February 4th,
2020
12:54 A.M.
Montevideo, Uruguay
(To begin, if you understand why the title is so clever,
give yourself a gold star.)
Recently I’ve been feeling restless. It’s not anyone’s
doing, (okay, maybe it’s my doing), but I’ve been struggling with my real
purpose. I know that when you move to a different country, everyone expects you
to have the time of your life, post the cool pictures of all the incredible
sights, and talk about how you’re never coming back because who knew life could
be this good?!
Part of that’s true.
I’m already looking
at schools in the U.K. for after my time here, and I am having the time of my
life and seeing incredible views. But nothing is sunshine and rainbows all the
time. I’ve been experiencing this lately, especially since it’s summer vacation.
I’ve never seen a country so shut down after New Years. If I were home in the
United States, school or work starts up again shortly after January 1st,
and the new year hits you before you’re ready for it. In Uruguay, most of the
shops shut down (or have minimal hours), few people go outside between 11am-4pm
(due to the heat), and the people that aren’t in their houses have left the
country to go on vacation. (Even my doctor told me she couldn’t see me because
she was on holiday in Brazil.)
I’m not used to this. If I’m not busy, then I’m not being
productive, and if I’m not being productive then I’m more stressed than if I
were busy with hardly enough time to eat and sleep. I don’t want to go so far
as to say that most jobs get the month of January off for summer vacation, but
for the vast amount of people that do, I am a part of that group. Of course I
could do some traveling, and I did do a week trip with some friends to another
small city with a beach, but at some point, money runs out and smaller
responsibilities keep me in Montevideo.
It’s moments like these when I tell myself staying up all
night watching The Lord of the Rings
is a perfectly acceptable use of my time because the only thing I have to do the
following day is make breakfast and go to coffee with a friend. (Side-note: I
found a fabulous coffee shop in a country taken over by yerba! HALLELUJAH.)
Some of you might be reading this thinking, “Oh, give me a BREAK. Nothing to do
but breakfast in bed and taking 3 hours to walk along the beach? SUCH a tough
life.”
I think I would have thought the same thing if I were in the
midst of studying for an upcoming exam or had finished a really tough work
week. But now that I’m in it, I really miss that slight drama of not quite
being sure if I’ll have enough time to finish everything. On some level, it’s
completely unhealthy that I need so much stress to feel satisfied. (Don’t
worry, I’m trying to work on that…emphasis on “trying”!) But recently I
finished The Good Place on Netflix,
(a series I highly recommend and am about to spoil for you, so if you want to
watch it, stop reading this paragraph and pick up at the next one). The series
tells the story of Eleanor Shellstrop (played by Kristen Bell) and her attempts
to dodge any or all attention after accidently being sent to the “Good Place” when
she should have been sent to the “Bad Place” after death. Eventually she finds
other friends with similar problems, and through 4 seasons of intense
excitement and suspense, they make it to the actual Good Place, only to find
that the people there are tired of everything being perfect all the time. As
Jason puts it after Michael asks him why his lifelong dream got boring so quickly,
“Monkeys in go-karts was fun for a while. Then I was like, ‘You know what would
be cool? Hippos in go-karts!’…I did like 50 combos and then I just kinda wanted
to hang out with you guys again.”
I must say, I’ve never had the dream to ride go-karts with
monkeys or hippos (maybe dogs?), but I’m coming to the realization that I never
really thought about my life once I got to Uruguay. Did I know ahead of time
that I would change as a person? Did I know I would be really challenged? Did I know that there would be days I would
cry simply because I was tired?
Of course. I knew all of those things.
