Where is Home?

If someone told you to go home, where would you go? If someone asked you where home is, would your answer be different? The word "home" is an extremely fluid concept. To some, it's wherever you sleep at night, to others, it may be where you grew up, where you've spent the most time maybe. Some may not see a house as a home, but rather refer to a city as home, or maybe even a country.

This is my home, not for the building, but for the memories.

I invite you to consider this idea: Home is about experiences, not places.

In some ways, Bellingham is my home. It's the first place I ever lived alone; the city where my very first house is and always will be. It's where I earned my undergraduate degree, met professors, exchanged ideas, pulled (surprisingly) only a single all-nighter. In Bellingham I learned what bad roommates are, and I learned what great roommates are. I sprained my ankle 6 times in the 3 and a half years living in Bellingham, recovered from one broken heart, and suffered one concussion. I made best friends, and I lost best friends. A single fender bender, 3 calls to 911, and one major legal scare later, Bellingham has been host to some of the most defining points to my life. If I had stayed in Covington after high school, or gone to college in Seattle, or New York, or Alabama, I would be a different human being than I am today. So, more often than not, if someone asks me where home is, I'll tell them Bellingham, Washington.

Times like these made my college dorm home...

So what about all the times I've been at work in Bellingham, so excited to go "home" for the weekend? If Bellingham is home, why do I say I'm going home to Covington? Is one more home than the other? Not at all. They're home differently. Covington is my childhood. It's where my parents raised me, where I learned to drive, where I came out to my best friend. It takes credit for the first time I tied my shoes, all my years playing team sports, and the time I knocked my best friends teeth out playing chicken on a Big Wheel. It is every Christmas morning and Halloween night trick-or-treating of my life. As much as I can't stand Covington, it's always going to be home.

I owe my childhood to Covingon.
I'm the cute kid having her elbow bitten,
my sister is the one ready to punch the camera....

I love Bellingham, I less than love Covington, but I love who I grew to be in both places. Both will always be home. They will be the first two places in a never-ending list of "homes." Give me a month, and Morocco will forever be on my list of places I call home. And if I never came home from Morocco the rest of my life, and forty years from now somebody was to ask me where home was, Covington would still be a perfectly valid answer. Because physical location is forever evolving.

There's a Heraclitus quote that I've always loved: "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man." This is why the concept of home is about experience, not location. One hour from now, Covington will be a different place than it is right now. And one hour from now, I won't be the same person I am right now. We as a population, and as individuals, are always changing and evolving. But once you experience something, nothing can take that experience from you. Home is an ever-evolving compilation of experiences.

So if you want to find home, don't talk to a real estate agent and buy some house somewhere. Go for a walk. Experience your surroundings. Talk to your peers. Explore somewhere new. Make yourself a part of your community. Follow these steps, and only then, you will find a home.

How Do You Say Goodbye For 26 Months?

I'll be the first to admit I'm inept at goodbyes. They generally end with an awkward hug/high-five/fist bump confusion and a last minute "see you later!" Only for me to walk away suddenly feeling like an idiot knowing the chances of literally never seeing that person again in my life. So what is the proper formula for a goodbye? Or is there one? Have you ever actually met someone that's "good" at goodbyes?

As I enter my last month in the United States, saying goodbye is becoming a daily occurrence, often even hourly. Here's what I've learned: Don't make it more than it is, and don't ignore it. 

I often get a romanticized idea of goodbye's in my head. I picture myself climbing onto a wagon and taking off down the Oregon Trail, never to see the old homelands again. This idea of 'never seeing people again' takes over the irrational portion of my brain and blows it out of proportion. Don't do this.

Alright, maybe in the days of piracy and New World exploration, a goodbye was final. Once you left, that was it. But this is 2012. The Wright brothers have come and gone, Alexander Graham Bell gifted us the telephone, and Zuckerberg has enrolled half of the world's internet users. I'm not really falling off the grid here. At the most I'm simply tuning my Facebook posts down to once every few days from slower internet, and paying more for phone calls. The goodbye's are merely physical.

I think that is why I often forget I'm saying a goodbye, and where my odd "see you later!"'s come from. I know I'll still interact with these people, so what exactly is this 'last' connection with them, if not a goodbye? For some, it very well may actually be a "see you later!" Just... a very long later. Others, it may be the end of a face-to-face relationship, and the conversion to a simply online, networking based relationship. You follow each other, you catch up with each other once in awhile, use each other as resources for future life en devours.

