Spin

Life update: I've decided to drop out of college. Technically I'm on college leave and am free to go back whenever I wish (which is a comforting safety net in a way. Would've saved me a lot of angst if I knew early on that this was a thing). But you and I both know that I'm not planning on going back there anytime soon. Definitely not voluntarily. Begrudgingly, perhaps.

Instead I've enrolled in this gap year program called UnCollege. There are 3 phases to the program: Voyage, where you pick a destination abroad to volunteer and explore outside of your comfort zone; Launch, which is basically a self-directed curriculum where you get to decide what you want to do and what skills you want to develop, coupled with general workshops in San Francisco; finally Internship, which is pretty much all on you to see where you can put your foot in the door. The great thing about UnCollege is the coaching and mentoring they offer their fellows.

Which is why I am currently in Tanzania (it's in East Africa in case you needed to Google it) for Voyage phase. I'm volunteering at this local daycare center, teaching kids and playing with them five days a week. And I know what you're thinking. Wow, you're in Africa? That's so cool, you must be having such a crazy experience.

In a way I am. Or at least was, for the first week or so. I have a gorgeous view of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest summit in Africa, right outside my bedroom window. I can even see the snow on top of its peak. I took a day trip to these hot springs about 90 mins out of town and it was beautiful, even more so since it's like an oasis in the middle of a dry and dusty desert. I've even been social enough to go out to bars and nightclubs and voluntarily make an ass out of myself by doing karaoke (basically sober).

But there's nothing new under the sun. Novelty doesn't last.

And here is where I get into my one of my neuroses: I call it being pathologically bored. Maybe it's because I've literally moved 4 times in the past 3 years. Those moves haven't just been to different cities, they've been to different countries and have been done at an increasingly alarming accelerated pace. The longest place I've lived in was the Philippines for 9 years and I was a baby for 3 of them. Indonesia for 6 years. Singapore for nearly 3. Boston for a year. Florida for a semester. And now here I am in Tanzania for a scheduled 10 weeks. San Francisco for 10 weeks too, no more. After that who knows?

And I travel a lot with my family. Just this past winter, we went to Korea for a week and a half then I met up with the CJ gang in Bali for another week. Two weeks later I left for Tanzania. I'm used to this, used to motion. Used to not staying in one place too long to realize I'm bored once I run out of distractions. But the constant acceleration I've found myself in has shortened that time frame. I'd be lucky if I didn't feel bored after a few days, let alone a week.

The strangest thing is that I am a creature of habit. Routine makes me feel secure and productive. But it also makes me feel... safe. It give me a false sense of security. Because I've navigated through all the novelty and carved out a space for myself in this foreign place, my next instinct is to blur out my surroundings entirely. Part of it is so I can function. Part of it is also, sadly, so I can convince myself that my surroundings have no bearing on how I'm feeling or how productive I'm going to be. I put myself in a bubble, essentially, and pray that it doesn't pop.

Life in Tanzania is also very slow. I'm very much used to being busy, having school keep me busy. Even if I was on school break, I would try to keep myself busy and be as productive as possible. I think I've developed this inability to really relax and take a break. So now, with so much free time on my hands and few options around to occupy me (other than shooting the breeze at the bar or something) I am inevitably the last thing I want to be -- bored.

Let's face it, reader -- life is nothing but a steaming pile of mediocrity. Not that there's anything wrong with mediocre, per se. It's just that for the most part we seem to avoid being honest about it at all costs. Nobody likes admitting that things are okay. Not bad, but not great either. Just okay. But okay doesn't fly in the world of forced positivity. So we play things up, tie everything with a pretty little bow and make things sound better than they are to our friends and family and distant relatives. Everything is... spin.

People like to say life isn't a competition, but it's hard not to feel like it is. It's hard not to feel like your life pales in comparison to everyone else's, especially when all you see are the selectively displayed moments on social media. And on the other hand, when it's your social media account, it becomes very easy to be selective, to tease out those picture perfect moments, slap a filter on them, write an apt caption and tell everyone who sees it, "Look at this cool thing I saw/did today. Isn't my life amazing?"

Even when you take social media out of the equation, having conversations with people about what's going on with their lives feels like a passive-aggressive one-upping show that makes you want to withdraw and leaves you with empty small talk when you can't -- and don't want to -- pretend that everything is better than it actual is. It's inauthentic. It's exhausting.

Disclaimer: this is probably just me. This is how I see things and it's probably a hyperbolic reading of it because I'm a bit low right now. Even when trying to 'get real' and honest, I can't help but put a spin on things. Perhaps that's the main skill a writer employs in their trade. We spin stories. Even when they're supposed to be grounded in reality, like when writing a memoir or a personal essay, the objective truth is marred by our creative liberties, our strokes of 'truthy-ness' and flawed memories.

Maybe I've also lost the inherent ability to feel things, to enjoy them. To look at something, even though it seems familiar and not 100% novel, and feel my heart burst with excitement and emotion. Odd thing is, when I write back on those experiences I do manage to make my experiences sound like something great and moving. It's similar to living vicariously (something I am a master of with my TV shows and comics and movies and Youtube). Except I'm living in retrospect, vicariously experiencing life through the lens of my past self. But never in the moment, no. It's so hard to be in the moment, especially when the moment feels like nothing but motion. 

It's the end of my third week here, surprisingly. Time here seems to pass by excruciatingly slow. I can't wait to get to Launch and start building something, something that I can call mine. Maybe even something to leave as my legacy, something to outlive me. Something solid and concrete and... permanent. Something that serves as the foundation of my identity through which I can operate on. Because right now, I'm drifting, I'm fleeting, I'm... lost.

And God knows I hate being bored.

--Karin Novelia, trying not to pull a Sherlock.

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