The Wandering Monkey

Hello, Hello again.
These days I'm simply Jim again. I have gone back to computer consulting. It's different. The one vital difference, of course, is that now I actually am making a living. The other vital difference, is , of course, that I am now the guy-who-used-to-be-the-guy-from-Shanghai-Swings.

It has been a very difficult adjustment coming back to America. As I said before, I was living in my mom's basement for about one month. I didn't know at the time how long I'd be there. I had just arrived, and my cash was down so low that I could not afford to buy a car, or even to put down a payment on an apartment. That's pretty low. I got a high-speed modem installed at my mom's, and I spend most every day searching for jobs back in the e-commerce field. I kept on thinking, How did I get back here again?

But there have been benefits to coming back. By lucky coincidence, my sister and her husband and their daughter were in town. I spent about two weeks with them. I also got to spend a decent amount of time with my mom and stepdad. But eventually, I knew it was about getting that first job. It was a trick, too, since the last two years of resume read: Swing Dancing in Shanghai. Please hire this guy, he has a wicked swingout...

But no. It's true, there was a lot of resistance when people ran into that line. They said, "Huh?" "Does this guy still remember it?"

Here's the highlights of job search: First weeks - feel out the market, try to judge the current demands. Figure out what the new technology is. Has anything changed since you left (answer = YES!) Update resume. Take phone calls. Take more phone calls. They ask for more information on the resume. Update resume again. Do you know UNIX? No? Do you know GIS? No? Update resume again. Contact old bosses. Add them to reference list. Update resume again. Fly to New Jersey for an interview. Get job offer new Ohare airport. Suddenly, everything falls through. Back to zero. Get job offer in south suburbs of Chicago. Less pay than you wanted! Three months contract. Take it.

That's how it went. Now those three months are up. I estimate I have two weeks left until I solve all of the problems they needed solving. In the process, I have remembered everything I used to know, plus I have learned much more.

I have also gained a huge amount of weight! America is filled with crap food! Fat, fat, protien, and sugar. That's the diet here. Plus, I went from King of Swing to Desk Jockey. Very little exercise.

And here's what is different about America since I left:
* TV: Everything is a reality show. (But, if you are an American, you already now this). The TV is filled with dozens of competition-type shows, where people compete with irrelevant or professional skills to win the PRIZE, which is something like money or fame.
* Food: It's actually the same, but I see it for the first time now. So much garbage in the food here! Fat and sugar. Available everywhere. Seen an Arby's commercial? If I ate what they are listing, I'd go into diabetic shock.
* People: One thing, though, I feel much older than I did when I was in Shanghai. Part of it is that I have not been in the Chicago area for a long time. Ten years. And when I was last here, I was a college student / recent grad. Now when I look at the college students, they seem like, well, they are not old enough to be in college, you know?
* Money: Everything is more expensive now. It seems like everyone in-the-know things the American economy is going to collapse, so they are charging as much as possible and selling homes for as much as possible so they can get their cash before the bubble bursts. Homes in my own town cost almost half a million dollars. I saw prices like this when I was in California, but I did not expect to see them in the reasonably far-away suburbs.
* And, dating.

New topic.

