Expertise

I ought to be getting ready to run down the road and get on a bus to go to a little party in town; instead I am sitting on my couch with a terrible headache and a queasy tummy, miserably sipping Lady Grey tea and trying to enjoy the last smidge of sunset before I give up completely and get into bed at 7:30.

That said, things in general are going fine for me: I have nice friends, I live in a cute (if freezing cold) house in a great city, I am (usually) healthy, I have some new ideas about some art I want to do and a pile of great books on my bedside table, I ate homemade minestrone for dinner, and I just got paid today, a fact for which I have not yet finished being grateful. So it’s all good in the hood for me, regardless of these vague flu-like symptoms that have been plaguing me since this afternoon, when I came back to work from a meeting in Porirua and promptly took off my shoes and socks and laid my head down on my desk. In short, I have a great life with nothing to complain about.

And that’s the end of this entry! Ta da!

No. Ha, no.

I think and talk a lot about the idea of mutual exclusivity—mainly, how few things in life…are that. You know, like you can love someone and hate him at the same time, or want to live two places simultaneously, or sort of miss being a kid and also be devoutly grateful to be an adult, et cetera et cetera et cetera. One of the nice things about being a slightly irrational person, I find, besides the undiluted pleasure I get in driving real math-y libertarian types gibberingly, frothingly insane at certain types of parties, is a general level of comfort with containing multitudes and with all the things in heaven and earth undreamt-of in my philosophy. It makes certain things about being a human being a little more relaxed.

So that’s why it’s possible for me to be exquisitely aware of all my privileges and the general goodness of my little life, and also…sort of wish that some things were different right now. Mainly, I am over this transition thing, completely and totally done with being new, with orientating, with “settling in.” I want my routines to be so intuitive that I don’t even think about them; I want my schedule to be a thing of impeccably organized beauty. I want to be actively good at something again.

I was thinking about this today at work—which, by the way, continues to completely kick my ass every single day, in ways I didn’t even know were possible—and remembering just three years ago when I knew what I was doing every day from nine to five and was actually considered to be quite good at my job. I was something of an expert in certain areas, now that I look back, I was someone to ask advice from. I had all sort of big ideas about projects and populations and position papers and modalities of practice, and when I said stuff at meetings people would nod their heads thoughtfully and go “Hmmm. That makes a lot of sense.”

Even bellydance, a couple of years ago, right before I left Seattle the first time: I wasn’t an expert there, but girl, you know what, I could go to class and know what I was doing. I could lead and follow and shimmy and extend and drop my hand when I was supposed to drop my hand and I could figure out when I was making a mistake, and sometimes I could even fix that mistake all on my own.

And then, as longtime readers will attest, I decided to let all that go and leave it behind just because—just because everything was safe and familiar and I didn’t see any change or possibility of change on my horizon (and who knows, by the way, if that was even true) and I think it was a full year before I stopped noticing the accent, before I stopped having to double check my change, before I stopped hugging myself at random moments of the day and thinking gleefully I’m in New Zealand. I was much more comfortable, then, with the idea of trying new things and of being sort of bad at everything—crossing the street, facing the corners and not the front in tribal formation, not giggling when someone said “I need the toilet” instead of “I have to go to the bathroom”–because hey! I was in a new country! I was on my OE! What else could you expect?

A year of intense transition later, and all I want is to be good at something. Anything. I’d be thrilled if I could be good at staying awake past eleven o’clock, or preparing for eight different types of weather when I get dressed in the morning, or responding to emails in a timely fashion, let alone actually understanding what I’m supposed to be doing at work or being able to do a barrel turn at dance class. I would settle, at this point, for being good at writing this damn blog, actually.

Annoyingly, I know the answer to all of these petty worries is: just keep doing it. Keep going to work, keep going to class. Keep saying “Yeah, apparently I have a bit of an accent” when I’m introduced to someone new, keep factoring in the exchange rate on my student loans, keep getting to know my far-flung friends and my everywhere family and my strangely familiar city. Keep being bad at things and keep hoping to be better, and maybe one day to be good again (at something). Keep remembering that it’s possible to feel three hundred million ways about three hundred million things, three hundred million times a day.