Getting My North American Ya-Yas Out: An Attitude Adjustment and a Bi-coastal Tour

Since making the decision, in June, to take this job in Guatemala, I've lived a little bit differently. While I was hunting for a job, not knowing where I'd be come August— hoping, above all, that I'd have a place to work and a place to live— the summer seemed to stretch out like some log, hot swath of stress, filled with things to do and variables to work out, plans and needs and contingencies to align while trying to squeeze in some wet and/or air-conditioned fun. Ever since I accepted this job, though, the uncertainty-caused stress I lived with evaporated (which was eased, of course, by the recent heat wave, during which I discovered Bunny's new favorite game: chasing a melting ice cube across a sticky wooden floor!), and has been replaced by a new, somehow less stressful variety of stress (items to sell! items to ship! health insurance to consider! vaccinations!), and a different approach to life in these last few weeks in the States. Ever since accepting this job, and realizing that my days as a pre-expat (a pat?) are numbered (now quickly approaching the single digits!), I've had— and perhaps been?— a lot more fun.

I'm getting my North American ya-yas out, one bucket list item at a time. I went to Montreal for a weekend, figuring now or never. I went farming, supervised by forty alpacas, and then swam in the ocean, a scary distance from shore (the theme of my life these days, perhaps.) I went to see Barenaked Ladies live (a friend of my concert companion inquired: "So how much did you pay for that time machine?") and went to all the restaurants I've been wanting to try but just, well, haven't. I've been making my way through a giant stack of books I'm going to have to get rid of so I might as well read. (I adored The Interestings, but I think Never Let Me Go is overrated.) Now I'm in the Bay Area, seeing my family and my California coterie, and one friend promised (it's written for the world to see now, J.!) to take me beer tasting on a mini golf course because, well, I'm moving to Central America, and also why the hell not?

Most strikingly, though, at least to me, is that I've done and said things I might not have a month ago. For better or for worse, the stakes seem at once so much lower and so much higher: in two weeks, I'm going to be living in Guatemala, and— at least this is how my theory goes now— I'll have just enough time and energy to dwell on the good memories, but not quite enough to dwell on the bad. I'm valuing relationships and experiences in ways I always have, but I'm acting with concentrated, deadline-induced vigor. 

Perhaps it would be possible to inject this type of urgency into living all the time; perhaps, if the rug were ripped out from under me tomorrow, and it turns out I'd be staying stateside after all, I could continue living this way indefinitely— but I'm not sure that I'd want to, because, for all its thrill, it's also exhausting. And perhaps this energy is induced by a sense that I need to practice my Traveler's Attitude, that I must refine at once both my extroversion and my independence in preparation for the coming year. Or perhaps— and this would be a first, truly!— I am overthinking things, and I am simply having fun because it's hot as F and it's July and I feel free.