Wedding stuff is over, the event itself as well as the mini-honeymoon we took to NYC this past weekend.
I wrote an email to my friend back home and stated that things were heading "back to normal" ... and all afternoon I've felt weird.

What the hell does "back to normal" mean in Chile, anyway? At least for me ...

See, I moved here because I'm in love and naturally the long distance thing can only lead nowhere when one is in love. Yeah, the relationship can last for a while but it can't move forward without being IN one another's lives physically. So ok, I moved. And then of course there was the whole wedding planning thing, which I've warmly and accurately cataloged here in my blog.

I'm married now and legally (technically too) I have a family of my own. In which case I need to do something with myself so I can not only be a contributing member of society but also a contributing member of this household. I'm went back to school for a graduate degree in Marketing. I had/have two intentions with this: 1) I'd like to further my education, especially here in Chile, so I know what's up and 2) I want to open my networking possibilities. The thing is, the way I feel about it, it's like I'm back at square one with all this ... like when I went to school the first time and wondered what would become of me when I was all growns up.

So that's how it feels now...yet ... I'm...33. Time is inevitably NOT on my side. And I'm not talking kids here by any means ... I'm talking career. In Chile age is a huge factor and I have 2.2 seconds to make something of myself that might somehow resemble something successful.

Success is relative, I know. And the irony is that I am going back to school so that I can learn what it means - AND what it looks like - to be successful here in Chile. It's ironic because what's successful here isn't necessarily what I grew up thinking was successful. I feel like I'm speaking in tongues right now, but trust me, it all makes perfect sense to ME. I'm working it out, bear with me.

See, it's not enough for me to watch my husband be a bad ass at work, despite all the headaches, stress and pressure that come with being said baller. In fact, it sometimes infuriates me that the majority of ballers are men in the corporate field here. I will fight the good battle with this society to be there as well but ... to do so... here I am again, at the bottom. What am I doing right now (well, writing this blog but besides that, what I should be doing) is studying. Reading chapters upon chapters of marketing crap IN SPANISH, which let me tell you, isn't an easy feat for me. Every other sentence I read makes sense only 20% of the time.

Anyway, where was I?
Oh yeah, normalcy.

I'm just not in a "normal" place here in Chile, as related to my regular normalcy back home... Or actually even when compared to my normalcy before school and the wedding. And the dog for that matter.

Ok, so maybe where I'm going here is that my normalcy has changed quite a bit in the past year. Each phase of "normal life" that I live lasts a short amount of time, relatively speaking, and I don't find that I have enough time to adapt. These next nine months, post wedding, are actually going to be the longest stretch of "normal" I've encountered since before moving here.

So is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Stay tuned.

Labels: Everyday life