panicky last year, back in 2007. I didn’t meet all of Portland right away, and I didn’t find the right place to live, and I didn’t change the world in my job, and no one fell madly and stupidly in love with me. And I was not only supposed to accept all of these things but stay put despite them – stick it out in this city because of some bizarre gut feeling that it’s ultimately going to crack open.
I’m part of a class action lawsuit that you’re probably part of too, against credit card companies that overcharged on foreign transactions. I found out about it when they sent me a claim form in the mail. It asked for an estimate of how many days I was out of the country between February 1, 1996 and November 8, 2006 and you know what I came up with? Eight hundred sixty-three days. That’s 2.4 years. Between stream ecology research and sea turtle monitoring and Spanish classes and thesis writing and random backpacking adventures, I spent twenty two percent of that ten year period in other countries. And that right there is what I’m good at: six items of clothing and a clamoring bus station. Talking to someone at a bar because he looks like he might speak English. Accidentally ordering chicken.
This shit where I stay put? This is brand new. If you add domestic excursions into that ten year period, I was probably “away from home” – whatever that means – about half the time. So what I’m learning right now is how to start projects at work that might not bear fruit immediately, how to find a place to live where I unpack all my boxes, how to demonstrate investment in a relationship for which no one had to move to a new state. I am not good at these things yet. Being not good at things is hard.
So I hereby forgive myself the dispirited mess that was 2007. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing in America but here I am, and so for 2008 my plan is to try to get good at it. To get good at it, and then see if I like it. If I do, well hell! How about that. And if not I have a shiny new passport that’s good until twenty seventeen.
Happy New Year All, wherever you are and wherever you’re going, or not going.
posted by tortaluga @ 11:45 AM
2 Comments:
Watch out for ants.
I'm having so much fun with my class action prep! There's all the reminiscing about exciting foreign adventure, to places exotic! and Cold! with lots of photo memories!
And as I dig through the credit card statements, oh right; skiing in whistler & kelowna, and shoe shopping in vancouver, oh wait! and I bought my kayak in BC! and... all those mundane little transactions where I popped over the border for dinner or a movie, when the closest Ikea was outside abbottsford, and ALL THAT COUNTS TOO! the every day, now exciting! revisited! worth another $1!
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