Al diablo con desorden

I hate my disposition. When I planned to live in Peru, I was convinced I could make it work. In my head I imagined myself being hired for a position and attaining international experience by utilizing my Telecommunications and Spanish degree. I was wrong.

It turns out that the government has poor communication skills. Shocker. The government tells me that I need a company to hire me via contract to get my immigration card. Employers say I need my immigration card for them to hire me. Damn you conflicting advice. Damn the lack of order. Nobody listened to me.

Most job interviews went extraordinarily well. At every interview, I made sure to show to the interviewer the information that was given to me from both the Peruvian Ministry of Exterior Relations and the Peruvian Immigrations Office. In this info were clearly written directions on how to legally hire an alien along with a telephone number of the Immigrations Officer whom I met with for any employer with questions. Followed by this, the interviews concluded with a, “Le llamo” (We’ll call you).

Some called wanting to hire me illegally. However being an illegally paid immigrant means you work for peanuts. Others emailed me saying that they could not hire me because I did not yet have my immigration card. One interview for a real-estate management position lasted three hours with 90% of it being in Spanish. The Peruvian that interviewed me studied abroad at Kelly School of Business at IU. Small world! I thought for sure I was going to get the job. Nope, a few days later I received an email from the employer explaining that I needed my immigration card for employment. FML

I caved. I took an English teaching position that earned very little money. I needed to do something. It got so bad that I began to stay home on weekends. I excessively argued on busses. Every time you get onto a bus in Lima, a man called the “cobrador” will charge you for using the bus service. And they are known for ripping off anyone possible. Some lie to your face and say they aren’t robbing you as they give you your change. Unfortunately, I can be a very harsh person and have belittled some cobradores for being the problem and scum of their own country. That was my money that they were stealing from me, and I needed it to pay rent. I felt bad for being so negative with them afterwards. They are even poorer than I am, and many were probably never taught that it’s wrong to steal.

At some point, I knew it was time to come home. I barely had enough money to pay rent, and I didn’t have any savings for emergencies or to pay college debt. Now I’m in Palm Harbor, FL. I have sent out over a 100 resumes and cover letters since I’ve been back. Only 4 employers responded with each leading to a rabbit trail. As Josh Longbrake puts it, “I am a valuable human being but not valuable enough for someone to have already hired me, or at least that’s the voice I hear from my résumé”. I just want to be back in Peru having success.

I miss Peru dearly. It’s all I think about. I miss my friends and the family I stayed with. I never had a chance to say goodbye to some of my closest friends. I don’t know when I’ll see them again. That hurts. Call me crazy but I hate speaking English all the time. My Spanish was getting to a point where some thought I was a native speaker. I hate defining what being “fluent” is, but I was getting close.

It was my dream to live and work there, and now I’m back in the US. I felt as if I was abruptly awoken and can’t go back to that great dream you never wanted to wake up from. I’m struggling with the feeling of failure. “It’s not my fault… it was just a short chapter. That’s life,” I keep telling myself. Now what? I feel directionless.

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and will never leave me to face my perils alone.” – Thomas Merton

Written by Josh Longbrake

This post was taken from Josh Longbrake’s blog. I can relate and feel very similar. Job searching is no fun.

“There needs to be a support group for anyone who is unemployed and job hunting. It’s the most humbling place. I’ve put out dozens of résumés, all of which scream I am a valuable human being but not valuable enough for someone to have already hired me, or at least that’s the voice I hear from my résumé. My résumé has the voice of an old Jewish mother. It’s not helpful.

I have found that it’s possible to check my email more than 200 times in one day. It’s gotten so bad, my desire to hear back from potential employers, that I put that little mail icon on my phone on the furthest screen possible away from the home screen, like an alcoholic who hides his Maker’s Mark behind the box of Wheat Thins on the top shelf of the cabinet. It doesn’t really do anything helpful, but it feels like a step in right direction.

But I keep going because Kirby keeps telling me that it’s going to be ok and because, despite my general disposition, I believe her. A few days ago I took the L down to the Tribune where she works and I found myself hating everyone I passed as they went to and from their jobs. I saw a baby and I hated that baby. It’s bad to hate babies, but I hated that one. I felt bad a few hours later, if that helps.

The most difficult thing to do when I am depressed is to make things. I don’t want to take photos because I don’t like my photos. I don’t want to write because it’s mopey and whiney. I don’t want to read books about getting out of creative slumps because those people are assholes who creatively wrote books about getting out of creative slumps and made thousands of dollars. You’ve gotta read those books when you’re in a good place so you can access what those assholes said from memory.

I know it’s going to be ok. I believe Kirby when she tells me that she loves me and believes in me. I know I’ll get a job. Belief is the most difficult thing in the universe, harder than doing your own taxes (don’t do that) or understanding women (don’t do that) or trying to understand I Heart Huckabees (“This is me, this is you, and over here, this is the Eiffel Tower, right, it’s Paris!”). As long as I have belief then I’ll try to keep at it.

Right now I’m going to go take Jack for a walk, God bless his doggy soul for being so patient with me, and then go to a movie to enter into someone else’s story. Then I’ll come home, fall asleep, and give it another go tomorrow.”

Click on Josh Longbrake to read more.

Moving Forth

“A great sin: the fear, and ultimately paralyzation, of becoming.

