Slowing down

It is Easter.  It is Spring.  A time for nature to awaken from winter and bloom and flourish.  In my interim I am finding that I have had a bit of reawakening.  The minute I graduated college I naturally needed to get a job.  Like any other college student I needed money, so I hit the pavement, or rather in our generation scoured the internet.  I got a job, a good job, I worked very hard.  Looking back there is a phrase that really sticks out to me, "sense of urgency."  The last four and a half years I have been thriving in urgency.  Sun up to sun down I was in a rush.  Even on the weekends I moved quickly to get my errands out of the way so I could get to my R&R time where I speedily buzzed through my TiVO list to make sure I saw all of my recorded shows.  Everything I did was done in a hurray.

In an earlier post I mentioned my mom asked me what I would do now that I had moved on from my job, what would consume my life next?  I really did not have an answer until today.  I realized that I am slowing down and taking time to enjoy.  I have spent time with all of my family.  I have sat down with them and really talked and listened.  Truly enjoyed their company.  I have cooked.  Not just once either, well maybe just twice, but I have really cooked things I want to eat.  Taken time to make healthy, delicious food.  Not only have I cooked but I have taken time to really taste my food.  I always ate in a hurry to get it over with, but not any more.  And I have hiked and I have ran.  Thanks to my big brother I have ran outside and reveled in this beautiful mountain landscape.  In five days I have jogged about 16 miles, a feat for me.  I have red books and I am writing as well.

I also mentioned in a past post that I could be having a quarter life crisis, but I really think that I am just growing up.  I am looking at the future and finding my way.  I am taking time to really ponder what it is that I would like to do.  When I get to Dubai I will get another job, and I will feel that urgency creep up again, but because of this down time here in North Carolina I hope that I have learned the value in just slowing down and taking my time to carve my path.

Happy Easter!

JALE

Jim And Lisa's Ecosystem:

1) No cell phone service (AT&T users beware)
2) When you need groceries it requires one to use the phrase "going into town"
3) Snakes, Bears, Six and Eight legged critters abundant (although most, I repeat MOST dwell outside)
4) Gorgeous woods, chirping birds
5) Hill Billys, although outside of JALE this is not PC, the correct term is "Mountain"
6) Splendid Sunsets
7) Fresh Air, like real actual I can breath with out sand particles choking my airways air
8) All the quiet in the world to process, "What the heck did I do?!"

I mean truly dreadful right?!

Just kidding.  JALE is a lovely place.  They live in a neighborhood that is uses the word habitat in it's title, and somehow that got replaced with Eco-system, do not ask me how.  Eric once joked that if we have kids one day when we take them to my parents house they will tell their teachers at school "We are headed off to jail for our summer vacation, " and then CPS would immediately be knocking on our door.

So far so good.  We got my the rest of my boxes up in the attic today and headed off to Greenville, South Carolina to see my precious, second cousin.  I think that must be my relation to him.  I have never been good at labeling extended family beyond the first round.  It seems all very hill billy to me, no pun intended, to label your third, fourth, eighteenth round of cousins.  At some point family is just "family," and the nitty gritty is way too time consuming.

JALE initiation
Triple Falls Hike, July 2010

My mom had a discovery that there are two different reactions to the statement, "My daughter is moving to Dubai:"

- "Oh my gosh that is so cool.  What a great adventure, you are going to have an awesome time, " spoken pretty much by anyone below the age of 40 in a truly enthusiastic excited tone.

-"....Oh....wow...That's different..." this is said by individuals who look like they just got a round of botox, their facial features are so frozen in shock that my mother would let me go to the Middle East (their version, Saudi, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc)

It's pretty interesting.  We tested the theory out at church today.  It held pretty true, although there was one exception to the rule.  I met one elderly lady who had a friends daughter go over there and she was pretty with it and knew that I was not going to be swiped up and sold into slavery (I have been told this stone faced before by others).  She was very excited for me but she also said that if I run into the Butler's I am to tell them that Mrs. Perry says hello.  I thought that was very sweet.

Still working on the job hunt.  I have a few things in the hopper, my pipe dream is still to work for TOMs shoes somehow.  That my big dream at the moment.  On the off chance that my cover letter and CV inspire them so that they will beg and plead for me to be a sales rep for them in Dubai.  What a truly awesome company.  You never know what could happen, and after all dreams are very important when you are serving hard time in JALE :)

The Night Sky of North Carolina
What I can see out the window of my cell

Step One

Our Non-Emotional Lil Jackers

And so I am here.  Step one, mission completed.  I have successfully made it to phase two in North Carolina.  That consisted of saying goodbye to my job, my friends, my roommate, and my dog.  I miss the little Jackers, although I would venture a guess that our non-emotional dog does not miss me too much, but I digress.  I spent three days in the car with my parents and after 1.5 books and a lot of Fox radio we are here.

I had my first big breakdown tonight realizing I had left everything of my past behind.  I was waiting, anticipating that the tears would come sooner than they did.  But I guess tonight is the night, I have full realization that there is no turning back.  I have made decisions that thus far I am happy with, just learning to accept them.

One thing I am not learning to accept are the HUGE insects that reside here in North Carolina.  It is funny after living in Phoenix for four and a half years I never encountered a rattle snake (thank you know who) or even a scorpion, not to mention very few cockroaches, but it has been less than five hours in the deep South and I have already transported rooms because of what I think is a hornets nest upstairs.  Once I got down stairs I cleaned up several grasshoppers, although I just had to literally pause from typing that sentence to get up, out of bed to slam dance something with six legs.  Wow this just keeps getting better, the price you pay for living in the smoky mountains.  I read a frightening statistic that the average human eats like 14 bugs a  year inadvertently.  I am no Andrew Zimmern and I am not okay with that!

My Going Away Present to my Rent-A-Car Career

I am getting on my soapbox here for just a moment, bear with me, but being a woman in this day in age, in any day in age is tricky.  When I left my job my sister heard my boss say something to his boss "does she just want an adventure?"  And then I heard another boss said to a friend, "I have seen girls chase boys before and 99.9% of the time it does not work out."  The first question I get from everyone is "Oh my gosh are you engaged?!"  And then they check my left hand expectingly.  No, I am not engaged, yes I want to have an adventure, and I am following a boy, sort of.  I am doing this because I always expected that I would do something with my life.  And renting cars in Mesa, Arizona, just didn't qualify as "something."  Not that there is anything wrong with that.  In fact in the past week since I have left my job I have contacted someone in one way or another to get numbers, find out stats, and just check in.  I am deranged, or worse, even though I quit, I really actually did care.  Do care.  I do not know.  But I want to do something.  I want my Hollywood Ending.  Eric used to always tell me "big risk, big reward," although at the time he was taking the risk and I was being left.  And now I am taking the risk, a big one, a huge crazy risk, and I do not know what will happen.  I do not know how to totally handle it all, but at the end of the day, I want to say that I did it.  I lived.

And I will, although right now all I can say is I am unemployed and living with my parents...and some really big bugs.