For the past one and a half years, my steady girlfriend and best friend has been Chris, my dance partner. Actually, this part is a little sad. We had our problems when we were together in Shanghai. But of course everyone does. There was enough to hold the relationship together, but I think I felt my doubts even then. Since coming back to America, we have kept in contact through weekly internet phone calls. Usually its on Saturday morning my time, which is Saturday night her time. And she's been staying home every Saturday night to take the calls.
It has been personally very frustrating to have to return to America, even though I am fortunate enough to be well employed. But I was beginning to feel more and more the differences in basic personality between Chris and I. There's many things I do not question, including her affection, her purity of purpose, and her motivations. However, we always kept butting heads over control issues. And I mean, every time we talked. It's hard to describe without being disrepectful, so I won't go into much detail. But the end of it is that I told her I felt we would not work together as a couple in the long run. The catalyst for this was, ironically, this very blog. I was going through it while talking to her online. I had been so long inbetween blog entries that I had almost fogotten I even had a blog. Anyhow, I read one part more-or-less at random, and she asked to read about some entries with her. And I found some, but in them I heard myself complaining about the very same things that I was complaining about now.
It was very sad, but I believed, and do believe, that even though I love her (and I do), we are not suited for spending all of our time together. We are too different in basic personality, and somehow we are not each able to change enough to meet in the middle.
I was very sad when I talked this through with her. There's so much which is good about our relationship. Of course, as she pointed out, even if our relationship were perfect, we would still be very hard-pressed to make it work now. It looks to me like I am going to be in America for a long time. I am probably going to be in Chicago, but maybe I'll go somewhere else. And I may be in one place, or I may move around a lot. Taking a full-time job is not a feasible option, because it pays so much less than consulting.
Meanwhile, she's taking her TEFL (sp?) tests to qualify for schools, to do a graduate school study here. But she won't even know if she is accepted for over one year. And then, there's no knowing what school she will be going to.
We are the two of us right now both moving targets. We could do some options which would guarantee us to stay together. One would be I take a job (any job) in Shanghai. Two would be we get married and she follows me around the country whereever I go. But neither of these options are practical. There are no high-paying corporate jobs in Shanghai anymore. The companies have adjusted their thinking, and instead of hiring one foreigner, they are hiring three locals. Plus, I don't currently speak Chinese well enough to do business in it. With regards to the other idea, of getting married, we discussed it. It's just too big a step for either of us, and it does not solve some basic problems, such as Where will be live, What will she do? If she comes here, will she sit at home all day? Get any job which she can? What kind of a life can we form with me moving around the country? Or, even if I stayed in one place, what would she do with her life if she got here?
In the end, I would just say that we are too different in outlook, and perhaps we are both to strong-headed. I don't like arguing, and we do it a lot. I don't like fighting for control, and we do that a lot, too. So I said we are just not going to work, and I do, unfortunately, think that is true. Not all marriages work out. A friend of mine said that of those marriages which do not work out, these types of problems are already present before the people get married. Each person thinks, "Oh well, they are not going to be like this after we get married," or "Oh, they will change after we have children" but both of these things are not true. People don't change. What's in their basic nature is in their basic nature, and it takes an enormous effort and motivation to change one's basic nature. I didn't see it happening.
So, by some ways of thinking, I posessed foresight, and I prevented a much larger, much more complicated problem from arising. But on the human level, I have lost my best friend, and I have lost the only person who was a witness to my life for the last 1.5 years. That's an important part of any relationship. I never thought about it before, but she mentioned it. Your singificant other, amoungst other things, serves as a witness to the events of your life. No matter what you do, if no one is there to see it, in a way its like it never happened. Its the same reason why going on a trip alone seems so much more hollow than taking the same trip with another person. It's kind of like it's not real unless somone else sees it, too.
Chris was very gracious and noble, though sad. I had talked to her about this problem before, and although we have been trying to 'bring it together' since then, she had thought that if such a problem existed, it would not go away. Eventually, we'd be right back to facing the problem again.
In the end, I was quite exhausted and tired, and quite sad. We must have been on the phone five or more hours. I don't think either of us really liked the outcome. I think both of us would like to have another answer than this. Stories are not supposed to end this way. But perhaps this is not a story, and real life does end this way. And perhaps everything I think I forsee is actually right, and we would end up not getting along together in the long run. In that case I have done the right thing, but it does not feel very invigorating.

SCENE

The other major topic since coming back to America is relations with my own family. I have been a traveller, for a long time. I have somewhat reconnected with my mom. It was good to see my sister & extened family there. I even got to sit down at the same table with my dad and have a cordial lunch. I am still working on my relationship with my brother.
For the last 10 years, the most I've seen of him has been occasional weekend visits, either me coming back or him traveling out so see me in California. This is the longest time we've been together in, well, a long time. Now that Mom has gone to Montana for the summer-and-fall, it's just he and I left here, as family.
We both agree that our family, as such, is not a very cohesive unit. It's spread out all over the world right now. At the moment, individuals are in all different states and countries. Were I not here right now, he would be the only one here in Chicago.
This sort of brings about an entirely new line of thinking. Is it time, perhaps, to set up some sort of base here in Chicago. Is it time to re-integrate with my family and develop some family ties? One cannot expect fast progress on such a thing. It will take time. 10 years past have not developed much. It may take some large amount of time for it to develop now.
And then I think of the interractions I have with my brother. There's a lot of arguing there, too. Whereas everyone on earth is a unique individual, one may say my bro is 'unique-er'. Quirks, quirky. Worry about him. Perhaps its a good idea to be here. Dont know yet.
As I've said before, I am not a religious man per se, but I do like to think of things as of God were there, and 'serving the will of God' can be used as a very good allegory for what to do to be a good person. In that vein, I felt that when I began the swing club in Shanghai, it was in line with the will of God. Or, to put it more colloquially, one might say God would be pleased with what I was doing. Perhaps towards the end I lost my focus in what I was trying to do, but I did accomplish the initial goal of getting swing dancing going.
Now I'm at a bit of a loss of focus. I am between worlds, and I am between people. I don't know if I should stay or go (as they say). I don't know if I should resign myself to a life of computer work, or if I should try again to do something more personally fulfilling. But, as many people claim, pursing just your own personal interests is not the path to a calm spirit. Looking to the collective good instead of yourself is the only way you can find happiness, as they say.
But let's be honest. We're just men, humans. We're not prophets and we're not divine. We may not even be spiritual, be may just be material, and spiritual goals are merely good ways of creating a better way of living for all beings while they are alive.
Yikes! Sorry, I realize I'm getting far off field here. But the point is, what is my purpose now? I must take care of my own requirements, of course. But what are my other priorities? Should I de-prioritize my own personal desires to try to become more of a 'in-the-family" type of person? Stop wandering? Give up on being a world traveler to become a suburbanite?
I'm not sure, I'm really not. But I must make up my mind in about two weeks when this job ends:
1) Do I make a visit back to Shanghai, for a week or so? It's the Fall holiday, and everyone will have one week off.
2) Do I limit my job search to the Chicago area?
3) Do I try to work towards buying real estate, and if so, share a home with my family?
I must admit this time of my life is not nearly as exciting, but these decisions are very imporant and they will affect a lot of things in the future. Hopefully I will keep this updated and submti a new chapter soon.
Peas,
-J