I am trying not to get stressed by everything I have to do. Writing to you all is a way to keep sane.
Figure out a decent resume, go around looking for both restaurants and hostels that might want to either do an unpaid exchange or pay me. Look for an apartment maybe, instead of an interchange, work on my English teaching certificate, so I can give classes. Think about my visa, which runs out in May, and if I end up wanting to stay (or even to leave and come back) friends say it takes forever. Try again to figure out if there is any possible way I could actually apply for a work permit myself, if I can convince someone to hire me. Think about whether I should instead go off looking in small towns in the mountains for shoemakers and see if there is some way to survive there because this might be closer to what I really want.
Look at shoemaking workshops online and try to decide if this is the way to go, and perhaps end up studying in Hungary or in the US. Try to stretch and not forget about flamenco which helps keep me going.
Listen to what seems like the wisest advice: do what you love. So then do I just get an apartment and buy a sewing machine and start drafting patterns and looking for shoemaking supplies and start trying to make them? And try to teach a bit of English to get by until I can sell some of these? Right now I am utterly envious of people who have a definite plan, however good or bad, and don't have to consider 1000 options, trying to decide which one will work.
The worst is having people give their opinions or judgements about what they think is a good idea or isn't, and what is or isn't possible. All my life I have listened to them, for a sense of duty to heed them, lest they think badly of me for not listening. That is why I have been so utterly lost and turning in every direction. No amount of education or talent will help you in this life if you cannot stand on your own two feet and say, "I am going in this direction, damn you all and your predictions and warnings!"
The most difficult is trying to make a wise, strategic decision about how best to use X amount of money, to do Y, considering other limits such as how long I can legally stay here. I have never had the ability to think strategically about my life. I meander about in a half-ass way, afraid to really commit to any real step, without a concrete plan for how to get where I am going, hoping that an answer will appear out of the blue.
I think the absolute number one is not to get freaked and start running around like a chicken with my head off, passing out resumes to every place and feeling terrible about myself. No one can succeed by freaking out and grabbing at the easiest/lowest possible way of surviving. Dominic told me it will be hard to bear difficulties and to make decisions and go forward if you don't have a goal that excites you - that is really coming from your heart. No wonder I have been wandering in the desert. But then told me he felt the most energy and a complete change in me, when I talked about my former abilities and interest in music. This is a crushed dream that I don't think can be resurrected, and I definitely cannot start making a living with it right now, and don't know if I ever want to. It's weird and unsettling when someone else mirrors back something else to me - music - piano, playing music, that I am not in touch with right now. I feel that perhaps I am missing out, am going in the wrong direction, and it makes it hard to take concrete steps I need to take in this moment.
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