You are not who you want to be, and the path is unclear, so you sit down in the dirt. The cloud of dust is comforting for awhile as it has the illusion of movement, but you’ve been fooled. The dust settles on your increasingly stiffened muscles. Rigamortis, God forbid. God forbid.

God forbid you sit in on the path and refuse maturation. God forbid you let the dust settle and you deny redemption. God forbid the fear of taking a step forward or backward or left or right and you deny process. God, in great humility, does not forbid failure. God does not forbid mistakes. God does not forbid missteps. Go fail and fail well! is the voice of God. Do nothing! is the voice of evil.

Stillness is not dualistic. There is a good, sacred stillness, and there is an evil stillness: the stillness of fear. You cannot stay in the desert. You may go to the desert, and you may be in the desert for a time, but if you stay then you choose death. Leave the desert. Leave now while you can, while you are still alive. Leave while you are able to choose to work out your life with good fear and with good trembling. We have so little time and we have so much time.”

I read this the other day in Josh Longbrake’s blog. Then I read it again and again. It speaks to the offbeat rhythm I’ve been walking. The past few months here in Lima, I have been struggling to make decisions that have potential to change the direction of my life. I let fear settle in. One of my greatest failures is not wanting to move forward.

Moving away from the place I grew up in changed me. Each location I’ve lived in has helped me innovatively evolve into whom I inspire to be. Five years ago I used to be petrified of change, but moving away from what I know as home altered that. Before then, I was never one to embrace change. Change, sometimes it’s great. Sometimes it’s terrible. Sometimes it’s bittersweet. It can be a web woven with decisions. The small decisions affect the big decisions. The future will never be fully certain. Change can’t be stopped, but it can be irrigated. Don’t sit still unless you genuinely feel the need to so. Seek wise guidance, be brave, and take control.

Life Moves Fast

Yesterday, I ate something that started to make my stomach ache off and on. Curse you Peruvian food. Mexican food is better. At night the pain became worse leading into incoherent nightmares and waking up every 20 minutes followed by a slow “I better slowly waddle to the bathroom down the hall so I don’t poop or puke on somebody else’s upstairs floor”. Pain like that in the belly made me wonder if it was similar to being pregnant. Probably not but it did make me wonder how my sister is doing. Being sick in another country always goes hand in hand with being homesick. I miss my family and friends in the US. My sister is pregnant with my first nephew. Wait, since when did my siblings and I become old enough to think about marriage and or babies?

Life, it moves fast. Let’s review. My senior year of college my dog, Desi, was put to sleep. We got her when I was in 6^th grade. I miss her so much. My parents had her with them when they were visiting my grandma in Florida. I never got a chance to say goodbye because I was at college.

Shortly after, I was flying to Florida with my brother to say goodbye to my grandma for one last and final time. She had a stroke out of nowhere, and it was fatal. My grandma was someone that has always been a part of my life. Now that she is gone, it’s weird. My grandma, June Hill, is truly a hero in my heart for being the person she chose to be all her life.

Two months later, I graduated from Indiana University (IU). It feels like just the other day my friend, Jon Bonomo, and I were trying to get excited for being new freshmen at IPFW a year before I transferred to IU.

After graduation came 14 weddings. My close friends are getting married. Aaah… wait, weren’t we just in high school feeling like a badasses because we just got our driver’s license?

Now, college is over, friends are married or making wedding plans, and I’m looking for a career.

As most of you know, I’m back in Lima, Peru. Let me be honest. This my blog, I say what I want. Lima is the ugliest city I have ever been in. People talk about Detroit, Michigan being ugly, but it would do them good to travel around Lima for a day or two before they talk about other cities. My snot at the end of the day is often dark from being in this city. My fingernails are darker than normal, and my white shoes quickly grew dark from smog. Most of the public transportation seems to be from the 70′s or 80′s. They’re poorly maintained buses with holes in the dusty floors and windows that rattle making you wonder if the car will hold in once piece. Walking through the streets makes you wonder if your life is being shortened with every breath inhaled full of fumes from noisy exhaust pipes and trashed flooded streets. It never rains here, so there is nothing to wash the buildings or the dusty streets. Infrastructure is ugly, and many buildings are old and seem to be crumbling, which poses the question of earthquake safety.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m back. Why did I come back to a place like this? I’m a bilingual alumni from a prestigious university in the U.S. with a solid Bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications and Spanish. Surely I could have moved anywhere in the States to start making 40 – 60 grand, and yet I moved here.

I believe in a God who calls us to do strange things. I never wanted to come back here. I passionately hated being here in ’09. I hardly knew enough Spanish to establish depth in friendships. I was lonely and deeply depressed when I was here. But ever since I got back, my friendships with Peruvians truly began through keeping in contact with them via Facebook and Skype for two years. Strange huh?

When I came here a month ago, I felt accepted with open arms. I love that (most) Peruvians are super willing to help others. My Spanish is better than it’s ever been, which allows me to deepen my friendships based on my second language. My heart for Lima, Peru has changed. It’s the people in Lima I came back for, not the city itself. It’s having great friendships that made all the difference. How does God fit in all this “me being back in Peru”? I am not sure. But, as President Obama says, “Make no mistake”. I have no doubt that God has a plan for me here. As for now, I am patiently waiting to find out what it is. Life moves fast, and I don’t want to skip out on His calling.