But sadly, it is inevitable that some actually are goodbyes. Forever. We all hate to admit it, but sometimes, you just fall away from people. Without school, work, mutual friends, you just seem to... lose touch. It's not vindictive, it isn't even all that sad sometimes, it just happens. You don't really actually have anything to hold a friendship together, you're friends on Facebook but never even virtually interact, and even when you live two blocks apart, you still don't see each other without a big social gathering forcing your paths to cross. It's just how life works.

And this is why I say don't make it more than it is. Time will run it's course. Corny as it is, if you're meant to be friends, you'll stay friends. This is what I've learned while my time in America slowly dwindles. The people I never saw as huge parts of my life came out of nowhere and became my best friend's in a matter of weeks. And the people I thought were the center of my universe I often managed to simply not see. And sometimes that sucked. But sometimes, it just never crossed my mind until the opportunity to see them had already come and gone, and my only option for response was a shrug.

But how do you know who will fall in each category? How can I be sure that reaching out one last time to someone I haven't seen in awhile won't spark a friendship back up? Or that someone you see everyday now won't end up being impossible to stay in contact with? The simple answer is this: you don't.

So again I say, don't make your goodbye's more than they are, but don't ignore them. Make time to see people still. Don't worry, if you have to stay up all night to pack, it will be worth it. You can even try to have a friend come over while you work -- kills two birds with one stone. The last week straight I have gone out to dinner every night with a different person. Sometimes it's somebody that I also had lunch with last week. But sometimes, it's somebody that you haven't seen in over six months, although you've always intended to meet up at some point.

That is what's important. Reach out to people. Make sure you show people that they really mean a lot to you. Go out of your way for the people who have gone out of their way for you, but leave time available for people you rarely see to also realize they want to see you once more. If they've waited until the last possible moment and want to see you still, don't ignore them, but don't ignore yourself. Let them know that you're busy, but give them another option ("Wanna come chill with me while I sort clothes into a 'keep' or 'Value Village' pile?"). People will often say yes.

But always remember one thing: No matter what, tomorrow will still be show up. So don't stress it that much. Do what you can, and accept life's course when you run out of time. I'm still going to get on that plane January 13th, whether I saw everyone I wanted or not. Whether I bought the extra socks I needed or not. Whether I remembered to pack that mug I wanted to save or not. It's going to happen, and that's a glorious thing.

Why This Summer Was The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me

I've told people all my life to live for the moment. Stop accepting unhappiness now, just for the thought of things getting better later. Stop working a job you hate just so that you can have money for the future. Money is meant to be spent, not saved, right? What's the point of having a lot of money in the bank if you never spend it? It always seemed like such an odd concept to live a life unsatisfied, only for the hope that one day you'll get to do what you really want. Just go make your life what you want it to be.

Bellingham Bay, Summer 2012

So what do you do when you have no choice but to hurry up and wait? When you've followed the steps to your dreams, but your dream can't come true until January? What do you do when you're trying to put your life back on course after 6 months of wasted time doing less than nothing, and you want to be passionate about something, but you find yourself stuck in a strange waiting pattern?

It can be argued that I've been on summer vacation since March, which sounds great initially, and it is great... initially. But there comes a point when you want more in life than to work a shitty job, get off work, go downtown to party all night long, head home at 2am with great friends, watch Planet Earth all night, and do it all again the next day. But this summer was weird. It was a summer of life lessons, best friends, great memories, nights I can't remember, zero accomplishments, major steps backwards, and an extremely vague idea of where I wanted my life to be going.

"But what about Peace Corps?" you ask. Well sometimes, you just need to nearly lose it all in order to realize that you actually care about something. True, this was a dream I came up with back in 9th grade, with extravagant desires to travel anywhere that wasn't named Covington, but without the funds to do so. It seemed like the perfect solution; just let the government pay for me to travel. But six and a half years later, it's difficult to describe what my thoughts were on the matter. I don't mean to say that I didn't want to go... Rather, it just wasn't tangible enough to grasp. I was applying because everyone was telling me it was what I was supposed to be doing; I was doing my volunteering because that's what I was told I should be doing; I was telling people I was excited, because I felt like that's how I was expected to feel. By the time I graduated, I honestly couldn't tell if I was pursuing Peace Corps because I wanted to, or because it was just what everyone expected of me. Peace Corps was, at a minimum, at least 9 months away, and never seemed like something that would actually happen in the end. It wasn't tangible enough to live for.

