I think I've finally hit a combination of culture shock, lonely homesickness and exhaustion.
Walking home today I kept people watching per norm. I did my normal ridiculous amount of jaywalking while humming to myself (literally). And all of a sudden, I walked by a stream of people who just made me say "Toto, we're not in the States anymore." I've hit culture shock twice before in my life: once about the 2.5 month mark of Semester at Sea - somewhere on the ocean between Kenya and South Africa which culminated with Thanksgiving on the way out of port; the other happened about 2 weeks after I got back to the States from Semester at Sea. I guess 2.5 months is about the time it takes for me to realize that I'm living somewhere entirely different but oh-so-similar to my "old life." I find myself being more restrained, yet feeling like I'm an oddity at the zoo. I feel flamboyant here comparatively which is very odd. So there's the culture shock of it: it's just time for it and it's not good or bad, it's just a piece of travel that you've gotta get through when you're in a new place for long enough. Guess this means I'll get to look forward to American culture shock again too, eh?
Lonely homesickness: well, that one's pretty self evident. But again, par for the course and I can deal with it. I have met some good people in and out of work - so that's good.
And then there's the exhaustion - I've been going like mad for the past 2.5 months between traveling and work, it's insane. I have 3 more weekends here and in my head today I put together what to do over that time and came up with the fact that if I'm going to make it to Western Ireland, I have to go this weekend. And I think of that and sigh with frustration because I'm tired of going. I know I'll be back to Ireland someday - but when? Do I take my chances and skip it on this trip? Or do I push myself through the exhaustion and go. I have plenty of options for day trips this coming weekend if I don't head to Galway. So we shall see. Right now, I'm not making any plans; I'll give myself another few days and follow my gut. It's not like I haven't done anything while I've been here!
And there's always more culture shock for me to find even if I stay close to Dublin. I can go plenty of places to stare at people in confusion and feel like a flamboyant outsider. Heck, even in the office I feel like the alien. Then again, there's a lot of back story there not to be published in any forum, however, the entirely male dominated atmosphere makes it "interesting." I can't quite describe how it differs from the male dominated atmosphere of the Seattle office, but it definitely does. I guess it's got that "all boys' club" feel to it - and being one of only three women in the entire office (and the only one on my end of the office) makes that very obvious - especially when the guys get to cracking jokes. Now, I'm not saying that I'm uncomfortable or weirded out - frankly, I think they're absolutely hysterical and I end up laughing so hard I can't see my computer screen at my lil' corner of the boys' club world. But being the gushy girl who ooo's over Cute Overload or adores hugs more than anything in the world, well, let's just say that I don't have enough of the one-upping attitude to not feel like the freak in the circus.
So I can end this on a more upbeat note (I promise Tracy - I'm smiling more than frowning - don't be saddened), I shall leave you with a link to a picture on the aforementioned Cute Overload that had me melting with cuteness into a lil' gooey gushy Vette: Blobule!
10 comments:
ooh, time for a ramble at bedtime? if I can't wake up in the morning I'll blame this. In no particular order at all though, some equally random thoughts:
- Blobule couldn't not melt plenty of gooiness inside me
- writing lists as a blog comment must surely be one of the most impersonal ways of commenting there is, no?
- your 2.5 month culture shock is way curious — do make sure to report what happens to you 2.5 months after you return to the US!
- being the oddity? yea, it's crap being the odd one out sometimes, but maybe other times it's a kind of asset being a bit different. bet it doesn't feel like that during the crap moments though
- when I'm really cranky I sometimes make jokes (jokes, right?) about kicking kittens. that thought makes some people mad (actually, it doesn't sound right at all — that's why it's best kept as a joke), and not sure if it does much for the crankiness, although maybe it's a kind of expression of same
- do you enjoy the feeling of flamboyance? I find it hard to imagine an environment where I'd feel like that, but it must be... interesting
- never stop smiling, unless you've got a damn good reason!
