Culture shock! How unexpected to have felt it so strongly this time! What a strange country I have come to at the end of my travels – where people sail around in their huge, shiny cars, one person per vehicle, and people smile when you buy things from them – my own, known-quantity home.
Also, the inertia that I dreaded has hit me. The other day I did yoga on the living room floor four different times while I drifted from kitchen chair to computer chair, plucked some sprouts from my eyebrows, contemplated my pores in the mirror, thought about the crashing markets, drank glass after glass of water… I guess what I am really “doing” right now is Searching for a Job, and I am doing that, but hitting reload on job sites and rewording cover letters isn’t strenuous enough to make me feel like I’m accomplishing anything, and since the rest of my generation has finally succeeded in escaping Harford County, it’s easy to feel at loose ends chez Mom and Pop.
Okay, okay, the pity party is over. There’s no reason why being unemployed means I can’t set goals for my time, so that’s what I’m doing. I’ve joined the gym! I’m choosing good, cultivating books to read! I’m cooking and riding my bike and doing yoga. Maybe I’ll jump-start some knitting projects or something, too. It’s just funny how after a certain point, having more free time does not result in getting more things done. Every time I start getting a little nervous about the future, or sick of seeing the same ads on Careerbuilder, or stir-crazy from a day spent in the house, I STOP -
and think about:
walking down the street in Budapest a little before sunset on the last day of our trip, fresh from the Turkish baths, Sophie and I smiled at each other, and then our shoulders shook, and then we were just laughing, loud hoots and little burbles that trailed off and came back again for blocks. That’s how life should always feel. I just have to remind myself of it.