Snow storm now; quite a lot of it this time. Outside, everything covered – cars doing their best to skate across the snow-blanketed roads. Last night, a total of three people in my scope of vision delighted me by falling on their bums. Sushi with Anish at Sushi Lounge on Avenue A, in the old neighborhood, and then some TV watching at his nearby pad. Anish has DVR, a phenomenon that I am still getting used to each time I see it. Dealing with TiVos has been traumatic enough – what is this DVR? Strange, beautiful – we watched two episodes of Scrubs he had taped and the best thing – real, howling, uncontrollable laughter – pealed from my lips. Scrubs can always bring it for me – I haven’t watched the show in months and months due to the demands of my job(s). If an episode involves a dance number, chances are I will be very happy. Donald Faison – airbanding to “Poison” – was excellent. Always such a pleasure to see actors breaking out the triple threat …
… over our sushi, I told Anish that I’ve been thinking.
“I’m stuck,” I said. “Stagnant. Underachieving. I’ve been unhappy at work now for a while but I don’t feel qualified to do anything else.”
“So then what?” he asked.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking,” I said. “I think I need a break. From New York.”
“Yeah? How long?”
“I don’t know … a couple of years?”
“Wow.”
“I know.”
“Where would you go? What would you do?”
Good question. But the thought was fresh and, as such, untainted.
At home, I began to look up TEFL jobs. I’d like to work abroad, continue making money, and as Pete says, the quickest, easiest way to do that abroad is to teach English. I don’t mind quick. I don’t mind easy right now. What I do mind is what I’m seeing on the internet – 4K to teach English in Argentina for 3 months? You have to pay in order to work? What the heck? Where on earth would I come up with that much money?
And then:
Heifer! My back shot up straight. Heifer! What about Heifer? I couldn’t bring her with me – it would be cruel, selfish – what does a cat need to do in Tanzania (for I’d already thought of living in Tanzania)? Ridiculous. Plane trips to Buenos Aires (I’d also thought of Argentina)? No. Cruel. But how to leave her behind? With who? Absolutely no strangers – she must stay with a trusted friend who would understand that I would come back for her in a couple of years. But who? Who would take her? And a couple of years without my Little Miss Tiger Stripes?
I sat, slumped, in a heap of glum. Naive, I thought. Always so naive. Of course it wasn’t as easy as just picking up and leaving. Money. Money, when I scrape by each month.
So I started pecking at the usual job sites – mediabistro, monster, Craig’s List. Applying to jobs – frustrating, so frustrating, seeing that there is little I’m qualified for.
Grad school? Again, money.
Volunteering? Money.
It is a frustrating thing to think, for the first time in years, “Yes!” … and then to sit down to a reality of “No.”