Travelling Yourself Into a Corner: On Impulse Control and Unplanned Stability
It looks like we’re going to be here in Shanghai for a while.
Doug has just signed a three year contract with his school; I have another year left on my two-year contract.
We own a slow cooker, a full set of cutlery and several potted plants (which are somehow still alive), including one rather large near-tree. I have a banjo. Doug has his PlayStation3. On recent trips around South East Asia, we’ve been buying artwork for the flat. We have a few very full book shelves. We have Gerald The Bear and two rather large Ikea plush mammals, Miss Shimahippo and The Elephant.
Shanghai is starting to look like home for the next few years. We, the previously nomadic and unsettled, are starting to look quite settled and domesticated.
Back when I was living in Turkey, this is what I had sought after, year after year: in my 6 years there, I bounced around constantly, trying to find the right mixture of job and flat and environment so I could finally stop running and just breathe and find my center. The energy was always wrong though, something always needed to be changed so I changed it. Regularly.
Between 2002 and 2008, I lived in 5 different flats in two different cities, in Kayseri and in Istanbul, on both the European and Asian sides of Istanbul; I worked for three different schools, but never in the same position for more than a year and sometimes in non-consecutive years for the same school.
At one point around 2006, I spent a year entertaining serious thoughts of packing up and moving back home to Canada- I wanted to live in the forest, baking bread, raising chickens and goats. I wanted to be able to go barefoot without being informed by everyone around me that bare feet would surely lead to getting sick and dying. I thought it might be nice to get a sensible, stable job stocking shelves at Ikea.
I quit my very good university job in Istanbul, gave up my beloved 3 bedroom flat (with one of the rooms decadently dedicated solely to Lola’s litter box), sold all my furniture, gave away a lot of my stuff, booked a flight to Vancouver (with a special provision for carrying my cat) and then changed my mind two weeks before I was meant to leave. I moved in with a friend who had a room to spare and started looking for a new job.
Within months, I had new plans battling in my head: I’d go to Dubai, I then decided, and get married (my then-boyfriend was working there)! Or Oman. Or Syria. I’d move to Yemen and study Arabic! I always kept one hand on the exit door. I was more than willing to make rash changes, to change my mind at the last minute, to completely uproot and start all over again from scratch.
I had been doing that since 1994, when I first travelled on my own to Europe at 19. You say want to go to Ireland tomorrow and you’d love for me to join you? Sure, why not. I’ll call my job and let them know I won’t be in. You need a sound and lighting techie for your touring theatre show in South Africa next month and you’d like me to do it, even though I’ve never done that before and it’s in Afrikaans and I can’t speak the language, aside from dirty poetry, swear words and a few folk songs? Sure, why not? You’re going to Ghana in two weeks for a month and you’d like a travelling companion? Let me just quit my job and pack my bags and get my yellow fever jabs. No problem.
Impulse control when it comes to life paths is not my forte, nor are plans. Or rather, I have plans– millions of them! Billions and billions! Infinite numbers of plans, all clamouring for viable space in my future. Each one more outrageous than the previous. My life, it seems, has unfolded according to the whim of the plan with the strongest upper-cut, or perhaps, more accurately, the one that was able to sneak past while the others were caught in a furious dog-pile.
On Sunday, one of my good friends here asked me – nay, persuaded me with the vigour and perfection that only a seasoned lawyer can muster– to join her in Italy next month, where she’ll be completing her Master’s degree. Italy! In Florence! In April! With a flat already arranged! I could write and sleep and eat and finally get my head together! Marvellous!
Sure I have a job here (with a 2 year contract) that gives me 4 months of paid holidays a year and a 4-day work-week and a ton of autonomy. My students are, generally, nice kids. My boss is so hands-off I haven’t seen him since sometime around December when we held our last staff meeting in a bar, moderating essay scores over pints of beer and games of billiards. I earn enough to live quite comfortably, to save quite a bit for hypothetical rainy days, and to be able to spend several months a year travelling around Asia and going home to Canada for a visit. I’ve got a lovely flat with a beautiful 16th storey view over the tile roofs of the French concession. I’ve got Doug. I’ve actually got it quite good. Objectively speaking, it would be quite stupid of me to casually toss it all away and run off to Italy for three months- I’d lose my job, and with that my ability to legally live in China. I’d still have to pay my share of the rent on top of half the Italian rent, all with no income. And poor Doug would be stuck alone working in Shanghai with me out galavanting in Italy. Not good!
So tempting!
And yet, objectively, so very unwise.
So I said, with great reluctance, no. No, I can’t. If this were, say, 1997 or 2003 or even 2007, I’d do it in a flash– I would be in Florence before her, scouting out the new neighbourhood, my previous life left in a puff of smoke. A vanishing act.
It’s different now. My life has a lot of parameters that are not easily dismantled– not that I’d really want them to be dismantled, if I thought about it carefully. I kind of like the stability I’ve found. It may be the stability I’d been searching for. By the end of my current job contract, I’ll have been in this job three whole years! A record for me. If we stay in this flat, I could have a stable home for a few years, not having to uproot myself and start all over again every year (or half year or month or whatever) as I had done for the first decade and a half of my adulthood. I’d have to give away my crock pot and coffee maker. I’d have to leave Gerald the bear and the Elephant and Hippo behind. I’d have to stop taking pictures of Chinese mops. That would be unthinkable.
