To some extent, I agree with that. I've found myself in quite an impasse in my life. If asked in November, "what are you doing when you get home from Egypt?" I would have said "Well, I'm coming home in June, then off to visit my family for a few weeks, come back to Ann Arbor to get a sublet, and then move off to school in September to start 5 years of academic slavery and come out to do something wonderful, impacting, and amazing."
Well, here I am. Home in February. No personal space to speak of, sleeping on the couch of a friend, working at Starbucks again, and no prospects of school for the next year. 8 "no letters" and an inconvenient (perhaps unnecessary?) evacuation from a revolution later, I find myself caught in a weird time warp. I've spent the past few months worrying and impatient. Will I get my belongings back from Egypt? I wore the same 3 outfits for a month in a half. I accepted that it wasn't going to happen and I was more than ok with that. But they came, one by one, to UM for me to pick up. I had no job when I came back. I panicked. 2 weeks of searching led to nothing. I broke down and asked for my job back. I got it, however inglorious it is. I was worried that I would lose all my Arabic. I was quickly employed by my professor to work on his book with him. I'm kept up all hours doing work for him and meeting with him at the drop of a hat. It's annoying, but hey, I get to keep up with Arabic and supplement Starbucks.
My point is that I've realized that the universe does work in mysterious ways. The stars do conspire for us in the end. It's just not the perfect picture I had in my head. This weird place that I find myself in right now, at this second in my life, will roll right off my shoulder. But later. Not now. Now I have an unprecedented opportunity to build up myself. I might not have gotten into graduate school this round, but I still want it more than anything. I was made to be there. It's not really my fault that I didn't get in. It was such a crap shoot now that I look back at it all. Reading my blogs from last June, July, and August, I can't believe that I somehow managed to study for the GRE, work on a personal statement, and research the few schools and contacts that I did, all while adjusting to the unprecedented events that kept pounding my brain into a pulpy mush.
But now I have time, and perhaps that's the biggest blessing in this whole situation. I've never had time to concentrate on myself and get my shit together before. It's always been...well...rather half assed. I've always been so busy, my mind so cluttered. Yeah, it stings to have what I thought of my future fragment and crash down in front of me. But ironically, there's nothing to clean up. I'm just going to work on that damn GRE because I know I can beat it. I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do for work for a year. I'm going to find out what I'm going to do about my living situation here in Ann Arbor for the next year. I have a lot on my plate right now, but somehow it doesn't feel so rushed, not so life-or-death. I can take my time. I'll have bad days where I just want to give up, where I'll call home and look for some kind of consolation about how I feel like such a loser, feeling insecure and underserving, beating myself up because this is not an ideal situation. It's natural. But I know it's not going to end here. I've been through a lot in the past 10 months. My mind and expectations have been totally unraveled and patched back together. Reality and Ideality are currently not congruent. I know that they never will be, but I'm determined to make them as harmonious as possible. Right now, I'm going to build myself up. I deserve it.
If I learned anything from the Arab Spring and the events that drove me out of Egypt, it's that it's never over. It's always evolving and ever-surprising. What made the old man in the coffee shop smoking his sheesha from dawn to dusk everyday playing backgammon throw it all away at the sight of thousands of young men and women in the street? What made him break his routine and secure life? Some might say he was fed up with it all. I think he was waiting for the opportunity his whole life and seized it. But he had to wait for the visual infrastructure, the outward mobilization of public weariness. He couldn't have abandoned his Turkish coffee alone. If Egypt's tired streets can rise up over night, I think one man can do the same in his own life. But first, I have build. Without that foundation or my own personal infrastructure, the opportunity will mean nothing, and I'll be sitting around with my own shot glass of sludgy coffee, wishing it would all just somehow get better.
Everything that I have now, at this moment in time, is wonderful, and I won't forget that.
I sound like a goddamn fortune cookie, always hopeful, always optimistic. Well, I don't have a choice. "Il faut cultiver notre jardin," said Voltaire. "l'Existence précède l'essence," said Sartre. I still agree completely.
