Getting back to myself..

For so long I have been talking about manifesting the things I want and trying hard to attain these things, in order to improve my life.  I feel like I have been doing the work for this for years now.   I’ve read so many books that have made me change parts of my life in terms of how I take care of myself physically or that have altered my perspective about life in general.   I’ve tried going to all kinds of churches and spiritual centers, I’ve done 12 step programs…I did the Artist Way.  All of these things gave me something, but they never gave me that thing that kept me from feeling still partially dissatisfied.

My friend Roxana asks me this question:   “What is it you have to offer other people?”  As I rack my brain for the most truthful answer to this question, mostly I find myself silent.  This she says is what I really have to work on.

Personally, at first I found this very frustrating as my immediate response was:  AGH!  I’ve done enough already!  I mean, from everything I have mentioned above, I felt like this is actually more of time in my life to finally relax, and instead her question left me once again thinking of what more I could do artistically or what kind of project I could get myself involved in..

But then, I realized the other day after the 4^th of July how much I just enjoy laughing and being with people…I enjoy making people laugh.  I enjoy laughing at myself.  In fact, I love it.  I love all of the ridiculous things that I do and all of the ridiculous things that happen to me and I love sharing it.  For so long I feel like my sense of humor has been buried, in the midst of trying to become someone I am not.  And, while it might not be the most productive way of being, I secretly love being that person who didn’t read the schedule and who asks what we are doing for the rest of the day.

Recently, my friend wrote me from the States informing me in a long email about how she was so inspired by me and the things I have accomplished that she pushed herself to attempt becoming an intern for LA Yoga Magazine, and upon inquiring into this, instead was offered to be one of the staff writers.  She actually wrote about owing it to me for getting this new position.  This makes me feel somewhat weird, because in so many ways, I don’t see myself doing anything that magnificent here.  I mean plenty of people travel and many people work abroad in much more unique and amazing careers.   And, I always imagine how I need to keep striving to be better to achieve that sort of status whether it be as an artist or in something else.  In fact, I am always seeing how I need to be more like her.  It has never occurred to me that maybe by just being me in all that I am not…is enough.  It was enough to somehow change part of my friend’s life.  In addition, I have received so many comments on my blog from people, emails and such that have really blown my mind.  For one, I am astonished that people actually read the thing, but for some people to keep reading every entry and to write me about how I inspired them or made them think just makes me feel great.  When I think about it, maybe what I see as a life that I constantly want to change and alter and improve upon is actually just the life that is okay as it is.

So maybe the most honest answer that I can give to what it is I have to offer people is actually just me being myself.

And instead of always searching for something outside of myself to give to the world, I am better off beginning by just expressing the person I am now and investing in things in which I find joy.  That is the most positive thing I can offer at this point.  This constant search for something beyond what I am in this moment, has only lead me to constant struggle and this is not the kind of energy I want to continue sharing.  Certainly, volunteer work and furthering my art career, along with using the social system that we have of entering certain careers is important, but those things can never be fully realized until I am okay with being without them first and by just being solely the person I am in all honesty.

I started this blog to have something fun to do…to record my time here and because I imagined I’d go crazy if I wasn’t working on something creative.  And, I came here for the love of traveling.  Travel and writing, along with sharing a sense of humor have been by far the things in which I find the most joy in my life.  To not permit myself to do the things in which I find so much enjoyment, would keep me from fully expressing that which I am.   And this is part of the reason I have always felt unfulfilled in the past.

As I’ve mentioned so many times on here, I never allowed my mind any amount of silence in the US.   And here, I just don’t worry about much at all.  I sometimes wonder if it is because the energy here is different.  Maybe in the US, we have a shared energy of things having to be just right all of the time, a shared energy of not having enough, of not being in the right place.  All of this can be very confusing and contradictory as we listen to so many people in all sorts of authority roles tell us how we should live our lives.  Perhaps it’s our media, our news never having anything positive to say, the fact that we love competition, the fact that we for the most part are obsessed with work, the fact that we often love to see people get what we think they deserve and nothing more and that also as a nation we seem to thrive off of fear.  It seems to consume us, making us afraid of not having insurance for every possible thing that could go wrong and making us feel like we must save and save for any conceivable emergency that might happen instead of actually using the money that we earn for any kind of true pleasure.  We go to work sick because we fear disappointing others and we only rarely take vacations.  We are accustomed to attaching guilt to those that actually do miss work.  We are conditioned to avoid certain people and places because we imagine them unsafe.  It seems like we live a large part of our lives thinking only about what could go wrong.  We have no training to handle any uncertainty or to see where it actually may be of value.  I wonder if this is why I felt like life was so overwhelming back in the States and why it was so hard for me to move beyond things or to say goodbye to things a lot of the time…so afraid to be without my own false security.  I’m really not sure, but here, I just don’t feel that kind of pressure and I sometimes wonder how I will feel when I once again am living in the US.

