Life Slows Down

When Eileen famously said "You don't get what you want out of Walkabout, you get what you need," I had wondered what it was that I needed that I would eventually learn or understand after Walkabout.  Now, I know.

I like being suuuuuper busy all the time.  This past semester was the most ridiculous thing in the world - I had a crap load of work all the time taking four Graham classes and two OSU classes.  My workload slowed down significantly after Walkabout started in that I had less to do, but what I was doing took a lot out of me.  I'd come home from rehearsal every day exhausted.

Now, I'm spending the majority of my time alone, doing work that is definitely significant for the organization, but I still feel like I'm wasting time.  Matan has me working on the website (which is looking really cool still, but I won't disclose the address because it's not finished yet), the translating, and we're both almost finished with the grant writing.  After I'm finished with this workload, what next?

I have a meeting next week on Sunday with Hana, my mentor from Sadaka-Reut, the Israeli-Palestinian youth group.  We're going to discuss what my role with the organization will be.  Sadaka-Reut is a more established group than La Escuelita, and I have a feeling like I will have more to do with them.

The thing that I'm realizing is that it's good to maybe take two months to have everything come to a grinding halt in order to figure yourself out.  I pride myself on being a pretty self-aware person, but right now I'm surprising myself.  For example: in situations where I could possibly be lost, or when I'm confused about something and my stress level is rising, my heart is beating, and I'm sweating?  It's almost easier to use Hebrew then.  When I'm just walking into a cafe and the woman asks me if I want to sit in the smoking section or the non-smoking section (remember those, Columbus?), I stutter and become completely flustered.  Maybe that shows that under pressure, I have a better knack of switching into auto-pilot, switching to the mode that gets crap done quickly.  When I'm in leisure, I'm lazy?  Or maybe it's just that I have more time to overthink everything.  Like right now.  (I'm lying on my back on Udi and Alon's bed as they're holding a workshop in the living room about Carl Jung, listening to Jim Gaffigan/writing this blog.)

So what is it that I NEED that I'm getting out of Walkabout?  Well, I've only been here about a week and a half, and so this is probably going to change, but I feel like I'm learning how to be by myself.  I don't like it.  At all.  It gets very lonely just sort of wandering around Tel Aviv by yourself.  But then I do things/see things/hear things that make me proud of myself, things I wouldn't have been able to do with other people (example: I'm learning the bus routes.  I made a decision today as to which bus to take WITHOUT AN ISRAELI HELPING ME).

I'm a very weird person - at home, there are days where I really don't want to do anything/be with anyone and so I'll just go back to my house and be alone.  I think the thing is that I like being alone, but I don't really know how to do it properly.  I hope that this will teach me how to be alone properly - how to be my own company, my own entertainment, my own friend.  That way, when I am traveling alone again, or find myself in another country or outside of my comfort zone, I can relax and be alone and feel comfortable about it without getting too panicked or crazy.  I'm not saying I want to learn how to not have friends.  In some ways, I think being apart from my friends right now has strengthened the friendships.  I just think it's important for me to learn how to just BE without anything else.  Maybe that's the biggest thing I NEED out of Walkabout.  To learn how to be without structure.

Today I met up with Matan at Tel Aviv University.  It's a really nice place, and it had rained that morning, so the air was cool and there was a wonderful breeze.  I met Matan in the Social Sciences building, and we went down to the cafe to discuss what further work we needed to accomplish for this grant and for the website.  In the end, because my computer's internet was being finnicky (my computer does not like Israel's connections), we went upstairs to one of the building's computer labs and went online.  I showed him the progress on the website.  At the end of our meeting, he did a very Israeli handshake (I have Israeli slang in a deep voice running through my head right now, but none of you know what "hey!  Achi!" means, so never mind) and told me he was really impressed with my level of commitment and everything that I had completed so far.  He said, "We're going to run out of things to give you to do!"  I said I hoped that would be the case, because I'd rather have helped in every possible way I can to La Escuelita than sat on my butt on a computer sort of futzing around with a website only to find at the end of two months that there were a bazillion other things to do that I totally missed out on, either because communication was weird or because I was lazy.  My biggest Walkabout fear as of right now is wasting time.

The thing is, for the people who work at La Escuelita, it's not their primary job, so they have a lot of other stuff to do.  I, who have nothing else to do but go to the beach and write poetry or something ridiculous, am seeing a lull in the speed of my life.  Maybe that's a good thing?  I don't know.  Regardless, tomorrow my day is looking pretty great: I'm gunna go to the beach, come home in the afternoon and do some more website work, then make Udi and Alon tacos for dinner.  On Thursday, Avi is picking me up and his family and I are going to Jerusalem over the weekend!!!  I'm really excited.  We're going to do the ISRAEL THING, which is to do a 'ti'ul', or a day trip - pack lunch, get in the car, drive to wherever it is we're going, have a picnic, take a hike.  I think we're probably going to go to the Wall again, which is exciting.  I loved going the last time, which was over two years ago.  I'm excited to see it again.

So much has happened to me in two years, I've just realized.  So much has happened to me just in the past year, and while we're at it, let's narrow down again: SO. MUCH. HAS. HAPPENED. TO. ME. OVER. WALKABOUT.  Not just Israel - CCT included.  I had no idea how all-consuming this was going to be, how much of myself I was going to pore into all of this.  All I have to say is Thank God I have street smarts - Tel Aviv is certainly not exempt of it's fair share of Creepy People, People Who Want to Swindle You, or People Who Are Just Mean.  Should I thank my mother more than God that I have those smarts?  Who knows.