I guess the blog’s a little outdated…and the title’s misleading as I’m not in Thailand anymore and haven’t been for almost a month now. It’s been a period of readjusting which, I think, has been a lot more difficult than I thought it would be.
The honeymoon, the novelty of being home the period of doing nothing and feeling totally fine about it…that all wore off pretty quickly. I did get to go visit my sister’s family in New Hampshire. I met my new nephew Nathan and my other nephew, Nicholas is able to hold a conversation with me. I was so impressed. I’m so happy to see all my family and friends (those who I’ve had the chance to see anyway). I’ve really missed everyone’s company and conversation. Though I have to say I think I’d rather gouge my eye out than hear the question, “How was Thailand?” one more time. Because the fact is, no matter how much I talk about it, no matter how little or how much I write about it, there’s no way that I can possibly characterize what it was like in a way that anyone would really care. I’ve dabbled in conversation about it every once in a while and I recognize far too well the facial expressions of feigned interest with nodding heads.

The routine of waking up and doing nothing while everyone else was working a 9-5 lasted about a week. My sense of purpose had suddenly vaporized and the city’s also way too expensive for me to just sit around losing money all the time. I still think in baht and I am outraged every time I buy anything. So I’ve been temping, filing, answering phone calls and emails and doing administrative work for a decent wage every hour. No, of course this isn’t what I want to be doing, but this is fine for now. I’m not in any race to find my dream job yet.

An adult i hardly know lectured me last week when I described the temp work I do as boring and I described my position in various offices as “corporate monkey”. It was meant to be a self-deprecating yet completely sarcastic joke. The conversation should have progressed in a very natural way, away from the subject of my future. But instead, he gave me a 15 minute lecture on how I should be pursuing a meaningful career and how I should be leading the “good life,” whatever that’s supposed to mean, anyway. Now maybe the conversation wasn’t very substantive in the way of things I’ve never heard before, but if anything, it was an eye-opener to something else. It was the first time since I’ve been back that someone wasn’t putting me up on a pedestal for working in an NGO in Thailand for 9 months. It was also a reminder that my time spent there didn’t translate into any specific career ideas. If it was supposed to do that or not, I don’t really know. It’s just so intimidating to be back here where most everyone I know is on some sort of “track”.

Whatever that might mean, significant or not, I’m still processing my time spent away from everything and everyone where I made from scratch a new life that no one from home fully understands. I do miss the kids from Mae Sai and I think about them all the time. I wonder how they’re doing in school and what they’re doing with their free time. I wonder how cold season is developing and what my psychotic neighbor is doing with herself. I wonder about a lot of things that I can’t bore anyone to read about, but the point is…the time there might be done, but it’s still far from gone from my mind.