I am not saying it is better here or that there aren’t people here that don’t fall into the same category.  And, there are certainly tons of things I miss and wish I had here.  So many things are much more available and more convenient in the States and being here has in fact made me more appreciative of those things.  Let me repeat once again how much I realize how spoiled I was in California.  I had a very good life despite the numerous complaints I often daily voiced.  I lived near the beach with many great friends, not to mention inexpensive food of different varieties from all over the world available always, stores open all night, tons of cultural things to do, places to ride my bike, places to do just about anything imaginable.  Maybe the only thing absent for me in California was joy.  And I’m not talking about the joy that comes from always being constantly entertained, but merely the joy and happiness for all that I have and all that I am and all that I CAN do. Losing my job and experiencing periods of unemployment during the last two years in the States began to shift my perspective on this.  And here, while I can only rarely eat food at a restaurant, as food is very expensive, and while I don’t have a car to escape the city and the smog (it’s much, much more expensive to even own a car here, not to mention gas is at least double the price here than in the States), I now depend on the few friendships I’ve made, and I find activities to do on the weekend.  And I actually get really excited about the possibility of getting into a car and spending the day walking in nature…not such a novelty in the States.  But, I actually feel like, wow, I GET to do this here, while in the States, I only felt that things were never enough.  The ironic thing being that I always had so much more there.

I don’t love it here.  I do love my own country.  But, I am also trying to understand how I can love a place full of so much hostility.

Sometimes I read the news feed on Face Book and I see so many complaints from different people in the States.  I see people write about what they consider are incompetent people at their jobs.  I see people write about their neighbors, their relationships…with so much negativity.  I get it.  I just wonder though if we have all jointly manifested this kind of national unhappiness through all of the expectations we have created of one another, including ourselves.  And, I just wonder if somehow we could all practice a little empathy.  It’s not necessary that everyone be perfect nor that we all be the same.   And also I wonder if we could practice a little more joy for that which we do have an abundance of, especially compared to the rest of the world.   If we could all realize how much we have available to us and how much freedom we waste by not changing parts of our lives that are no longer doing ourselves or anyone else justice.  These are things that many people are unable to change in other parts of the world due to many reasons that are economic or social or because their governments won’t allow it.  We ARE actually free to do what we want.  It’s not always without a lot of effort and not always without giving something else up, but the point is that we GET to make those choices.  It just takes some courage to live life a little less secure and to allow our real selves to be expressed.

4th of July….and Being a Vegetarian

Yesterday we celebrated our own 4^th of July (it was actually the 3^rd, but it was the best we could do) by having a BBQ in the park.  This time Roxie had all of our plans colored coded in an excel spreadsheet (which I didn’t read and was reprimanded for!).  We didn’t have fireworks, but at least we had good food (and an abundance of rice).  I was specifically told to make rice for 19 people and of course only one serving of it was actually eaten and I think that was just someone being nice.   One of the guys showed me how he had taken some of it: “See, I’m having some, Jen.”  I looked and he had taken a small sympathy spoonful.  I knew no one was going to eat that stuff.  Rice is like that side dish that you eat last because there isn’t anything else good leftover…or, if you are vegetarian like me.  So now I have rice for 18 people sitting in my refrigerator.

I love how whenever I go to events that involve eating that people assume because I’m a vegetarian, I can be satisfied by just eating some lettuce.  “Oh, there will be something there for you to eat,” is usually the response I get and usually it’s like a piece of cheese or something that someone pulls out of the refrigerator at the last minute.

Vegetarian food here has no imagination.  In the States, a Vegetarian sandwich (commonly called the “health sandwich” as my friend always likes to point out and laugh at – this could just be a California thing) has things like avocado and sprouts and other vegetables carefully chosen for the perfect combination, on some kind of thick toasted wheat bread usually with seasonings and flavor.  The sandwich actually has weight to it and some creativity.  Here, it’s like someone bought a bag of plain white wonder bread and cut up a tomato and put some pieces of canned corn or other such flavorless vegetables inside it.  It feels as if the chef took their inspiration from cleaning out the refrigerator and figuring they could either throw the stuff in the dog’s bowl or make a sandwich.   No taste, no thought…It just sucks.  No one can fathom a meal without some kind of beef or chicken or pork.  The other day I ordered what was called “The Vegetarian” from a small restaurant in between classes.  I only had a vague idea of what that consisted of and assumed it was a salad of some sort, but I was perplexed when I opened up the box while I walked down the street and noticed there was a heap of chicken on top.  I took the box back and explained that there must be some mistake and so the guy just opened the box and grabbed all of the chicken and gave the box back to me.  Needless to say, I make most of my food at home.

