a true American anthem

How long can I say I’m experiencing a mid-life crisis, well until you’re out of mid-life and then you can just say you’re experiencing a ‘what the #$@’ moment that knows no end.  If this were all about finding happiness, then advice from the common sense corner would say happiness is within, you find peace of mind through meditation and an acceptance that all things are as they are and worry is not normal. 

I have good reasons and bad reasons for walking away from jobs, jobs may I add I’ve had in one particular part of the world that has paid me better than anywhere else.  You should have been able to figure out how to connect with that inner divine self in the years you worked here, six jobs since 1993, but alas you have chosen to put yourself on the end of the gangplank once again.  I got good reasons for quitting the first job, I returned to school in the states.  The second job, I quit because I had big loans and I wasn’t going to pay them off as fast as I wanted if I remained there.  I quit the third job because after three years I couldn’t put anything I had done on my resume.  I liked my fourth job but I quit because I thought I had an extraordinary opportunity ahead of me and had only four years left on earth to do it.  I quit the fifth job because I wanted to spend an extended time of my life in the mountains, breathing in nature and everything else organic.  And I am quitting the sixth job I’ve had in the middle east because…I am simply not happy here.

And you are hoping, you are looking to return once again to this peninsula because the fifth job was close to the ocean, as close as I’ve ever been to big water but I might have shot myself in the foot leaving the ocean for the mountains.  There was nothing inherently wrong with jobs 2, 3, 4, or five, restlessness has been my weakness, and it is a weakness which has no foresight. 

I saw a job in west Texas, got excited for a minute, planned to write a cover letter and that was as far as I got.  Today’s teachers are cutting edge, they got the technology I have had none of for the last two years.  The only technology I use is recording student’s attendance four times every day on a computer that takes twenty minutes to warm up.  And the computer in the classroom has speakers which don’t work and now I have to spend five minutes shaking the wires because somewhere there is a short, and eventually they work.  Until the next day.

I was gonna cross the border but came home feeling icky.  Free food was available outside, food sponsored by the business college who erected a tent without air conditioning, ‘it’s keeping all the food warm’ no mind it was 106 outside the tent, so I ate, an hour after I had eaten my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and bag of baked labnah and mint chips and I got home and six hours later I’m still hurting.  What the hell.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll cross.  Who knows. 

Once my border pass expires I will probably increase my visits to the local Lulus.  Salads and the deli serve up decent food and there is variety, imagine the first year eating cheese wraps every single night.  I kept a budget those first months, $250 on cream cheese, pita, tomatoes and cucumbers, along with milk, cereal and juice.  My big meals of the day were in the school canteen and since I returned from Sri Lanka I’ve eaten there once.  I need to say hey to the folks there before I bid adieu.

I can’t believe you lived here for two years and cooked nothing but fried and boiled eggs.  I didn’t want to buy any pots and pans for anything else and I did buy knives, forks and spoons.

Prudence says don’t return to the states if you got nothing lined up.  Prudence asks to look at how it would play out if you returned without a job and cash.  How long could I stretch that cash before I found something that would pay the bills and plug me back into the scary American matrix.

I wish I were more positive here, try visualizing something really good happening.  Ok,  let’s listen to the Scorpions, ok you can whistle along ‘winds of change’ in the mood, in the zone, imagine, shit, the song’s over…how about ‘send me an angel’ ah I don’t know this one, do I know any other songs from these guys, they almost sound like one of them fake bands…let’s try one more, nope, they suck, let’s go to something I know… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8MYsii4DZY

Everybody listen to me and return me my ship…ok, visualize a good return to my mother country.  Lord, be good to me, give me the wits, give me what has eluded me my whole life, no not a woman, a place to call home.  Are there conditionals, not to Americans, work hard, God will bless, so sad that formula doesn’t work for the world’s hard working poor, God helps those who help themselves, the true American anthem, I don’t know, stop, negativity…ah yes…I’m getting closer to my home.