So where did this all change? I went from living for everyone else to living for myself... but how? A series of poor life choices, bad luck on Friday the 13th, and a summer's worth of selfish living all crashed down into a single night of life changing realizations. By the next morning, I knew I wanted Peace Corps, but beyond that, I needed Peace Corps. I needed to feel like my life was headed somewhere important again, and by nearly losing Peace Corps, I suddenly realized where I would be without it. I would be exactly where I had been since I graduated, doing the same thing, every night, with the same people. That thought alone terrified me.

Rabat, Morocco 

That was the moment I started living my life for a reason again. It was a defining point in my life, and, short of my time spent in Kenya, it was the best thing that's ever happened to me. It's tough though, to put things back in place, point my life in the direction I wanted again, and feel like everything was falling into place so fast, only to fall back into a waiting period. I'm back here now, waiting not very patiently for January, and trying so hard to hold onto reality just long enough to catch that jet to Morocco.

This isn't to say that I haven't enjoyed what I've been doing, or who I've been with. On the contrary in fact, I've loved every minute of it. I've made some of the best friends of my life this summer, and had incredible experiences. But I forgot that they weren't the entirety of my existence. So, I suppose what I'm trying to say here is this: it's important to live in the moment, it is. But it's also important to remember that while you must take every opportunity, you also need to make sure you don't miss out on something more important just for that one crazy night right now.

The Motivations of a Movement

"Just talk about what your motivations are! It won't be too hard." This is the response a friend of mine gave me when I asked what I was supposed to be writing. She had approached me with a simple request. Would I be willing to write a guest piece for her blog about global citizenship that addresses my motivations and thoughts on joining the Peace Corps? Of course I agreed instantly. But it got me to thinking: What are my motivations? Why did I sign up to move overseas for 27 months to a remote location all by myself?

The moment anyone asks if I'm excited to go I instantly respond with a rapid "Yes! I couldn't be more pumped." But I guess the question that floats around the back of my mind is simply this: Is this my answer? Or is this the answer people want to hear? Why did I sit down back in December and hit submit on that application? It was seven years ago that 14 year old me came up with the idea to join Peace Corps, and the idea has spread like an infection within me ever since. But when push comes to shove, having that idea is much different than turning it into a reality. 

So why did I do it? Anyone who has watched me through the application process can attest that I haven't been ideally efficient in completing the process. It took over two months to simply finish and submit the application. Then when I found out I needed volunteer hours to qualify, I would be lying if I didn't admit the idea of an easy way out never crossed my mind. And to top the whole process off, my medical packet sat on the floor of my room for over three months, only to be submitted with 2 days to spare before disqualification. But here I am today, all forms submitted and signed, sick of Bellingham, waiting on my assignment, and ready to leave. But again I ask: How did I get here?

Almost a year ago to the day, I first started this blog. It was born out of an intense frustration and a lack of outlets for release, talking about my experiences in Kochia, Kenya, and how those experiences were changing my life on a day to day basis. It was raw, uncensored, and pissed people off. There's an old Chinese proverb that goes something like this: "You have to get off the mountain to see it." And that may have been the theme for that first post. It was easy for me to judge the people around me for living an American lifestyle when I was freshly back from an experience that showed the impacts our society truly has on the world. But as this year as moved forward, I've struggled with a raging internal battle between the American life I was raised in, and the knowledge I have that I don't want to be that way. If there's one thing this year has taught me though, its that old habits die hard.

I've had to learn to compromise with myself, and slowly change my habits. I've managed to not buy a single piece of new clothing for over a year now, I've been vegetarian for eleven months now, I sold my car to live more sustainable, and I stubbornly use a broken cell phone instead of buying a new one. I also bought a new laptop, work a retail job that promotes over-consumption, and don't always buy organic or local foods because I don't want to spend the money. Its the give and take of living an ethical American lifestyle. And its not easy. I ask myself what impact eating just one cheeseburger would have; I debate internally about if I can get away with buying that T-shirt I really like (it is just one new piece of clothing, right?); I some days wish I never sold my car (it would just be so convenient...). But what it comes down to is bigger than me.

And that's why I will leave in January for the Peace Corps. Because this is about something bigger than me. I'm not vegetarian because it's easy. I'm not living a sustainable life (as much as possible) because American society tells me to do so. And I'm not moving abroad all by myself for over 2 years because it seems like an exotic getaway. I do all of this because it's hard, and it's important. I do it because if I don't, who will? If I convinced myself that my actions don't matter, and so do 1,000 other people, nothing will ever improve. I'm moving abroad to push myself to find new limits and challenge my intellect and human nature. I am excited, but I'm also scared to hell and back. But in the end, I will come out stronger, more determined, and ready to fight like hell to make this world something worth leaving for my children. Those are my motivations.