Moving Home

Right. So. Blogging.

I've tried to put this off for a long time, not because I think I'm bad at writing, just really good at procrastination. But I think having a blog while I've overseas will really help me. Starting it while I'm at home I think will help me get in the habit. So, home. May as well talk about the title of my blog post.

Leaving Kalamazoo to live back in Lansing for three months gives me a lot of mixed feelings. On one hand, I'll be spending way less money (in fact I'm almost losing money staying here even though I have a job). But my friends are here, and basically for the last 5 years (4 if you count that I moved back home after freshman year), this city is my home.  I joked to one of my roommates that if I could just have my Kalamazoo room in my Lansing house, things would be perfect. But things never are.

I'll have to come up with a new normal for this transitional life, much as I have been told I will have to come up with a new normal when I arrive in Uganda for training, and then again after I finish training and am assigned to a post. So I guess it's good to get practice.

I've been told that when living alone or living without any immediate responsibilities it's good to have structure. Have a routine so that the days melt together less often. Here it's been volunteering in the mornings and working in the afternoons. I hope to continue volunteering when I get home, and possible make some money on the side with tutoring gigs. But in terms of socializing I am so very terrifically bad at making plans. It's not that I mind being alone; anyone who's met me can tell you that. But when I do feel like hanging out with someone sometimes I get an anxiety about it, like, is this the right way to ask someone to hang out? Am I doing this right? Do they see me as strange? But no matter what it's like here I imagine it will be very different in Africa. So maybe it's for the best that I have no current fallback.

In preparation for moving of course comes packing, and in packing finding all those things you've acquired over the years and slightly forgotten about. Sometimes they're just old things you forgot to throw away, or that you meant to do something with but never got around to. But I'm finding things that I have kept because they were given to me, and in that process remembering all the great things I've experienced in The Zoo.

Have to run to work now (1 week left!) so I'll leave you to read this rambling craziness of a first post and reflect on it. Later.