Photo via The U.S. National Archives
Category Archives: Entries
The delusions and reality of a life abroad
Hi, I’m Stacey, and I’m a single twenty-something who has been living abroad for the past six years. I can hear you now. Wow, you say, six years! You’ve been travelling for six years!? That’s so amazing, you say. I’m so jealous. I see you there, reading this in a sneaky hidden tab in your browser window while you should be working, beginning to daydream about this idyllic life. Life abroad. The overseas adventure. You know the one – waking up each morning in a hotel overlooking the Seine, in a king-size bed with crisp white sheets, wandering downstairs for an espresso at 10am, served by a handsome man who greets you by name and winks as he hands you your change.
I love the romantic idea you have of life abroad. It’s what motivates you to quit that boring job, to buy that plane ticket, to pack your bags, and to GO. When you’re daydreaming from behind your computer screen, you don’t want the truth. The truth is this. Some days, i am your mirror image, bleakly staring into the computer screen wishing my workday was over. The truth is that this morning I hit the snooze button eight times before prying myself out of the single bed with the broken springs that barely fits in my exorbitantly expensive room in a dingy flat that I share with an eccentric Venezuelan ESOL student called Hector. The truth is that I am currently staring back at you into that computer screen, but instead of daydreaming about overseas adventures, I’m daydreaming about tomorrow’s lunch, which, as tomorrow is payday, is guaranteed to be an improvement on today’s stale bread and nutella ‘sandwich’.
This is life abroad, and it is everything you hope it will be and more.
You see, there is a difference between living abroad and going on holiday. When you’re on holiday, you’re escaping reality. Money is high, hotels are nice, you have saved up enough cash to be served each meal, and your cell phone is most certainly off.
Now don’t get me wrong here. I’m making it sound like living abroad is a nightmare, but it’s not. It is an amazing, life-changing experience.
It’s not a holiday, it’s life.
Life, with all of its ups and downs, hiccups and hilarity, and when it’s lived in a culture completely different from your own there are added challenges. And unexpected joys. This life requires sacrifices, but is punctuated with moments and experiences and beauty and relationships that take your breath away, instances that make you stop and close your eyes and whisper ‘thank you,’ knowing that you’ve just lived a moment that is now painted indelibly on the canvas of your memory. You’ll admire the masterpiece for the rest of your days, marvelling at how dull and blank it might have been, had you not chased that daydream of life abroad. It may not always be glamorous, but I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt: it’s worth it.
Photo: Hamed Saber
Beacon Hill: Reinventing the system
A couple years ago a group of christian families got together and felt they needed to walk out the things they believed, instead of just talking about it. So they spent time every month getting together and praying. Praying led to action. Soon one of those actions was to bring a hundred dollars or more per family and pool it up. From there they looked for those who needed help. Time and time again they helped out people who needed rent, car payments, groceries, etc. All the while they remained completely anonymous.
As the months rolled on an idea was birthed. That idea was Beacon Hill. Within months Beacon Hill was a reality. (One of the amazing parts of this story is the fact that they never looked for property. They had an investor approach them, out of the blue.) Soon they were accepting applicants to come and shortly after, those accepted were moving in. Beacon Hill had started. Homeless women and children were coming in off the streets and being rescued from sleeping in their cars.
These women and children are being shown love and taught life skills they need. They are being pointed to the right community resources and helped back on their feet. In their first year, Beacon Hill had a greater than 75% success rate.
I believe a lot of people think it’s okay to live off the system or indefinitely accept assistance the government can provide, as though entitled to the help. While the programs the government provides are beneficial they are only meant to be temporary (in my opinion). Beacon Hill realized they were only enabling their tenants to be dependent on those systems.
So, for Beacon Hill 2012 brings changes to how they provide assistance. As the year progresses they will take their tenants from a place of receiving assistance from these programs, which breed dependency and only make it harder and harder to survive, to one of complete independence. Freedom in the true sense of the word.
As I talked with one of the founders I was amazed to find out Beacon Hill is an independently funded program. It receives NO assistance or funding from the government. They maintain the program on money given to them by businesses or individual people who want to help. Because of this they are not limited to what they can teach or how they can teach it.
I know I’ve only touched the surface of what Beacon Hill is and what it offers, but the main point is this: a group of families got together and decided that they were no longer going to just talk about what they believed in. They put action to that belief even when they felt they were in over their heads and doing something way out of their league. They stepped out and are participating in an adventure that is creatively and indefinitely changing the city of Anchorage, Alaska; and more importantly the lives of the women and children they help.
Photo: Mr. Kris
If I ever win the lottery
If I ever win the lottery, the very first thing I’m doing is buying an international iPhone and then calling my wife’s job from it. I will ask her to nicely pack her things and tell the powers that be how she will not be returning tomorrow or the next day or the next day or ever. I would then rent 6 limos and pay 6 friends to ride in them to the lottery office. This will deter news cameras while I roll in the back lot with my Toyota Echo. I will then collect my winnings, buy 3 first-class, one-way tickets to Naples, Italy and call my dad. My dad is very understanding and would ask the minimal amount of questions.
On the way to the airport, I will call a little bed ‘n breakfast in Conca De Marini named Amalfi Residence and book their ‘sunflower suite’ for 1 month. I will tell the owner, Luigi, to secure us a limousine ride from Naples.
Of course my in-laws and immediate family will be a little worried and I will tell them to not worry because when I return I will pay off all their mortgages. And I will explain it all to them later.
When my wife and son and I get to Italy we will do no work. No work at all. We will dream up fantastic day trips and taste all the different meats from local shops. We will only buy what we need for the day and we will only buy from the people in our neighborhood. We will take time to savor. We will take time to drink and time to laugh. We will look at our son and each other as rare gifts. Gifts not everyone can enjoy. We will go home at 1 for siesta and take a nap after a meal. We will get a tan and lose the bags under our eyes. We will learn the language and the culture and we will appreciate it with infinite respect. We will make friends with our neighbors and respect their property as ours. We will never litter or lose regard for even the sidewalks as they are a part of our lives and our lives are to be lived with robust adventure and desire for flavorful fellowship. We will never get take-out or use a drive thru. We will never use a microwave. We will sit. We will enjoy. We won’t be hell-bent on safety. We will watch others smoke next to us in a restaurant. We will not complain or tell them to stop because we would not want them to tell us to stop doing something we enjoyed.
We will do that for a month. Then we’ll return home and hook up all the details of our new-found fortune. We will pay off our parents’ debts and our siblings’ debts. We will teach ways to properly handle money. We will put enough away so we never have to worry again and put the rest toward giving.
I lived there
I met my wife, I learned a language… sort of, the birth of my daughter, the death of my father in law, the death of my mother… long distance, run ins with the law, run ins with the yakuza, run ins with Jehovah’s Witnesses, all night dance parties, learned how to dance… really well, wrote songs, took lots of pictures, developed community, made lifelong friends, changed my thinking, had my civil rights violated, felt violated, questioned who I was, changed who I am, survived an earthquake, worked on an archeological dig, some other unmentionables, had surgery, ate, drank and was merry, raised my daughter, worried, laughed, cried, walked the city. I worked as an actor. Giant chess boards and chain mail and whisky, Bulgari meets La Dolce Vita airport scene, conversations with Hitler, commercials with Jackie Chan, red carpet with Jon Bon Jovi. I was a doctor, zombie, woman, FBI agent, a coal miner, a photographer. I came back unrecognizable… to myself.
I wasn’t a tourist or even a visitor. I was a resident. I lived there. It becomes a subjective experience. It’s mine. I invested and ingested Tokyo. I began to realize I brought baggage I didn’t intend to and began to pick up some new baggage along the way. Identity issues. There is constant learning and becoming. It’s not like taking a class where learning is compartmentalized. I was in learning mode all the time, learning about self. Live there and it becomes your life. When you have to deal with your own issues a place becomes home. That may conjure up all sorts of gushy happy feelings of home cookin’ but take another look. There is some curdling milk in the fridge and dishes in the sink.
Less like wanderlust more like marriage. Visiting for one to two years? Fine, the honeymoon, its magic. After the honeymoon it gets critical, then balance comes, hopefully, and you are at peace with it. If nothing else it is real not romantic. It’s much like the difference between the patriotic feelings when singing the national anthem and going to war. Most people travel to get away, from it all, including themselves. Although place becomes a part of you by living there, you do become someone else through the experience, I know that it is not possible to get away from your self.
I cannot speak of living abroad in general terms or clever anecdotes or leisure like a travel book. It would seem academic, general, quaint but wrong for me to do so. I wasn’t a tourist or even a visitor. I lived there. I could give you the two cent tour but I lived there. I didn’t live in Tokyo. I lived in Suginami ward of Tokyo. Not only that, I lived in between Asagaya, a writer’s haven, and Koenji, the birthplace of punk in Tokyo and home to a hundred used clothing stores. It’s personal. Stuff happened there, to me. I lived there.
Do you know what you’re doing?
via State Library and Archives of Florida (flickr.com/photos/floridamemory/3983331817)
I believe in the power of a good mission statement to help a person or group to focus on what’s really important to them. But we all know most mission statements are completely worthless. Nancy Lublin of Fast Company wrote about this a couple years ago in an article called, ‘How to Write a Mission Statement That Isn’t Dumb.’
Sometimes defining your mission can wreck your whole view of how you currently live your life and force you to rebuild your decision-making process from scratch. Like a good massage, it hurts while it’s happening but you’ll feel great when it’s over. I highly recommend checking out the article and taking Ms. Lublin’s advice.
But we have to tackle vision statements, too. Most of those are also dumb. And the right vision statement can be just as explosive as the right mission statement, maybe even more so. Writing a vision statement involves imagining the future you want and putting it into words. And Ari Weinzweig will you tell you exactly how to do that in his article, ’8 Steps to Creating a Great Vision.’
Here’s what I came away with for OCSPLORA’s mission after reading those articles.
There are three main things I am attempting with OCSPLORA: one, to tell fantastic stories (99 new stories each year, at least one gaining international recognition each month); two, to connect creative revolutionaries with people and ideas that resonate (99 positive responses each week from our audience); and three, to point out opportunities for adventure, creativity and generosity (99 messages each quarter from people who took action based on opportunities we reported).
What do you think? Let me know your thoughts on those two articles, mission and vision statements in general, your mission and vision for life or OCSPLORA’s mission (and help us meet the goal for part two).