I declined meat from one of the guys at the BBQ yesterday, telling him that I don’t eat meat and he didn’t hesitate to inform me that “that will change if you stay here,” but I have news for him; it won’t.

I haven’t eaten meat in almost 7 years now.  I try not to be a pain in the ass about it, but it’s been so long without meat that, I’m sorry, but I’m probably not going to start eating the stuff again at this point, no matter how much people try to tell me I need more protein and no matter how much I try to tell people I have my own sources of protein.  All I know is that my body feels much better without it and I rarely get sick anymore as opposed to before.

It’s funny to me how some people respond when I tell them I don’t eat meat.  Some people actually get quite defensive and edgy about it.  It’s strange to me.  It’s just food.  My mom tends to react this way and always adds “well, we eat meat here,” (referring to her and my dad) as if my decision is an attack on them.  She used to take it very personally in the beginning, insisting that I can eat her chicken, as if I had to choose between vegetarianism or my family.  Mostly, I think it’s just that she doesn’t appreciate her own lifestyle being challenged by her own kid.  And that’s why she has a tendency to announce to a roomful of people that her daughter doesn’t eat meat, and then she kind of waits around to see if anyone will join her in agreement of criticizing my highly “defiant” act that doesn’t jive with her own cooking.  It doesn’t matter how many years go by, my parents still react to me like I am 15 years old and trying to purposely disobey them by getting part of my body pierced.  Alas, I’m the youngest and I will never be seen as an adult.

My friend from the US recently sent me a box of foods and other odd things I am missing here.  The package included things like real organic peanut butter and organic cheese puffs which were all eaten in the first day of receiving the package.  Only in the US would they actually make cheese puffs organic.  And they do it just for people like me who claim to be all health conscious and assume…organic = healthy.  Its cheese puffs for god’s sake.

I want organic refried beans to be in his next package.  He thinks this is an unusual request.   He assumes that Chile must be the same as Mexico and he can’t wrap his head around the fact that beans aren’t a big deal down here.  I miss Mexican food.  Its not the same here and you can’t get beans in a can here without paying $4 and finding them at the giant grocery store across the city.   I don’t have the time and patience to always soak beans and make a dinner that takes 2 days when it normally only took me ten minutes in the States.

(So instead of paying $4, I make my friend pay $50 to send them from the US).  I know it really doesn’t make any sense.

We actually had warmer weather yesterday and so it was nice to be in the park and actually be able to be without a coat for part of the day.  Recently, it rained and so all of the mountains surrounding the city are now covered in snow:

My personal favorite…thanks to yoga…..

 Yes, we shamelessly painted our faces:

After the BBQ, the guy who is convinced that I will eat meat again, gave me a ride home.  I pleaded:  Please don’t make me ride the metro home (alone) with an American flag painted on my face…my poor non-meat eating self is bound to get into some kind of trouble!

In the spirit of the 4^th of July, this morning I gave one of my more advanced students a reading about the holiday from the New York Times called “Red, White and Blue and Many Other Colors.”  It was a sentimental article complete with quotes from the National Anthem about immigrants coming into the harbor in New York City for the first time and gazing at the Statue of Liberty.   The writer ended the article saying “God bless all of you on this great day and god bless America,“ and of course this made both of us laugh immediately.  I left his office and his last words to me were: “God bless!” while my other advanced student drew an arrow on his copy of the article and added “South” to “God Bless America.”  My less advanced student just looked at me, confused and asked “What’s a firecracker?”

 

Family and Friendship…

Yesterday was a great day.  I finally made it out of the city and went hiking with friends and friends of friends.  Roxana organized all of us to get together and go hiking for the day and have lunch in Pirque, a small town outside of Santiago.

Yesterday was one of those days where I couldn’t take anything too seriously.  Maybe its how being in nature makes me feel a little giddy, but I forgot how much good humor I find in all situations even if I have a tendency to laugh at maybe not the most appropriate times as well.  I remember camping with a friend of mine years ago in the desert, setting up our tent and going for a bike ride.  When we returned, all of our things were gone.  Our tent had blown away in the wind.  He was pissed.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  I remember him not being very pleased with my reaction.

