Where's Uri At?

I realize it’s been quite some time since my last posting, but to be completely honest, that’s because there’s been absolutely nothing to write about. I’ve been living the life of a hermit for the most part, focussing on some projects I’ve been working on for some time now.

I’m past the halfway mark of my time in Korea, and I’ve realized something that is both enlightening and disheartening: I came to Korea to have less stress in my life, to detox that cancer out of my system; and yet, no matter how hard I try, I can’t escape it--it follows me wherever I go. It’s always in the back of my mind, eating away at me, screaming at me for no particular reason. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Anxiety that I live with.

Back home, it always pestered me about the big and the small things: work, lesson planning, marking, meetings, paperwork, concerns regarding each and every individual student, their parents, maintaining my blog, visiting my family, seeing friends, things I said the day before, things I did the previous week, people I used to know ten years ago, things I want to do next month, preparations I need to make for this project or that, things I wanted to tell people tomorrow, errands to run, calls to make, and the list went on. In short: I’m always thinking about life in both the big and small picture simultaneously at all fucking times. The frustrating part is that I can’t shut it off, so my thoughts get caught up in this non-stop whirlwind and ideas and things I want and ought to remember end up getting lost and forgotten. Even when I had an agenda to pack everything in to, the agenda itself would end up becoming a jumble, an endless list of to-do things that kept getting longer rather than shorter, and the sight of it would just make me more stressed!

Now I know, we all have busy lives, and there’s nothing about my life that makes mine any more difficult than yours, but the thing that drives me nuts is the simple fact that I can’t turn the nagging voice off; there’s never silence. I can never just be; I always have to do. Sometimes I actually get antsy during my free time because I don't even know what to do with myself. I’ve always chalked this up to being ambitious or having a strong work ethic, but the fact of the matter is that I’m self-destructive. It literally keeps me awake at night.

Before I came to Korea, I embarked on a life-changing journey across Canada where, for the first time ever, I was able to live my life completely in the moment. The trek took between five and six weeks, and for that entire time, I never heard any of the voices. I immersed myself in the people that I met and the places that I visited and I let myself just be. Living on the road liberated me from the confines of the box of my day to day life, and the freedom to just live was matched only by warming touch of the sun against my skin. The only things in front of me were the road and these amazing people who completely transformed how I viewed the world and how I viewed myself. That’s when I realized that the only times in my life I’ve ever felt stress-free to the point where I could shut the voices out and just live in the moment and celebrate that moment, have been when I shared a particular moment, no matter how big or small, with the people who mattered most to me.

When I came to Korea, I came here with the intention of eliminating all of the sources of stress from my life so that I could live with that sort of peace of mind on a more regular basis. I figured an exciting new culture to explore and a much more relaxed working environment were just what I needed. Plus, this newfound free time would give me ample opportunity to focus on my creative endeavours. However I also wanted to save up a boatload of money for my ambitious travel plans of 2015.

In the time since my last post, I’ve gotten into a nice routine of reading, writing, getting my walk on (when Mother Nature isn’t being particularly bitchy), and watching my shows (most recently, the exciting adventures of Doctor Who). I’m accomplishing most of my goals by settling into this routine: I’m being creative, I’m relaxing, and hell, I’m even following through on my New Year’s Resolutions!

But the last two months haven’t quite felt as fulfilling as the first few months did. This, I believe, is because I’ve forgotten the one thing that made me feel most alive while trekking on the road: the people. I’ve cocooned myself—a behaviour I’ve displayed in the past—worrying so much about saving enough money and completing these projects within a certain time period that I’ve forgotten the fact that, holy shit, I’m in Korea! This is how my stress and Anxiety have manifested themselves in a stress-free life. My mind always finds something to obsess over. (Though I think part of the reason I cracked was the heartbreak I suffered after my external hard drive crashed on me and I faced the very real possibility that I just lost months and months of work.  This has eaten away at me, as the one thing that has always driven me up the walls worse than anything else is wasted time.)

Thankfully, I’m finally starting to feel a little claustrophobic in this routine, so for the last six months or so of my time in Korea, I’m going to try to focus less on the background noise and just enjoy this country and the people that matter most while I still can. It probably means my financial goals will have to be adjusted ever-so slightly, but if it’s for the sake of my sanity, I think it’s a fair price to pay.

I’m pretty sure I’ll never rid myself of the worrisome voices in my head, but if I can’t live the perpetual life of a traveler in order to shut them up, then the least I can do is try to manage them. So expect to see some more posts in the near future. Happy birthday to me, indeed.