Balancing ∞

Its amazing how easy it can be to become totally submerged in life with someone you love. At least it has been that way for me since I’ve returned to the Cities. Exploring life in the new, intense context of us has been enthralling & challenging. This, obviously, has a lot of up sides. What is love if not, in part, a desire to be with a particular someone and making them happy? I also chose the new quote to banner this page with a reason. Balance.

In some ways the loneness of the Peace Corps is also one of its advantages. At the end of the day, or the week or the month; at the end of your solitary rope, you have to face up to the realities you have put yourself in. If your new community hasn’t fully embraced you after your first tentative “Ngay omajem?” you have to figure out why & keep looking for those with whom you can develop some amount of camaraderie. In the same vein, if your day isn’t fulfilling to you personally, emotionally or in regards to your work you are confronted with that reality constantly. There are few places to run & hide. Most of those are within yourself & they never hold up long. Trips to visit other Volunteers are also always brief. In its simplicity everything comes into sharper focus. Your work blends into integrating blends into leisure activities even blends into your running regime. One of the most striking lessons I learned was how much community & other people really do draw one of those fine lines between sanity & hell.

So what do you do when all of a sudden merely sitting on a couch talking with someone you love about whatever banal topic is of the moment overwhelmingly fulfills those desires of community & human interaction & leaves you fulfilled for the day? The day has been a success! My relationship with Bridget is improving and deepening and constantly moving towards the point a more natural existence as us. Its not always easy, but it is always exciting & engaging & the most worthwhile & important thing I could be doing with my life right now.

But I speak of balances. Only the lucky (or maybe only the dim or un-ambitious) are every able to approach & deal with life on reality, one aspect at a time. While I still hold life with Bridget is the most important & exciting part of life right now it is far from the only part. For instance, take the concept of that lucrative job so I can continue paying my bills my Dad keeps reminding me about every time we chat on the phone. Or more simple pleasures & goals of continuing to run & get in shape for frisbee season or getting back into climbing. None of these things happens overnight. Plyometric jump training is neither easy nor short, nor necessarily that much fun, but skying someone 3 inches taller than you 8 weeks from now certainly is. & to stretch to timeline out even farther, now is the time to really be putting in the work researching grad schools to find the best options & to start working on applications while I have the luxury of far & distant deadlines & can really focus on the substance within that freedom.

While pursuing one particular worthwhile endeavor might not constitute hiding from the others it can definitely develop overtones of that as the rest of life begins to breakdown around the edges from lack of use or engagement.
Damn. I need to get a job.