I can’t sleep… a rant…

I just finished reading the part in “V for Vendetta” where V breaks Evey in a staged prison scenario. The object of this torture was to drive Evey to the point of madness so she would discover the freedom that she naturally possessed but was too blind because of the world around her.

If I were to consider the world we live in now as a prison I would consider the media, with the power to spew propaganda, the bars; money, with the ironic power to eradicate human worth, the lock; and the ideal American dream, the blanket of despair. With such a beautiful world around us, with its brilliant colors and textures, muted by the fears of terrorism, sinking economy, and strive for mutual respect, how can we possess the freedom to be happy? There is a divide between who we are and who we think we are supposed to be; a clear wall separating us from the freedom and happiness that every living thing should have the power to possess. How did we give this power away and so easily?

The media, with its power to inform and its infamous power to persuade, has the power to enter the mind, now by default, without reason or question. For over two centuries, the media has been tapping into your world, gaining your trust and absolving your better judgments. “Whatever is on the ticker or makes the front page is real and there isn’t enough time for me to waste finding out any different.” Apathy. It is going to kill our nation… maybe even the human race.

The media scares the hell out of me. The fact that one person, one voice, one idea can reaches billions of people at the same time makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand. That… is ultimate… power. Companies spend millions, if not BILLIONS of dollars for thirty seconds of airtime during the American Super Bowl. What. The. Fuck? If money is power, that’s how much power you can pack into thirty seconds. Can you imagine what the worth of one super bowl commercial would do for the world? Maybe for the millions of middle class who can’t use their college degrees to find a decent job and have to resort to looking for work as a Wal-Mart greeter? A job they need to pay for their college degrees? Its not just greed, it is a lust for power, and it sickens me.

Money. Its smell. Its color. Its existence. It exists to supply value. Value. A human life… does it have value? Is it worth more than your Yatch (capital letter “Y” Yatch)? Is it worth more than your dignity or identity? Would you sell your dignity? What is your price? Everyone has one… The fact that a human being, a living organism with human emotions and understanding could be sold or sold out for a selfish reward makes me sick. Money, in my opinion, is the route of all evil. You strive for it, you push others out of the way for it, you’d sell your soul for the right price…

The American idea dream… college degree, marriage (no, a proper marriage between a man and a woman), 401K, two cars, two kids, and a drive way. There are people out there trying to capture this “American Dream.” These thoughts of the “American Dream” have actually depressed me. This is not what I want. Why must I be pooled into a group of people who want to follow the norms set by the national standard and the media? I worked hard for a Bachelors degree in Media Studies and entered the job market with high scores and got that awesome job. I was making a great wage for a kid straight out of college. I was living my “dream,” right? My office had a window. Every year, that window grew smaller and smaller as my life grew more single and independent. As soon as I thought, “I can’t do this for the rest of my life,” I was gone. Is that the American Dream? Is that what I spent all that money for? My achievements didn’t come with culture or life lessons, just a steady paycheck. Is that what I should be doing? My impression was “yes.” I had health insurance and opened an IRA. I paid taxes and bought a coffee from the local bakery every morning. Is that the American Dream? I did the same thing every morning and drank at the same pub every night. Is that what I was designed for? I didn’t see anything different. I didn’t meet anyone new. I was a video editor and I was a damn good one but was that my life? My part in the system? All I needed to do was ask myself these questions to know that, “Fuck no. This is not who I am. This is not what I want. This is not my Dream,” and off I went to South Korea. Is it so wrong to not want to follow the norm? The American Standard? I may be one of the few but if you needed an answer today I would tell you, “Fuck if I know. But I will not follow some pre-determined path that has been designed for me, like they knew who I was when they made it.” I would rather take my chances in the mystery of the dark rain than the known outcome of the dreary sunshine.

The world we live in… a prison? Maybe by design but also built by your own hand. Don’t forget that you are responsible for your own actions. If you allow the media to pollute your head with fear, or money to rule your decisions or society to govern what is the right path, then you need to sleep in the bed that you’ve made. You have built these walls between who you are and whom you think you should be. You have allowed the veil to fall over your eyes. You are the one that will ask yourself these questions when you find yourself unhappy. You need to inform yourself, don’t allow the media to scare you or money to rule you. You need to find what you want and it’s a fucking struggle, let me tell you. It isn’t easy. It’s a fucking journey; an adventure of ups and downs but it is your journey and your adventure. No one designed it for you and no one is telling you which way to go. You have your freedom to make mistakes. That freedom to be who you are and not what you think you should be.

