Dispatches from Dreamland: Part I: The Journey to the Journey

Hey y'all! I'm in Colombia! No, really. South America: I am in it.

And if I eat enough obleas, it is in me.

How? Why? What? Why?

Let me start at the beginning. About eighteen months ago, I was involved in one of my favorite activities: lengthy late night conversation with my witty and interesting husband. We were talking about our future, what we should hope for and start working for. These things take time, but remember, it may be moving faster for me than some of you. When we talked about five years in the future, and more, all of our plans kept coming down to one sticking point: I need to decide what to do when I grow up.

Here's the list of stuff I've done over the years:
Baby wrangler
Wal-Mart drone
Burger joint waitslave
Kentucky Fried Chicken minion
Uptight college dorm RA
International airport security checkpoint thug
Pizza slinger
English language buffoon/teacher
Personal henchman to a world-renowned mathematician.

So, you know, I'm mildly effective at a number of menial pursuits. Somewhere in there, I ended up with a bachelor's degree in Spanish, without the teaching license I started out after and abandoned. Impressive, no? No. My grades were average, at best, and obviously, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I graduated with a son on the way and a sweet gig as a stay-at-home mom stretching out before me.

It wasn't just the harsh reality of repaying student loans for a degree I don't use in any lucrative sense that made me think about the future. As an unattached student, I had little passion for professional goals, and it showed in my GPA and attendance record; but as a mother, I felt it. I felt like sacrificing, working, and dreaming, to make something great. I felt that the result, my family, would reflect on me in a way I never felt about my grades. Now that I have done that for many years, I can't imagine going back to barely tolerating some job and doing it poorly just to pay the bills. I want to continue to live this way, pouring myself into things I love, no matter how hard they are to do. I could have more kids and extend this labor of love, but just typing that made my uterus start scanning the classified ads for a new place to live. It's not going to happen. So, what's next for me?

Turns out I really should have gotten that teachers license, because even though we unschool, I pay a lot of attention to what my kids are and aren't learning. Watching them learn new things and grow has inspired me to work with other peoples' kids too.

  Hi, can I unschool your kid? Just drop him off in his pajamas and I'll set out the chicken feed and art supplies. Don't worry, he'll be a genius in a few years.

J to the K. L to the OL, but really, an idea in my head started to take shape: I felt passionately about tutoring kids in my town who are still in the process of learning English. Many of them come from Mexico. Through connections I made while volunteering at the local elementary school, I started working with such a boy this year, which was very rewarding; but my inability to speak and understand Spanish well inhibited my ability to communicate with his family. We managed, but I really could have used immersion.*

*immersion is what you call going somewhere where they speak the language you are trying to learn, and sounding like a totally confused fool for at least a few weeks, in order to improve skills rapidly. 

Which brings me back to that conversation with the aforementioned witty interesting husband (he's quite photogenic and good at tennis too). At that time, I was less clear on how and what I would do whatever I would do, but I knew one thing for certain: It was time to brush up the bilingualism. My rusty Spanish would not do. I said, tentatively, "I think, in order to do this right, I'm going to need to travel and stay somewhere Spanish-speaking, for a long time, like a month." My encouraging husband nearly cut that sentence off with a supportive "DO IT!" and the rest is bloggery.

 I calculated the cost and started the search for summer work to pay for it. That's how I ended up selling other people's plants and produce at the Tillamook Farmers Market last summer, working for the scrappiest local food supporter on the north coast of Oregon, Food Roots, running their FarmTable.

By fall, I had selected a country: Colombia, and a city: Manizales, and a time: June 2014. Why all of these things? Why not Mexico? Spanish isn't exactly the same from region to region, and there aren't any Colombians living in Tillamook. Well, I figured, if I'm going to save up and plan for a year and go really far away and be gone from my family for several weeks, I would want to accomplish other things as well, like fulfill my long time dream of seeing the country that gave the world cumbia music. It just so happens that a folk music festival takes place in June here, in the small town of Ibague. I was unable to find a good place to stay in Ibague, but a nearby city, Manizales, had lots of good options on a world-wide network of informal house sharers, Airbnb. After choosing a home, paying for my stay, and communicating with the family, I was able to find a good place where I might get some experience in a classroom, with kids. I knew I'd want to volunteer while traveling, because to me, that makes everything more fun. The family hosting me recommended a local kids foundation, where I sent my resume and secured a job as a volunteer.


REAL TALK
Confession time: This all looks like the work of a fearless independent go-getter, but appearances can often be deceiving. Years of staying home, raising kids, changed me, for the better in some ways, for the worse in others. I don't know why, exactly, but about six years ago, I started to experience something like social anxiety. It was a new and worrisome set of physical symptoms that I didn't understand.

I felt like a sick, achy, sack of tired all throughout  my last pregnancy, and George began to exhibit behavior that had his school teachers concerned, which made me concerned. As rewarding as this job was, the pressure of being a mom to many was slowing killing my desire to do anything but stay home and focus on my family. With few exceptions, if my phone rang, or if there was a knock at the door, or if I had to walk down a street full of people, or go to a room full of people, my heart would start to race and I would feel nauseous. I used to be a proud and loud extrovert, spending all of my time with friends, feeling lonely and bored alone without that interaction, but I changed into a reclusive homebody. This new me was unrecognizable, and depressing.

The dream of traveling forced me to work through a lot of that. The mere thought of looking at the classifieds for a job would make my heart race, but I just swallowed hard, took a deep breath or two, and did it anyway. When I got a job interview, I felt like a dumpy mommy, crawling out from under a rock after a decade underground; but I picked the feathers and food out of my hair and did it anyway. I ended up with a job in which I talked to about 100 people a day, which I enjoyed very much, even though I started each Saturday morning with a certainty that I would vomit all over the FarmTable as soon as I got it set up. As I pushed myself through each step, I asked myself, "If this is so hard for you, how hard do you think Colombia will be?" and I would feel less daunted.

After completing all the money-earning and plan-making, I started to look forward to my trip, even though every time I thought of it I felt a bit dizzy. I wondered when this horrible fearfulness would be cured, and then I read this Georgia O'Keefe quote.

" I have been absolutely terrified my entire life, and I never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do."

Probably never. Okay.

As I have worked toward this goal, I have learned to discredit and ignore that part of my brain that always felt so freaked out. I took it out of the driver's seat because I knew if I didn't, I'd end up in a dark room, wearing only pajamas, watching my toenails grow - instead of here.

 And here is so beautiful.