Where To Begin

Where to begin, with this week. I got my new Florida driver’s license, registered to vote, went on a job interview that consisted entirely of my taking a practice SAT for the first time since 1992, finished a rib-knit scarf I began in 2006, received my official multi-page Invitation To Apply for New Zealand residency and got started on getting NZ social work registration, sent shaky emails to my new senators and congressional rep (miss you, Patty and Maria! Stay sweet, Jim!) saw a great egret attack and dismember a baby duckling right in front of my eyes while I was walking down the street, read a lot of political news, and learned that my bank failed last night.

My low-level freaked-out-ness continues—there are the specific issue, like the major one of my not having a job in Miami but still having to pay my student loans and pay exorbitant immigration application fees. I haven’t heard anything from the social work recruiters I got in touch with several weeks ago; I called up just a regular temp agency and asked them where I could send my woefully pruned-down resume, and they were like, “Yeah, don’t even bother sending that in, we have way too many people looking for work.” I’m calling my investment company today to find out what’s happened and I’m scared to even find out—I think I’m just going to assume that everything’s gone.

And then, of course, there are the bigger issues I am cursing my lack of economic understanding—I don’t even know what questions to ask. I hardly know how to read the news: is this bailout happening or what? What’s going to happen to the money I have in my money market account at WaMu? I see numbers like 700 billion and I don’t even know what that means, I can’t even understand that number—although I do get the sense that it’s rather a large one, and it makes me wonder where exactly that money has been all this time, and why it hasn’t been used for, oh I don’t know, universal health care or something, but I’m sure there are no-doubt-excellent reasons for that. Fortunately for me, since I haven’t been able to chat much with my economist boyfriend this week, telecommunications in the Sudan being wonkier than usual, internet videos have stepped into the breach, as they so often do.

Rachel Maddow lays it out for me:

And this dude pretty much sums up what I’ve been feeling about the whole thing:There’s a lot more to freak out about, on all levels, personal and political—the will-they-won’t-they nature of the Presidential debate that’s supposed to happen tonight, and of course the actual election itself, reading all the articles Lisa put up the other day, all the work that has to happen for me to get my residency application in, the fact that I have no health insurance, the fact that I have no job in either hemisphere.

There’s a lot to be grateful for, too, of course: I have somewhere to stay and food to eat, I have many many opportunities and privileges, I have good friends and family members, I have the amazing chance to emigrate, I have my health. It all coexists, it all balances—not just for me, I’m sure, but for probably everyone reading this. It’s negotiating that balance that’s tricky: understanding and recognizing what all the big picture stuff means for me in my own little picture. That’s the thing that is keeping me awake at night, spinning the anxiety tighter and tighter as the days push along.