Hump Day Blues

March 28, 2007

We are in the middle of exams now, which means I have to proctor. I’d rather be teaching…
Standing for 2 or 4 hours at a time without being able to do anythning else is, well, tiring. And it hurts my knees.
Mark posted something on the transient nature of expat life. At the age of 38, I have not been an expat for 12 years. And of those, the most consecutive run in my birth country (Canada) was 6-from birth to age 6. So I certainly feel qualified to comment on this topic. I also detected another underlying theme to Mark’s post-loneliness. I am DEFINITELY qualified to comment on that. It would be convenient to say that having a family–wife and 2 beautiful children–is what has abated the feeling of loneliness which preoccupied me much of of my life, but this would be off target. Also wrong would be to say that being a “stranger in a strange land” was the main culprit. If anything, it is being a “stranger in a strange mind/body” that is the issue, and often continues to be, although more infrequently. I have discovered that my loneliness is fundamentally not about a lack of “suitable humans” in my daily life. I would go so far as to say that people often exacerbate the problem by masking it.
The situation which Mark described–being an expat who is experiencing less transience in relation to his fellow expats–is one which has often made me acutely aware of my own transience. We’ll call that a badly written paradox, ok? In any case, now I have less friends, less social life and I am less lonely. How did I get this way? For just 29.99 I will email you a link to download the answer. Paypal accepted.
This week I got a few more comments on my Watoto Children’s Choir post from almost a year ago. You’d think I was Hannibal Lecter by the their accounts. I am not going to delete them or block them, as I do believe in free speech. Plus, it’s a good exercise for me in rolling with the punches. I am not so good at that. Practice, practice, practice…keep em’ coming!

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