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I probably already articulated this as well as I'm going to in this thread of tweets.
Thread.
Because I'm using my phone and my Bluetooth keyboard, it is too fiddly to properly embed or copy and paste it right now. But I figure this kind of thinking is what goes in a journal if one is going to keep one.
Things are going okay since I got home from Japan, I guess. I've mostly been sleeping and languishing. I went to church this morning, and I'm sort of wigged out that unless I find a job to do in the meantime that I have nothing lined up until September.
September is when I should go back to Japan if I go through the steps and actually do the next semester. I've been accepted to do so, but I feel so torn about whether or not I want to do so.
My family isn't wealthy by a long shot. However, we kind of operate life out of two houses since my dad has been pastoring a church about 45 minutes away that owns a parsonage. The parsonage is the main place that I lived from August of last year until April of this year, just before I left to go to Japan. I was working at the school system over here, and honestly I loved it more than any other American school work I have been able to get. However, I haven't found a full-time professional position with them, which was what led to me looking into Japan and EFL in the first place.
Stepping back into life here, particularly in this house that sort of felt like "mine" even though that was the furthest thing from the truth before I left, I feel a gnawing ache in my gut. Other than my parents, dog, and fellow church goers none of whom are peers to me, no one knew I left or cared. I don't have friends or a peer group here at all. However, in the days before I left I felt like I was watching a blade swinging on a pendulum, waiting for my inevitable and uneventful execution. I don't know why, but it felt like killing a certain life I had managed to find a status quo in. It was a desperately undernoruished, empty life, but it was a life that I felt like I was living. In Japan, I did stuff. I went through the motions of keeping myself fed and clean. But beyond that, I didn't really live. Even chronicling what I went through emotionally there, you might notice that there was always the obstacle and buffer of the fact that everything I did and expeienced was through the lens and buffer of being a professional, even when I let my guard down and felt like that in and of itself was a whole life. Here, at least, I was able to put down that mantel even if I didnt know what else to do with my time.
There are some things that my parents have moved, here at the parsonage and back at their house. They put in some effort into making my half-storage-facility of a bedroom back at their house as personal and inviting as it has been in a long time. It almost made me cry even though I still feel no freedom to customize anything at all. But the weird contrast between things that were moved and things that were left exactly as I left them makes me feel like a ghost haunting the left behind space of a person that I used to be. I don't really know what that means, because one reason that I was able to go to Japan in the first place was the anxious realization that I didn't have much to call my own as a life or identity beyond my parents, particularly after my father's head injury and subsequent surgery back in the winter. I felt like I needed to strike out.
But I just don't really know that I found anything on the other side of the world that is worth going back to for another three months. I wanted to be rehired because of my Feelings and also because I wanted to be validated that I'd done well enough to merit it. And I wanted to say yes to something that had some scent of being up to the standard they wanted. However, being back here on the solid ground that I know, ther really isn't anything exciting to do but look and see if a job that seems appropriate gets posted. And I'm terrified of what will happen if it does.
There are a few I could apply for now, but all of them would be part-time or very low full-time pay for something less than what I'm qualified to do. At least with the EFL I was doing and tentatively plan to return to, I was valued as an asset if not as a real person. I don't get the esnes that I am valued enough as an asset here, but I feel at least a little more like a person. In a way, in Japan, I was ALMOST too tired to feel this emptiness that is making me wrestle with whether or not I can emotionally afford to go back.
I don't know if I can handle another sense of death unto my life here, as weak and thready as it is. I will have a friend in Japan next time, but she'll be 250 miles away. I don't know if that's worth it. The notion that we will hang out sometimes seems more like the offer of a lifeline of sanity now, rather than a call to adventure.
Thread.
Because I'm using my phone and my Bluetooth keyboard, it is too fiddly to properly embed or copy and paste it right now. But I figure this kind of thinking is what goes in a journal if one is going to keep one.
Things are going okay since I got home from Japan, I guess. I've mostly been sleeping and languishing. I went to church this morning, and I'm sort of wigged out that unless I find a job to do in the meantime that I have nothing lined up until September.
September is when I should go back to Japan if I go through the steps and actually do the next semester. I've been accepted to do so, but I feel so torn about whether or not I want to do so.
My family isn't wealthy by a long shot. However, we kind of operate life out of two houses since my dad has been pastoring a church about 45 minutes away that owns a parsonage. The parsonage is the main place that I lived from August of last year until April of this year, just before I left to go to Japan. I was working at the school system over here, and honestly I loved it more than any other American school work I have been able to get. However, I haven't found a full-time professional position with them, which was what led to me looking into Japan and EFL in the first place.
Stepping back into life here, particularly in this house that sort of felt like "mine" even though that was the furthest thing from the truth before I left, I feel a gnawing ache in my gut. Other than my parents, dog, and fellow church goers none of whom are peers to me, no one knew I left or cared. I don't have friends or a peer group here at all. However, in the days before I left I felt like I was watching a blade swinging on a pendulum, waiting for my inevitable and uneventful execution. I don't know why, but it felt like killing a certain life I had managed to find a status quo in. It was a desperately undernoruished, empty life, but it was a life that I felt like I was living. In Japan, I did stuff. I went through the motions of keeping myself fed and clean. But beyond that, I didn't really live. Even chronicling what I went through emotionally there, you might notice that there was always the obstacle and buffer of the fact that everything I did and expeienced was through the lens and buffer of being a professional, even when I let my guard down and felt like that in and of itself was a whole life. Here, at least, I was able to put down that mantel even if I didnt know what else to do with my time.
There are some things that my parents have moved, here at the parsonage and back at their house. They put in some effort into making my half-storage-facility of a bedroom back at their house as personal and inviting as it has been in a long time. It almost made me cry even though I still feel no freedom to customize anything at all. But the weird contrast between things that were moved and things that were left exactly as I left them makes me feel like a ghost haunting the left behind space of a person that I used to be. I don't really know what that means, because one reason that I was able to go to Japan in the first place was the anxious realization that I didn't have much to call my own as a life or identity beyond my parents, particularly after my father's head injury and subsequent surgery back in the winter. I felt like I needed to strike out.
But I just don't really know that I found anything on the other side of the world that is worth going back to for another three months. I wanted to be rehired because of my Feelings and also because I wanted to be validated that I'd done well enough to merit it. And I wanted to say yes to something that had some scent of being up to the standard they wanted. However, being back here on the solid ground that I know, ther really isn't anything exciting to do but look and see if a job that seems appropriate gets posted. And I'm terrified of what will happen if it does.
There are a few I could apply for now, but all of them would be part-time or very low full-time pay for something less than what I'm qualified to do. At least with the EFL I was doing and tentatively plan to return to, I was valued as an asset if not as a real person. I don't get the esnes that I am valued enough as an asset here, but I feel at least a little more like a person. In a way, in Japan, I was ALMOST too tired to feel this emptiness that is making me wrestle with whether or not I can emotionally afford to go back.
I don't know if I can handle another sense of death unto my life here, as weak and thready as it is. I will have a friend in Japan next time, but she'll be 250 miles away. I don't know if that's worth it. The notion that we will hang out sometimes seems more like the offer of a lifeline of sanity now, rather than a call to adventure.
