March 4, 2007

• Foreign and Framiliar

  I have not been blogging lately, for the sole reason that the things I’m experiencing this year, while amazing, make crappy blog entries. I like reading the type of blogs that offer small, interesting insights into the realities of day-to-day life. I like bloggers who write about fascinating bits of human nature, the vibrancy of life beneath the dull surface of the everyday.

  And lets face it: I’m just not in the position where I can write that sort of thing. For me to write that sort of thing well, I have to be comfortable, content, and in an emotional place where I can slow down enough to notice the universe within the minutia. This year abroad has me feeling many things, but comfort and contentment are not amongst them.

  I’ve found an inherent duality to living abroad, meaning that I rarely feel one predominant emotion. I feel things simultaneously, on many different levels. Things are funny and sad. Life is easy and hard. Glasgow is foreign and familiar. I am beautiful and ugly. I am lonesome and loved. I feel homesick and wanderlust. I am selfish. I am selfless. I am out of my element. I am my element.

  I think this dual reaction to life abroad is just a byproduct of feeling extra alive. I shook my life up; I am shook up. I love it. I hate it. I want it forever. I want it to stop. Can we go home now? Lets move to Japan.

  See what I mean? Impossible. Furthermore, I hate to annoy my readership with either of these two possible scenarios:

  1.) I don’t want people to think, “Oh, there goes that Chicagoartgirl, wingin’ again. What’s she got to complain about? ‘Oh waaa: I husband who loves and respects me and who I love and respect back. Oh waaaa: I have a job that pays my bills and does not involve grease or manual labor. Waa-waa: I live in Scotland.’

  I feel you: boo fucking hoo, right? Besides, as many times as I write about being sad, I am probably simultaneously overjoyed. My writing/self reflection is not advanced enough to mirror that in a bloody blog.

  2.) I also would hate for people to think, “oh there goes Chicagoartgirl again, talking about how great her adventures abroad are, blabbing about how much fun she’s having at the Glasgow Film Festival, at the Glasgow Writing festival, with her new pack of girlfriends, hiking in the highlands with her fantastically loving husband. Will that spoiled bitch ever shut up?!?”

  So I’ve stopped blogging and stared journaling. In my journal, I rant about my difficult office politics (aka: the dream job gone sour), my financial fears, my freakish craving for a child, my homesickness, the joys of this country, the loneliness of this world, my cat (I miss him!), my running times, my freakish zits and my love of the “healing tool” on Photoshop, my thoughts on globalization, on polarization, on the finer and weaker points of a socialist government model, on the books I’m reading, on the foods I’m eating, of the ever-present fact that here is different from there.

  It feels good to journal again. My journal was my ever-present companion all through childhood and adolescence. It lets me be me; there is no readership.

  I did, however, update the Loch Ness Blog today. I wrote about my upcoming birthday and my celebratory hike through the Killiecrankie Pass.

  Aside from journaling, I’ve also been making a lot of funny faces lately. My favorite game is to get out the digital camera and do photoshoots. Before the picture is taken, the photographer yells out something for the model to be. For example, in this one, Shaun yelled, “Be your boss!”

  

  Be Buffy!
  

  Emo My Space Pic
  

  Say: “Duh”
  

  I have no idea what this one is, but it is by far the funniest thing I have ever seen and I laugh until I can’t breathe every time I look at it. I’ve never seen Shaun make this face before the photoshoot and so far, he’s been unsucessful in his attempts to recreate it.
  

  Pretend your a vegetable and I’m your burdened wife. (I know: what is wrong with us?)
  

  Be our cat.
  

  Laugh really hard because you are taking random, insane pictures and for some ungodly reason, posting them on the internet.
  

  Try it. It’s fun. I even dare you to post the results.

  XOX,

  Chicagoartgirl23

  ps: I may not be writing blogs, but when my ten-hour work-a-holic days (plus weekends–crikey!) allow it, I am reading them. You xanga authors make me smile. Keep it up.

  • 5:41 pm
  • 5 Comments