- if you decide to approve this comment, feel free to trim as much as you need to (such as this point)
(also in no particular order, but slightly more sentence-esque than bulleted lists)
Hrmmm - I just click "publish" on your comments and read them later. That might be a bad thing when you do things like... oh... publish the same comment 2x let's say? Yeah - you needed sleep more than rambling last night.
I must say, your bulleted rambles are impersonal, although they did make me laugh. I would be like "ooookay" to the silly ones and then hit a demanding one ("never stop smiling...") and shake my head like "whoa - where'd that come from?"
2.5 month culture shock is annoying - because it's a combo of the other factors I mentioned: lonely homesickness and exhaustion. Those two things make my brain ramble ramble ramble more and that's when I start doing double takes. It'll go away in another week of two - it always does. And I don't expect to have US culture shock 2.5 months out. That'll be 2-3 weeks out and last 1-2 days if it's anything like the previous time. It's easier to acclimitize to what you were raised with and eventhough I wasn't raised in Seattle, I've spent 1.75 years there which trumps the .25 year here. I'd actually have to say that I've probably had culture shock whereever I've moved - just moving shock if you will - and this isn't the first massive move I've made - the others were just "in the States." I remember hitting a similar wall moving from NH to MD and then again moving from MD to WA. They fade with time - and they always elicit the reaction in me that "you're not where you're used to - you're not quite comfortable yet."
Dammitall - now I'm rambling before work. If I get paged before work well, then I won't make it into the office at a reasonable hour today and hrmphadiddles.
What's with the emphasis on the "never stop smiling, unless you've got a damn good reason!" comment? It's got me staring quizically at my screen like a puppy wishing she could open the door to go play in the back yard with the squirrels.
I think actually kicking kittens is up there with my other "ewww - bad person - yucks" that I mentioned yesterday. Joking, well, joking is good so long as everyone can tell it's joking. So I think you're safe from the wrath of Yvette. Although kicking kittens? Poor kitties!!!!!!!! At least it's not puppies though.
In some parts of my life I got used to being the oddity - it's only since I moved to Seattle that things have changed... (if you wanna know more about that, I'm willing to tell so ask, just not on my blog). However, it is the fact that I feel relatively flamboyant that's making me squirm to think about it. I've never ever pictured myself in that role, yet I keep seeing myself laughing loud, smiling big, dancing in my chair at work and dancing in the streets at night, giving people random hugs for no apparent reason, and well, just having those things feel over-the-top eventhough they're things I just do. I can't get how I can feel like the people around me are so restrained AND free at the same time, but I do. That's also adding to the culture shock - feeling like I haven't changed, but people's reactions to me have changed (lots of odd stares in and out of work).
Ok - I really should get myself ready to go to work now. Yeah - right. Tuesday. But before I go, the other pup who tied for cutest pup ever that made me want to give him a bath and a good neck scritch and belly rub....... awwwwwwwwwwww (Yes, I really do read every entry in Cute Overload - I blame my friend Susan for this addiction).
Oh, and the other thing I had to say... do you always ramble this much in other people's blogs? Get your own!! :P
Just kidding - I like the rambling - it's nice to see people actually have a reaction to what I'm saying!
Wow, you must've woken up early — that was a decent-sized reply!
"never stop smiling" was a combination of a reaction to your 'I'm smiling more than frowning' line in the original post and the belief that it'd actually be a big shame if you didn't keep smiling.
You were probably right that I needed sleep more than rambling last night, I think, although even after a quick ramble I still couldn't sleep.
And, um, I do comment a reasonable bit on other peoples' blogs — especially those of people I know. OK, more commenting than rambling, but rambling in general is a habit. Sometimes commenting falls back to email for extra detail, although, as a reader, when I'm reading comments it's always frustrating when an interesting commentary conversation disappears like that, even though sometimes it has to.