To me, that is heaven on earth.

Some Thoughts From June 2011

Occasionally, I go through my old journal entries and marvel at how quickly things change. Here is an entry from June 2011.

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A few weeks ago, someone asked me how old I was. With the utmost sincerity, I could not remember. “Um…” After a moment of rendering I guessed, “Twenty…. Six?” I instantly felt wrong. Then I did the math and sure enough, I was twenty-six years old.

I measure age by my oldest brother, Graham. He was born in 1975 and was ten when I was born: as he turned twenty in college, I was learning my times-table; as he was married with talks of children at thirty, I was sneaking my first beer in my parents backyard. I was always many steps behind Graham, physically and mentally. In my mind, being twenty-six means Graham was getting old! When my parents were twenty-five, they just became parents not to mention being married for several years. I think about me having a ring, a steady relationship with mortgage worries and dinner plans. I quiver. “I’m too young.” I think about me right now and what kind of mother I would be. I shudder. “I’m too young.” If I am too young at twenty-six, I ponder when will I be old enough?

At thirty-six, Graham has an upscale house with surround sound, hardwood floors, and granite counter tops (all things I see as “upper class”) in an extremely respected neighborhood that compliments his Land Rover, with a career he loves and allows him the time to pick up his two-year-old son Max from daycare and wind down his day the only way he wants: cooking a healthy dinner with his beloved wife and feeding his growing baby.  Looking at Graham’s life from a distance, it looks like the answer. All of life’s lessons, hard work, desperation, and unanswered prayers are in preparation for this kind of happiness. To me, Graham’s example is the path to happiness. To me, Graham must weigh a feather.

At twenty-six, I live in a 12×15 apartment in Seoul, South Korea with a linoleum floor and moldy walls in a neighborhood where I cannot afford a coffee, a job teaching English to rich five-year-olds whilst my University degree hangs on a metal hanger in my closet, nowhere to be at 5pm and nothing but my uncontrollable desire for adventure to take me places. I feel as if our paths went in as different directions as our locations on the planet; ten years apart, physically and mentally.

I tried to follow suit having attended college, several long-term relationships and a successful career in video editing. Oh, did I love love. I longed to be next to my companion for no other reason than proximity. Then how I loved getting paid for being good at something. At twenty-four, everyday had purpose, meaning… happiness. However, eventually the love melted into boredom. Everyday was the same happiness. My beautifully colored world had begun to fade under the consistently sunny days. I used to say, “Would you like Christmas if it was everyday?” A blessing and a curse all at once.

Adventure!

I threw a figurative dart at a spinning globe and said, “There! Let’s go there, babe!” At first, my job was expendable. “We could work anywhere,” I thought, “As long as we didn’t desire an expensive lifestyle, we could do anything!” We. My first over-zealous mistake: I wasn’t planning for just myself.  Then came the path of realization to separation. The desire for adventure was too much for my companion and thus the divide began. When I moved to Washington DC, I left my other half in North Carolina. For me, at that time, there was no time to hesitate! The time was now; let’s get on this train! When we met, I didn’t exactly say, “Yeah, so I want to take several months off from life and ride a train through Europe!” Even now, having been to several countries, participated in several dangerous sports, and living and teaching in Seoul, SK, I can’t seem to find a mate that is ready and willing to take the next boat to China. When I say mate, I mean companion; I can find plenty of men who will ride a weekend into an unknown adventure, but none that make my heart flutter like Mr. North Carolina. It seemed that I required too much from a companion: must love me for me and must love unknown adventures.  So I threw a figurative dart at a map and left Mr. North Carolina and America to find what it was driving my feet forward. If I can’t have everything I want, I will do what I came here for: adventure the shit out of my single-self.

I have never owned the place where I slept. I have paid monthly rent, weekly festival fees, daily rates, and couch surfed only in exchange for cultural stories. I have slept on dirt and desert to a sleep-number mattress. Never once do I remember thinking, “What I would do for a mattress.” As long as I am in the safety of a room or tent, I can sleep soundly in any environment. That being said, I have never desired a fancy home with all the frills of Home & Garden or an arrangement of pots and pans designed specifically for any meat you bring home from the market. To put it plainly, I am low-maintenance, a requirement of an adventure seeker, a trait that has been solidified with my move to South Korea. I quit my job, sold 80% of my earthly possessions, and moved to a new world with only two suitcases. Looking for anything familiar (food, luxury, communication) was an adventure. Between the heated floors to the bathroom/shower area, my apartment alone was exciting!