I am pretty sure this comes from growing up on ridiculous comedies and maybe also the last 10 years of reality tv shows combined.  I was happy to sit in the back of the bus like a trouble maker scheming with my French friend and being disciplined by Roxana.  I swear she is such a leader and such a great organizer.  The price I pay for my sense of humor is that I am not a great leader, nor a good organizer.  In fact, I fail when it comes to those things much of the time.  I don’t have the personality to pull off what she does.  She even had all of us introduce ourselves and do that thing where you have everyone say one interesting thing about themselves.  I wanted her to have a clip board and a headset and pass out name tags too.

Friendship is so important to me.  It always has been.  I rarely get to see my family and to make up for it I have made exceptionally close friendships in my life with both men and women…they are like my replacement family.

I’m not sure if I consider my biological family close.  It bothers me.  I try to call my mom once a week.  I try, but I don’t always do it.  I haven’t seen my sister in almost 7 years and my brother…I haven’t seen him in at least 3 or more years and I only see my other brother due to the fact that he lives semi close to my parents, so when I see them maybe once a year, I usually see him as well.  Is this normal for us in the US?  My dad and I have never been very close, but his one wish for me was to actually write to my sister to say hi and break the ice a little between us.  Why weren’t we talking?  I have no idea.  I think it’s merely just a lack of consciousness we have for communication.  I feel my real family fading away in the dust and it bothers me immensely.

Sometimes I think about how years ago I couldn’t imagine never seeing my siblings…how they were such an integral part of my life.  How did I ever end up with this completely disconnected family?

I always remember the one time my brother came to California because of his job.  He just happened to visit me as well.  I met him at his hotel and we spent the evening together.  The next morning his flight was canceled and he irritatedly referred to the rest of the day together as “dead time.”  That kind of stung. But then at the same time I hear from so many people that know him about how much he talks about me and how much he thinks about me.  He isn’t the only person like this in my life.  Why can’t we just say how we feel to the actual person we have these feelings for?  And why is it easier to express it to someone else?  My mom always says, “You know your dad talks about you a lot,” but he isn’t talking about me to me so how would I know?  In addition to this, my family has always had a habit of insulting each other and its sort of an affectionate thing.  Tough love.  I kinda have a feeling that this is normal for many American families.

So much of American culture is based on independence.  If you are still living with your family after 20 years old then something is wrong with you…or at least that is what we assume.  I haven’t lived near my parents since I was 18 years old other than a small stretch of time when I needed to stay with them for financial reasons.  I missed out on a consistent relationship with my brother and his family and all of my nephews and my niece.  Suddenly my niece is 14 years old this year.  Suddenly my parents have grey hair and all kinds of medical problems.  When did they age?  I was never around long enough to witness all of the transitions.

Maybe I needed them more.  Maybe leaving them so young was actually a premature thing to do because the lack of them has made me seek it in others and I’ve maybe stayed in relationships way too long or formed bonds that maybe I shouldn’t have because of this.

At the same time, to appear needy at least in the US is completely unacceptable and so I was taught that I need to do it all on my own and I need to be proud of this.  I am proud of it.  I have done a lot just solo…more than I give myself credit for most of the time.  I’m definitely not afraid of being alone.  I can take care of myself and I can support myself just fine even if I slip up sometimes and get my Ipod stolen or forget my keys or have to go back to my apartment two or three times after I intended to leave to get something else.    One of my ex-boyfriends used to call me “two trips” because I couldn’t just leave the apartment the first time.  I’m not perfect.

I am thankful for Roxana because currently she is my stand in family and she does a good job of it.  She also does a good job of including all sorts of other people that are new here.  Our new addition was a guy from the States who lost his financial job during the beginning of the economic crisis in the US and changed his life becoming a yoga instructor and looking towards spirituality instead of the American dream.  That’s not much of a unique story these days.

I think I would absolutely go crazy if I didn’t have at least one good friend here that I could really communicate with inside out.  I’m realizing so much how I actually do need people in my life and maybe being so overly independent isn’t all that its cracked up to be.

The mountains were beautiful yesterday and it was so nice to breathe fresh air again.  Between that and having laughed all day, I feel somewhat renewed from all of it.

My New Home

Two days ago I moved into my new apartment.  Hopefully, this will be the place that will last at least until the rest of the year.  My roommate is Chilean.  She’s has her own vintage furniture store and she’s also a painter, my age.  It’s perfect for me.

