It’s mid service, and I think a good chunk of Peace Corps Jamaica, Group 83 is feeling what I’ve been calling the “mid service blues”.
For me, it’s the combination of many, many things.
1) I’m on the descending side of a relatively successful project and, looking up for air, I realize how very much more there is to do here. Also having been here for a year, my idealism about the future is also waning. I feel weak with the inability to convey my knowledge to everyone all at once, I feel exhausted knowing that I can invite everyone I know to a meeting and 3 people will show, I am tired of the things that I don’t understand and unsure of the things I do. I’ve been in this relationship with Jamaica for a year now, and we’re at the point where I see her flaws just as well, if not better, than I see her attributes. Best practices are only such when practiced, I will not push when someone else is pushing back.
2) I LIVE ON AN ISLAND. I could get into all the ways that serving in Jamaica is different from serving in another country more remote, but I’ll stick with this for now: I’m not in Africa, surrounded on three sides by other countries, I’m surrounded on all sides by an ocean. Yet I still must travel several hours, take days off, and make accommodations ($ I don’t have) to visit a new place.
3) I just got internet, which is SO great in most regards, but it makes the future easier to see, the present easier to follow and the past a photo album just waiting to make you incapacitated with homesickness.
4) I keep thinking to myself, I hope people are actually easier to deal with back home. But I might also be fabricating this falsely polite and concerned society of people who get along out of a jaded memory of my past as a college student at a forestry school.
These are the reasons I am choosing to disclose, I have to remember that this blog is public, but suffice it to say, I feel hung-over and uninspired. Runners like my mother and my sister would say, I’ve hit “The Wall” and I agree. I actually very much feel like this clip from “Run Fat Boy Run” (I highly recommend watching the whole movie, very funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kmzJcC_HN4
So now I have to make myself see through that first brick. What is beckoning me forward?
Well, Mid Service conference is in a week. This is a time when Peace Corps staff puts all of group 83 in a hotel and organizes workshops about subjects such as community development, organizational management, project writing, youth motivation, technology as a tool, funny cultural story time, fails and success discussions and of course some good old fashioned friend time.
After Mid Service conference I’ll be going home for a probably whirlwind visit with family, friends and the countryside I miss so much.
I suppose I have a whole crew of people waving me on through that brick space, telling me to take a deep breath and limp forward. Nothing worth having ever comes easy, I can take that advice from my mother: the marathon runner, my father: the successful doctor and several friends in Jamaica, raising children and working until midnight.
Even if I accomplish nothing else here, I am still running the race and I still intend to finish.
For me, it’s the combination of many, many things.
1) I’m on the descending side of a relatively successful project and, looking up for air, I realize how very much more there is to do here. Also having been here for a year, my idealism about the future is also waning. I feel weak with the inability to convey my knowledge to everyone all at once, I feel exhausted knowing that I can invite everyone I know to a meeting and 3 people will show, I am tired of the things that I don’t understand and unsure of the things I do. I’ve been in this relationship with Jamaica for a year now, and we’re at the point where I see her flaws just as well, if not better, than I see her attributes. Best practices are only such when practiced, I will not push when someone else is pushing back.
2) I LIVE ON AN ISLAND. I could get into all the ways that serving in Jamaica is different from serving in another country more remote, but I’ll stick with this for now: I’m not in Africa, surrounded on three sides by other countries, I’m surrounded on all sides by an ocean. Yet I still must travel several hours, take days off, and make accommodations ($ I don’t have) to visit a new place.
3) I just got internet, which is SO great in most regards, but it makes the future easier to see, the present easier to follow and the past a photo album just waiting to make you incapacitated with homesickness.
4) I keep thinking to myself, I hope people are actually easier to deal with back home. But I might also be fabricating this falsely polite and concerned society of people who get along out of a jaded memory of my past as a college student at a forestry school.
These are the reasons I am choosing to disclose, I have to remember that this blog is public, but suffice it to say, I feel hung-over and uninspired. Runners like my mother and my sister would say, I’ve hit “The Wall” and I agree. I actually very much feel like this clip from “Run Fat Boy Run” (I highly recommend watching the whole movie, very funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kmzJcC_HN4
So now I have to make myself see through that first brick. What is beckoning me forward?
Well, Mid Service conference is in a week. This is a time when Peace Corps staff puts all of group 83 in a hotel and organizes workshops about subjects such as community development, organizational management, project writing, youth motivation, technology as a tool, funny cultural story time, fails and success discussions and of course some good old fashioned friend time.
After Mid Service conference I’ll be going home for a probably whirlwind visit with family, friends and the countryside I miss so much.
I suppose I have a whole crew of people waving me on through that brick space, telling me to take a deep breath and limp forward. Nothing worth having ever comes easy, I can take that advice from my mother: the marathon runner, my father: the successful doctor and several friends in Jamaica, raising children and working until midnight.
Even if I accomplish nothing else here, I am still running the race and I still intend to finish.
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