And, eh, I did already get my own. Two, in fact, although they're not very well updated. They tend to get burst-updates very irregularly.
I didn't wake up that early - I think that took me about 5 mins to write. It's the fact that I was just spewing random thoughts and not rereading/editing or any of the like. Programmers type fast, y'know?
I'll keep smiling in the long run - no motivation not to. Everyone's entitled to days without smiles - or hours or minutes or seconds - but overall, if my life is more than half smiles, I'm doing good! And smiling just makes a person more personable.
What's the difference between commenting and rambling on someone else's blog? And why do you need 2 blogs out there? Wouldn't one be sufficient? (granted, I know people who have multiples for "different audiences" - just curious if you're a partitioner of your audience as well as your thoughts)
Ah, not sure that I could type anything coherent that early in the morning. Even if I write nonsense late at night, at least it might feel coherent as I write it…
Commenting can be one liners, I guess — and rambling is accidental mini essays. I started with one 'public' blog, suitable for all audiences, then created an 'anonymous' one a wee while ago 'cos I wanted to rant about a few things without being identified. The audiences turned out being similarish sets of people but only a very small set of people know about my 'anonymous' blog.
I can write nonsense any time of day. Although I won't if I'm supposed to be 100% serious cause I don't trust myself as much early in the morning. And writing after drinking - ha - that's always an experiment the next morning. Reminds me of drunken e-mailing in college - it became a game!
Makes sense to have 2 blogs. I've gone back to my old blog a time or two and thrown a royal rant on there. Only a minimal subset of the people who could potentially read it via knowing the address are people who know who the girl behind the name is. That one's sporadic - I've gone years without updating and then have updating flashes when something's getting to me.
How many conversation mediums can we use at once?
Yea, a few times some self-awareness has come over me and I've written a post while slightly squiffy and then saved it for the next day so I can post it in some sanity.
My natural curiousity (apologies: I may have an excess of it) makes me wonder where your other blog might be. Another blogging friend of mine once set a pile of challenges to find the links between a person's blog and their real persona. This was after somebody heard she had a blog and only found it through some fairly obscure research.
>How many conversation mediums can we use at once?
Hmm, I count about 7..10 theoretically possible (depending how you count) … and I think so far we've done about 4..7 of them. I ran out of fingers counting though, and wasn't sure whether to count some them as two or one, hence the ranges.
As for how many parallel conversations can be kept on the boil in the brain at once, well, that's a different kind of arithmetic. I used to (and still do sometimes) keep a topic static with a geeky friend of mine; if you didn't have time to talk about something interesting right now, we'd just say 'push' and then pop it back off the stack next time coffee was drunk (actually, now the word 'coffee' has almost the same meaning as 'pop')
Oops, ramble detector just tripped. Back to your normal programming…
You'll just have to see if you can investigate well enough to find the private blog (I think it's probably possible, but I don't know of anyone who's gone to the trouble). It takes a whole lot for me to give out that address since it's one of those "way too revealing" places on the web - and I value my anonimity there. (aka - know me for long enough that I inherently know that you won't judge me no matter what I write, or get me so drunk I dont' remember giving you the address, although the later wouldn't bode well if you cared to be my friend). And don't worry about being curious about it - it naturally incites curiousity in people to know that someone's hiding something from common knowledge when they know that person. If I don't want to answer, I'll explain why, and leave it at that.
What's your public blog btw? I'd like to return the rambling on someone else's blog... Just more reading / procrastinating / learning.
Right now we're only at 1 conversation (via this) although I know 3 other mediums possible at the current moment.
I really need to not look at my blog at work. But I don't have that rule for my email so... AH!
I have to admit, I'm equally curious as to your other blog... someday perhaps! And I doubt it would be boring.
And I don't look at blogs at work for the most part (unless it's the aforementioned CuteOverload cause I need a squeee or because Susan IMs me a link). However, I will reply to comments on my blog(s) when I get them.
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