I traded this:  (Depressing – kind of looks like a room at the hospital)

For this:  (Much Better)

I’ve also been making myself meet Chilean people to have language exchanges where we meet up and speak half in English and half in Spanish.  Yesterday, I met a girl from Peru and was so happy to be able to understand mostly everything she said!  It kind of gave me some reassurance that I am making some progress and maybe Chilean Spanish really is the hardest to learn.

The more I meet and get to know the Chilean people the less I feel homesick.   The more I integrate and stay in the present moment – stay focused on what I can do here – the less I think of what I don’t have here.  I guess that makes sense.  The more I think of what I do have and what I can do, the less my mind wanders toward the negative.

But I have to admit that this can be a struggle because many moments I spend thinking, I wish I could just talk to my old friends and laugh like I used to, express myself in ways I feel more comfortable.  I miss having people who know me so well.

I used to miss the east coast of the US for years and I don’t think, after 13 years I ever surrendered to living in California until the last two years.  I finally felt like I had a home – a community.  I felt settled in ways that I never felt before.  And to me, it was a huge accomplishment.  It meant that I finally felt okay with life, where I was.  I lost that idea that life was better elsewhere and I lost that lack of place that I used to feel there.  The more I think about it, that lack feeling I felt for so long in California was really a need for some kind of special identity to prevent me from fitting in, probably because I was too afraid to.  Too afraid of just being normal.  Of just being myself.  I held on to being “from the east coast” just as much as I think I was holding onto “being an artist” for so long.  In every office job I ever had, I had to make it clear that I was an artist because I sure as hell didn’t want to just be the office worker and how dare I just be Jen.

It’s amazing how much this false identification with words has kept me from changing parts of my life for so long.

If I didn’t drop my negative separatist attitude, I would never have made so many connections in Long Beach and who knows what possibilities could have happened if I would have dropped my attitude years before that.

And at the same time, if I hadn’t let go of my art and tried something new, I wouldn’t be here.

For years, I told myself, when I was in the midst of wishing I was everywhere else, that I probably wouldn’t leave California until I accepted it as home and accepted that nothing was really going to be any better anywhere else.  I didn’t want to leave California because I was escaping, I wanted to be able to leave for the joy of knowing another place.  Mentally I knew this, but I couldn’t make myself feel it.

The thing that really did it, that really made me feel at home was that I finally invested in the area.  I looked for things to do and I met a lot of people and finally I wasn’t living like an island anymore.  And actually, I didn’t just look for things…I had fun with it.  I had fun joining new things…spending a few weeks doing this thing and then looking into something else.  And I enjoyed imagining where each new thing could lead.  I made some of the best friends I have in the last two years.  And, I started to love my life so much that I didn’t want to leave right down to the moment I got on the plane to come here.  I didn’t have money.  I didn’t have a fabulous job.  I didn’t have a comfortable place.  But, I was abundant.

Where the hell did that feeling suddenly come from? (Coincidentally, while the plane was rolling down the runway, we came to a very abrupt stop just seconds before taking off which scared the bejesus out of me (apparently, one of doors was not completely shut…Shouldn’t they check that before take off?).  Anyway, was that a sign for me to stay?).

But, now here I am.  I’m glad that I am here.  I’m doing this because it’s good for me and it’s pushing me in ways I wanted and needed to be pushed, but my heart still feels like it’s somewhere else.

Can you fall in love with a place?

I think so.  And like all of my relationships when I would finally realize I was indeed in love, it was only after a long period of experiencing a good mix of pain and happiness.  Because it’s a love that comes from really knowing something inside out and for merely existing together in the day to day.  I call that love, home.

And, so I’ve decided that I’m experiencing some loss now, and my heart feels it.  I’m mourning things that have passed and knowing that everything in life is always changing and that whenever I do go back to the States again, it won’t be quite the same as it was.  So I feel like I’m leaving a great love in my life and suddenly I’m meeting someone else and it’s not the same feeling at all.  I’m comparing them to the former person.  I’m expecting them to be like the former person.  Trying to dress them the same and I’m missing the music we used to play and the way they used to make me laugh.  In so many ways, I feel that about Santiago when I compare.

But is it good to be that attached to a place or a person where it makes me suffocate parts of who I am because I fear that I’ll lose them?   I have a huge curiosity for life and that will never go away.

One thing I have always liked about myself is the ability to learn from the people I love and allow them to creep into my past without resentments.  And, I am going to use what my former residence has taught me.  And that is to invest in all of the great possibilities that are here and to forget about all the other places I could be right now.

I’m going to have fun with my new space and I even bought two small blank canvases just for the purposes of creating something for myself to hang on my wall.  Hopefully, this will get me painting again.  Photos to come….