A pronouncement.

I will revisit these themes later, but in the interest of brevity and filling the minds of the content-hungry twitter-fucked digital zombies that stumble from novelty to novelty, here are the important parts.

1) I am bad at goodbyes.
2) I am also bad at sticking to a schedule.

I am not going back to Korea. Most people knew this, save for my Dad who I think is still convinced I'm headed for Singapore because I mentioned it once in a phone call. The inanity of my own words rarely dawns on me until they leave my body, and my fingers are further from my brain than my mouth is, sooooooo yeah.

An actual thing I have said:
"So I heard that when you sing, it's like doves fly out of your mouth."

It's not that I don't want to go back. Believe me, being ludicrously overpaid in a country where you can get utterly ripped on the good stuff for less than the cost of a decent restaurant is basically heaven. I worked a laughable amount of hours which left me with plenty of time to pursue other interests and make friends, which of course translated to "never leave the apartment" and "only ever associate with like three people." Someday they will make a pill that fixes me, but I am stubborn enough to insist that I get better without chemical assistance. I will say this while drinking and somehow not suffer agonizing brainspasms due to cognitive dissonance, because I am a superhero.

I miss Jay, Mojave, and Ringo almost every single day. Even if I go back, they won't be there. I will uproot myself to go chasing after a memory, throwing myself down into the maw of nostalgia chasing a ghost long after it's returned to Hades and the Mneumosyne and okay this metaphor has officially eaten this paragraph. Line break, indent, new ideas.

I did not enjoy my job. That's not the fault of anyone I worked with, who were all wonderful people that had to deal with the worst parts of me, neither is it the fault of my kids, who were (as you know) hilaridorable and taught me way more than I taught them. I disliked working six days a week, which as I am told, is now no longer company policy. I disliked using outdated, ineffectual classroom materials, which as I am told, is now no longer company policy, either.

In fact, the term after I left apparently removed nearly every aspect of the job I found objectionable. Three days before I left, I was offered a position at a nearby university (a women's university) for which the previous teacher's main instructional aid was seasons 1-4 of Supernatural. I would have been given complete control over what I taught for what levels, respect, a title, and temporary accommodations with the students until they were able to secure me a house. If they had mentioned how much they would have paid me, I might not have had the determination to come back home. Ever. But, I did, because there are some things that are worth more to me than success, respect, a job. . . Nevermind.



Not the girl, no, but I don't blame you for assuming that.

Korea was never home. Rome wasn't home, either, but there were plenty of people willing to tell me it could be home if I paid them enough. There was no community, we were all just victims of circumstances, thrown together because everyone else in the country looked at us like fashionable medical oddities. I love my friends to death, don't get me wrong, but there were a whole host of people I drank with just because we were the only folks who understood.

Kinda like high school, you know? And I got complaints about being forced back into a high school state of anything.

Worcester understands that sometimes, you go through a week where you need open mic therapy every night of the week. Worcester has, quite frankly, an irrational number of open mic nights. I love it. Ms. Choi will be making an appearance at the Dirty Gerund this week, which is why I linked the video above. That's the only reason I linked the video above. Stop looking at me like that.

I'm off topic. One beer-soaked night prior to my departure, Jay was wailing that he'd never see me again, making me swear that I'd come back to Pohang. I told him that I needed a vacation, and we agreed that three months was a reasonable limit.

Hey, when you're flush with cash and young, with no real responsibilities? It is. Also, I missed my girlfriend, so there.

I gave myself the time limit of three months to see how life with Spider compared to the mid-level-rockstar status of being a horrible rugmonster to Korean children. Given that it's six months now since I left, I think you know how that turned out.

I am constantly reminded that I never gave Ringo, Jay, or Mojave a proper goodbye, just a 'see you in a few months' which I should have known that I wouldn't follow up on. I'm bad at sticking to schedules, remember? Especially schedules that hinge on assheadedly complicated visa requirements and regulations.

I'm not done traveling, though. In much the same way that I stuck it out in Pohang because I had my boys supporting me, I'm going to tough it out in Worcester for a while longer. There are still things to experience, folks to meet, creative projects to start. It's all fresh and new, at least to me, and there's an entire society of people who live and breathe literary talent, and this is not something I have ever been exposed to before.

Pohang in February was dusty, grit-caked and still swamped with the occasional heavily stained snowdrift. I was an uncomfortable fish in a small pond full of eels. I'm glad I was there at the time I was, but that time is long gone. I need to look towards the future now.

Also, I need a goddamn job.