Since my breakaway from the normal trek to happiness, I have

• spent a week in the desert at Burning Man then hitchhiked to the airport
• drove to Punxetony PA in a blizzard with my two best friends to see the groundhog predict the coming weather
• spent a drunken weekend in a freezing corn field watching air cannons and mid-evil trebuchets chunk pumpkins specifically designed for chunking
• went paragliding over the border of Delaware and Maryland
• spontaneously hopped on a bus to Boston where I learned about GeoCaching and found a geocoin that’s mission was to go to Colonial Williamsburg VA… where I then drove to Williamsburg VA and walked around the colonial town in amazement of its existence

If my brother has what I define as “happiness,” then what do I have?

It Has Been a Year ~ Where Am I Going?

Where am I going? Since starting this blog, I quit my video editing job in Washington DC, sold everything I owned that didn’t fit into two suitcases (or exceed 50lbs each), moved to South Korea and became a kindergarten teacher. Quite a flip, eh? It gets better.

In the year I have lived in South Korea I have picked up a hobby in poi (spinning glow sticks/fire), become an MC for a Burlesque group, become a fanatic for road cycling, started running with Hashers, organized S. Korea’s first Burning Man celebration, discovered the green smoothie and the Lemonade Detox and rode my first public bus.

For my first vacation in July, I traveled alone to Koh Tao, Thailand where I learned how to relax and go with the flow. The energy within me came alive as I let go and followed my intuition. I met two girls from England and two girls from Switzerland who changed my life. I managed to stumble into a tryst that you would read in a romance novel, kissing in low tide along the long boats as the sun was rising behind us. I got the tattoo I have waited years for the right time: “Buy the Ticket”. It was simply perfect. “Buy the ticket, take the ride” was the motto I wanted on my body in every language of every country I visited. So I have it in English and Thai (Korean soon . I wanted to remember to let go of the anxieties of money or traveling alone and just GO; no excuses, only adventures. I didn’t want to forget the ease I had discovered in Thailand.

Then there was the boy. Out of all the numbers I didn’t call, there was one that changed it all. The timing was strangely the best part. Here I am, planning my trip to Australia and New Zealand come March 2012, bought the books and sending out Couch Requests; and here comes this military boy asking for my number at a techno festival. I was in no way interested but the boy was persistent. A month after we met, we started dating. Three days later, I had to decide if I was going to resign a contract for another year of teaching at my school in Korea. I told the school “no, I have plans.” A few weeks later and two well thought out pros/cons lists, I changed my mind and decided to stay. Out of all the benefits that Korea had to offer, the boy was the needle that broke the camel’s back.

For my second vacation in December, the boy decided he would come with me to Vietnam. It was still going to be the trip I had planned before I met him but this time I wasn’t going to do it alone. However, I forgot that one needs a visa to get into Vietnam. Well shit… here we are at the airport with our bags and useless-tickets to Vietnam and no where to go…. the boy works his magic and asks me, “Well, where do you want to go? There is a flight going to Saipan, an island in the Northern Marianas…?” “Yes, I don’t care, let’s go.” So we went. We blindly bought tickets to a place we both had never heard of. It was the most spontaneous thing I could have ever done and I was doing it with someone I loved. I couldn’t have been happier.

But what goes up, must come down. In February, a few days after I signed the contract to stay in Korea another year, the boy and I decided that we were not a good match and parted ways. I got to thinking about how everything happens for a reason. The good things. The bad things…. everything has a purpose and nothing happen in vain. Now I am here, single, in Korea for another year, teaching, riding my bike, spinning my poi, running my hashes, and living in a new apartment with one of my good buddies from the UK, Tom.

Right now… I am where I am supposed to be. I am being the person I was meant to be. I am learning the lessons I was meant to learn. I am grateful for this last year and am excited for the new adventures to come.

So where am I going? I have no fucking clue… but my arms and feet are up and I am letting the river take me.

 

Video from Thailand trip: