Home, Finally.

You haven’t heard from me, due to some Self-Induced Writer’s Block (do not try this at home). I spent months overcoming it, and here’s what has passed since.

Panic and nausea, fear and self-loathing, confusion and despair. Today, I finally take up the pen (keyboard?) again, and I am paying dearly with my feelings for a mistake I made. My trip was completed back in May, and for over half a year, I’ve left faithful readers hanging with the story unfinished. Upon returning to the U.S., there seemed to be too much to do! Besides, I convinced myself, writing a dazzling and accurate conclusion meant time was needed to organize my notes. So I deliberately induced writer’s block, and put off writing for reasons that seemed permissible at the time:

My wedding was only a few weeks away. I hadn’t seen the wedding site, written my vows, or held up my end0 of the planning. So it loomed large on the horizon, along with everything else that surrounded the date: two bachelor parties, a surprise honeymoon to Alaska, and dinner receptions in both our home cities.

Then it all happened, and reconnecting with family and friends throughout the festivities was glorious. Take it from me: if you want a homecoming full of fanfare after a long absence, just have a wedding. On the day we were to be wed in remote Big Sur, California (the state’s most impressive outdoor setting, especially in June), we got a healthy dose of my favorite substance. It came in the form of record-shattering rain, the most in 127 years, apparently. For just one day, our day, dark clouds blotted out the magnificent view of the cliffs, ocean, and forests, and the storm gave us high winds and cold temperatures. But what could go wrong, with family and friends like these? Everyone rolled with it! So I appreciated Mother Nature’s decision to force everyone under a warm and glowing tent, making the setting more intimate. The mood was cheerful, a bit wild, and unforgettably magical.

After a much-too-brief honeymoon, married life began abruptly with Ruth working 80 hours a week in the hospital, and we lived in a cheap motel. By day, my job was to find and establish a home in unfamiliar Orange County – Southern California’s smallest county, where the population is higher than that of twenty different states. By night, I cooked on a bathroom counter using knives and appliances that were wedding presents. Having enjoyed the freedom of moving about the country and the world (not owning or renting a home in four years) suddenly becoming tangled up in OC Suburbia was frustrating, to say the least. Fresh in my mind were recent adventures and constant thoughts of communities befriended while volunteering. Suddenly being alone amid nothing but highways and shopping malls was nearly devastating. But then I found a hidden yet remarkably accessible neighborhood called “Old Town Orange.” And in its four charming square miles, I found the one and only place up for rent: a one-hundred year old house, with two bedrooms, nice neighbors, and a prolific lemon tree in the yard.

 “I and My” rapidly became “We and Ours” - just another pivotal life change I was  we were to make in the Summer of 2011. We were like weeds in how quickly we put our roots down. Stored with family and friends were our belongings and rediscovering them meant they had to be moved, stored again, and moved again*. Having an old, unfurnished house (built in the 1920’s) meant serious work and time. A full July of labor kept my body, and audio books kept my mind. When Ruth worked the night shift, I worked a night shift. From time to time, I looked for a fresh career opportunity worth starting, but none surfaced, and I didn’t know how to best follow up the Hydrophilic Mission. I did apply to one small company that seemed different from all the rest, but quickly the radar fell silent. Just as the house came together, time was up, money was scarce, and I found myself with nothing planned. August, which had looked so far away one year prior, had arrived, and my leave of absence was over – without becoming a resignation like I had planned. I swallowed my pride and returned to the old company; to the dreaded job I tried so hard to shed.

But it was not to be! I did everything I knew to keep a good attitude and land a good project role with a good client. The efforts yielded results, and I actually found myself in the best arrangement yet with the firm, working under a manager I respected. This time, the cubicles were clean and new and in the shape of hexagons! Ugh… it was all wrong from the start. Despite the good team, good hours, good pay, and good commute, it was all wrong and I knew it. Staying positive was all I could do to stay sane.

I’m not so sure I could have stayed sane for long in a place where the culture has teammates shielding “work” from one another using polarized privacy screens. Where “ramping up” meant completing paperwork needed to obtain a badge. Where obtaining a badge was considered a key accomplishment for the week. Thank the Lord, in my second week of this, I received a call from S. Groner, of S. Groner Associates, Inc. – that small company that seemed different from all the rest.

While working for The Man, there was one piece of advice I had known all along, but nobody ever said it to me. Finally, on my last day ever to work a job that held no meaning, my manager heard my resignation and mumbled the advice: “Yeah, get out while you still can...” It was said more to himself than to me. A successful man by most accounts, his advice was confirming. But his timing was interesting; given it was the advice I didn’t need any more.

Originally, I told myself: “Write! After finding a home...” But that took a long time so I ask your forgiveness, and I humbly ask that you read again. I’ll have you know, beginning to write again was extremely painful (see line 1). But the blockage has been removed because now and forever I am home. By that I mean I am with my Ruth. Right now, home happens to be in Orange, California, but we are blessed to have many homes in places like Dallas, Phoenix, UCLA, Taiwan’s East Coast, and Ecuador’s West Coast. In April I plan on taking her to my one home she doesn’t know yet, in Yunnan Province of China.

Also, I’ve finally found work I truly feel at home doing, in a workplace I happily call my second home. It’s been three incredible months, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it. But only if you’ll hear of the end to my hydrophilic mission, which I now can finally write.

  
*The sheer number of belongings required for life in this fair country continues to astound me. Until only recently, I stayed in bare rooms where all things to my name could lie in plain sight. I lost not one item, since having little means tracking little. But ever since going from a backpack full of stuff to a house + car + yard full of stuff, I cannot begin to count the items I have misplaced or lost. Now, my things hide amongst my other things, and it is truly horrifying.