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Notes from Underneath: Normalcy

Notes from Underneath

A California girl in Chilsters (that's Chile to you)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

 

Normalcy

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.

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Comments:
It's like an early midlife crises without the crises I guess? In 8 years you cant say that you have been doing the same boring for your life since forever ago.
 
I understand how you are feeling and boy does it suck to be confused and feeling at the bottom, but remember two things:
1. don't let your definition of success be defined by others, only you can know what success means to you. go after that success and be happy with it (I personally struggle with this A LOT, but I am trying to not let society--Chilean or American--dictate what success means to me)
2. I think with all of the wedding planning + work + planning to study, you probably didn't have enough time to adapt because you were focused on other things. Now that the wedding is out of the way, I am totally confident that you will warm up to the way of life in Santiago and it will start to feel normal.

Hugs!!!
 
This is true, you've been going through one transition or another for a while now - it must be strange to think of just settling in not only to marriage but also to school and work. But I'm pretty sure that once you DO get settled in, you'll find that you start to get a handle on how you apply all this Chilean marketing-speak to your future career and figure out exactly what type of baller you will become :)
 

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