Citizen of the World

Citizen of the World

Has a nice ring, doesn't it? Unlike other people that want to put up walls and other destructive tactics, I want to go see the world, meet the people, see the sites, eat the food, be one with humanity, not just one from my country.

Its hard and its frightening. All change requires risk but I know this desire is changing me. If I don't go, I will return to regretting having a small life. If I do go, I will change everything in my personality ... again. I finally got comfortable with myself and its already past time to start changing again. I am struggling to create the illusion of personal security in this new life I'm working to create for myself.

I think I could manage this change if it was the only what to cope with. Unlike my very mobile childhood, I want something specific that was mine and "feltl like home", something fixed in location, defined as "home", reliable as my safe haven. Now that I have a home I love, managing the mortgage isn't easy with the 2007 version of the American Dream. Imagine, if you will, trying to manage it without a job.

Unemployed for three and a half months, I have about out to run out of my paranoia money I stored away when being laid off the second time. While I fully acknowledge that I left my last job, that decision was very healthy decision ( everyone impacted by that decision agreed as well. )

Over the past months, I have been doing odd jobs for friends for cash and, must to my surprise, that has made a difference for the small expenses. But I grow wearing of doing these odd jobs and favors for friends because "Oh, you're unemployed right? Then you must have lots of free time and I need a favor..." I love to help people and often help other people more than I help myself. But even this gets tiring.

On the days that I don't do odd jobs, I do six to eight hours of job seeking: returning emails and select phone calls, screening incoming calls and reviewing voice mail, scouring web sites and shaking down my network of friends and second degree contacts. I'm tired of this too. I've even apologized for over shaking some of friends for employment leads. Stress isn't a good motivator when used for too long.

Held in the balance of this few concerns are family, some of whom I have welcomed into my home to assist them for the next several months; other family that I wish I could visit during my "time off" but I can't; friends that don't want me to go and friends that are waiting for me. Lastly, my lover waits somewhat impatiently. I feel her impatiences, knowing full well relationships fade and die when the distance is too great for too long.

I have considered simplifying things, removing anything that gets in the way. Principally, this month at least, that would mean selling the home, putting my some of my family out on their own, liquidating all my possession sans what I few things can put in two or three bags, clean out my bank account, sell the truck and hit the airport. Its tempting but it also seems like a poor response to a plan that isn't working well yet.

I've done fairly well thus far but, other than the near continual job search and a newly developed nervous facial twitch I've had for two and a half months now, nothing has gone seriously wrong yet. But neither has anything gone serious right either. I'm risking everything and nothing is moving.

In the last week, interest has picked up in employment, mostly in my current city of residence. While this restores some hope that I'll at last begin to the movement into change, the employment opportunities are in the wrong city; wrong time zone even. Complicating this is my dreaded need to be honest with local employers. I don't want to edit the truth about my more immediate plans to move out of country but I must have employment somewhere.

And none of these concerns prepare me for entering an environment where I don't speak nor read the language, must less recognize alphabet (Cyrillic.)

Citizen of the World. The term doesn't mean only a change of my scenery; it means a change in absolutely everything for me.