"This is your life, are you who you wanna be? When the world was younger and you had everything to lose." -Switchfoot
It's not lost. It's just "later".
__________________________________________________________________________________
Well, here I am. Home in February. No personal space to speak of, sleeping on the couch of a friend, working at Starbucks again, and no prospects of school for the next year. 8 "no letters" and an inconvenient (perhaps unnecessary?) evacuation from a revolution later, I find myself caught in a weird time warp. I've spent the past few months worrying and impatient. Will I get my belongings back from Egypt? I wore the same 3 outfits for a month in a half. I accepted that it wasn't going to happen and I was more than ok with that. But they came, one by one, to UM for me to pick up. I had no job when I came back. I panicked. 2 weeks of searching led to nothing. I broke down and asked for my job back. I got it, however inglorious it is. I was worried that I would lose all my Arabic. I was quickly employed by my professor to work on his book with him. I'm kept up all hours doing work for him and meeting with him at the drop of a hat. It's annoying, but hey, I get to keep up with Arabic and supplement Starbucks.
My point is that I've realized that the universe does work in mysterious ways. The stars do conspire for us in the end. It's just not the perfect picture I had in my head. This weird place that I find myself in right now, at this second in my life, will roll right off my shoulder. But later. Not now. Now I have an unprecedented opportunity to build up myself. I might not have gotten into graduate school this round, but I still want it more than anything. I was made to be there. It's not really my fault that I didn't get in. It was such a crap shoot now that I look back at it all. Reading my blogs from last June, July, and August, I can't believe that I somehow managed to study for the GRE, work on a personal statement, and research the few schools and contacts that I did, all while adjusting to the unprecedented events that kept pounding my brain into a pulpy mush.
But now I have time, and perhaps that's the biggest blessing in this whole situation. I've never had time to concentrate on myself and get my shit together before. It's always been...well...rather half assed. I've always been so busy, my mind so cluttered. Yeah, it stings to have what I thought of my future fragment and crash down in front of me. But ironically, there's nothing to clean up. I'm just going to work on that damn GRE because I know I can beat it. I'm going to figure out what I'm going to do for work for a year. I'm going to find out what I'm going to do about my living situation here in Ann Arbor for the next year. I have a lot on my plate right now, but somehow it doesn't feel so rushed, not so life-or-death. I can take my time. I'll have bad days where I just want to give up, where I'll call home and look for some kind of consolation about how I feel like such a loser, feeling insecure and underserving, beating myself up because this is not an ideal situation. It's natural. But I know it's not going to end here. I've been through a lot in the past 10 months. My mind and expectations have been totally unraveled and patched back together. Reality and Ideality are currently not congruent. I know that they never will be, but I'm determined to make them as harmonious as possible. Right now, I'm going to build myself up. I deserve it.
If I learned anything from the Arab Spring and the events that drove me out of Egypt, it's that it's never over. It's always evolving and ever-surprising. What made the old man in the coffee shop smoking his sheesha from dawn to dusk everyday playing backgammon throw it all away at the sight of thousands of young men and women in the street? What made him break his routine and secure life? Some might say he was fed up with it all. I think he was waiting for the opportunity his whole life and seized it. But he had to wait for the visual infrastructure, the outward mobilization of public weariness. He couldn't have abandoned his Turkish coffee alone. If Egypt's tired streets can rise up over night, I think one man can do the same in his own life. But first, I have build. Without that foundation or my own personal infrastructure, the opportunity will mean nothing, and I'll be sitting around with my own shot glass of sludgy coffee, wishing it would all just somehow get better.
Everything that I have now, at this moment in time, is wonderful, and I won't forget that.
I sound like a goddamn fortune cookie, always hopeful, always optimistic. Well, I don't have a choice. "Il faut cultiver notre jardin," said Voltaire. "l'Existence précède l'essence," said Sartre. I still agree completely.
"This is your life, are you who you wanna be? When the world was younger and you had everything to lose." -Switchfoot
It's not lost. It's just "later".
__________________________________________________________________________________
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