Does this mean I’m a grown up now?
Just today I was admiring my impressive (for someone who, a year ago, was technically still a backpacker) book collection, neatly arranged on brand new bookshelves in my brand new apartment).
You know, I think maybe you’re right. And we’re. Oh God. Grownups.
Admitting it is the first step to overcoming it.
That’s the danger of Shanghai, isn’t it? It would be madness to leave here, with the good job, the comfortable lifestyle, the relatively large selection of books with which to stock our shelves. But I find the thought of waking up five years from now still in Shanghai terrifying. What if, by settling in, I miss out on the rest of the world? Does that mean I haven’t yet grown up?
Shanghai IS dangerous that way. My main terror for the past 2 years has been that, oh god, this is where I’ll end up long term. I don’t even really like it here that much. I try very hard to make the most of it but really, I’d rather be somewhere smaller, quieter, less crowded, less concrete-y, with more greenery and better air. I’d like to be able to abandon my asthma inhaler. I’d like to know that my rice isn’t full of heavy metals (or if it is, let it be good heavy metals, like Deep Purple). Whenever we go away in during our holidays- say, to Indonesia or Burma or Cambodia- all I can think about is how I’d much rather live there… I still ache to leave, to move, to change– I just have to stop and ask myself if leaving is always the best choice (um, yes?).
But. But. Maybe with a time limit and some clear goals in mind I can accept that this will be my home for a few years and I will make the most of it with a defined end in sight so it’s not an endless slog for money (because, really, we are here for the money primarily, if we are honest with ourselves).
So maybe not 5 years. Let’s say 3 years. Could you handle 3 years here? I think in three years and one day, I’ll be sipping tea in Damascus.
great read, it sounds like you have lead an extremely interesting life, and i’m sure the ability to move, change and see new places does eventually become addictive, and second-nature.
i haven’t lived anywhere long term, but i definitely feel the pull to escape to different places, something i am contemplating now- job security in south africa or new experiences in japan?
it seems like you have to sacrifice things either way, but it sounds like you do have a solid, happy setup in shanghai though, even with all the heavy metals in your rice- scary!
Go to Japan! SA will always be there… There are sacrifices along the way but rarely regrets (at least for me, so far). If you have a temperament that pulls you away, allow it. You can always go back if you feel the need. There is job security out there, not just at home.
By the way, welcome! I’ve dipped into your blog regularly since meeting you indirectly through MatadorU though, shamefully, I haven’t commented (I’m not a very good commenter).
thanks maryanne, glad to know that you’ve read my blog too.
and no problem, i don’t think i’m a very good commenter either!
As always, I hear ya. I got rid of almost everything I own this winter because I was going to travel indefinitely and only take short-term jobs. And, here I am thinking, “Gee, it would be nice to have a coffee pot. Like a real one. And settle in. And find friends that I won’t have to leave in 4-6 months. And be, well, a grown-up. Again. Even though I thought I gave that up.” Errgh. Life decisions are hard.
I think it was the coffee pot I yearned for the most during my more restless years. That and a book shelf full of books. All them minimalist lifestyle designers don’t know what they’re missing– a room of one’s own full of one’s own lovely things can be just marvellous. As is finding the stability to make and keep friends who are actually in the same country. I have something like 400 Facebook friends and I’d say I know 360 of them personally– but either they left or I left or the country left or… something. The other 40 or so are my imaginary friends, like you. It would be nice to have all those friends actually here in Shanghai. Stability and staying in one place do have their upsides, beyond crock pots and sofas!
Becoming a grown up can be a long, involved process, yes? I am sure I am not there yet, and may never be there, despite all the things in my life that say (sometimes in accusatory and flashing letters), that I am. It’s kind of sad that embracing stability sometimes feels like letting go of spontaneity, freedom and adventure. I have made a resolution to have internal adventures. I think I should send you another parcel very soon *nods* I had some ideas just the other day
I’m kind of surprised by how upbeat this post came out– I mean, you know yourself how I’ve been for the past two years here, wrestling with this Place and all it entails internally. I still find myself regularly slipping into panic/depressed mode at the idea of actually settling down here. I’m not sure which part is more disturbing- settling down or settling down in Shanghai. Ha. It’s a process, I guess- the process of becoming that grown up you were meant to be a decade ago but were too busy running around to do it properly.
I like the idea of internal adventures.
A parcel would be marvellous. Have you done anything grand with the fabric yet?
I know EXACTLY how you feel….
Almost a grown-up. 😉
Dear God, we’re soul mates!!! This post touched on several chords. And it’s really just an aaaah-mazing relief to know I’m not in this boat alone!
Ah, decisions, decisions. And fat ones. But we only live once…right? 🙂
Indeed we do only live once, at least that we are aware of 😉 So many decisions… this season has been harder on me than usual for a number of reasons I won’t moan on about here. Hope yours is easier!