My whole life, I've felt like I was doing all the right things, but not feeling very good about it. I come from the East Coast, DC metro area, and lived there 40 years. I went to American University in DC and loved, loved, loved the experierence of learning. I never really took advantage of DC. Typical of people who live with the best places in their own backyard, I never took advantage of the DC scene. Loved the museums, and I will say I miss the East Wing of the National Art Gallery.
I'm from the generation between going to school to find a husband and women's liberation really having an impact. I remember wearing suits and bow ties with high neck blouses to the office to be taken seriously. Living your dream was outside of many comfort zones. I finally recognized that I was unhappy, really unhappy. Everyone around me is on the fast track to success and taking no prisoners. Where do you live? Where do you work? What sort of car do you drive? What schools to your kids attend? I would like to say I thrived in that environment, but sadly, I didn't.
I wanted what every 20 year old wanted in 1989, a husband, a good job, nice house, nice car and I got it. I got it at the expense of things that were important to me that went by the wayside. It took another 20 years to realize that.
From the time I was 10, I have planned to join the Peace Corps. I wanted to make a journey to another place that would be completely foreign to me and work with other cultures. Learning. Doing things that might mean something and having adventures that might make good stories one day. There are at least 10 good reasons I kept giving myself for not actually doing it. Being married, working, family has a way of putting perfectly good ideas aside for a while.
Twenty years and a divorce passed and I had reached a cross roads in my life. I knew what I was doing was bullshit, even though the pay was good. I didn't know what I wanted to do next. Someone told me its always "what I want to do NEXT" rather than "when I grow up". Growing up, check. Now what?
I'm going off the reservation here and getting woo-woo. I believe in intentions. If you put your intentions out there with a pure heart and no sense of gain, it comes to you. It took 40 years, but it did come to me. As I was looking for another position, with yet another company, VISTA kept popping up. Volunteers in Service to America, the domestic Peace Corps. I kept going back to the VISTA site and picking fantasy locations to pack it up and move to in the middle of nowhere for a while. My follow-thru ain't that great most times, but when I set my mind on something, I get 'er done. And I set my mind on becoming a VISTA volunteer.
I have never felt such a sense of Yes, this is what I need to do. Most 40 year olds are going through their 2nd divorce, paying off mortgages and settled. Nope. Not this 40 year old. I needed to GO. I needed to do something completely different yet not a surprize to the people who love me. My brother actually asked me what took me so long to do this because its Peace Corps, yet not Uzbeckistan. It's South East Utah, one of the most beautiful, harsh places in the country.
I chose Blanding Utah, because as a VISTA volunteer, you live at the level of the community that you are serving and I would be working with and around Navajo and White Mesa Ute. Two very different tribes within 70 miles of each other. We lived on $600/month, which covered rent, food (with the help of food stamps, I have no pride) and gas. Blanding Utah between Moab, with Arches National Park and some serious red rock country and the Valley, Monument Valley, where the Mittens are familiar to everyone, but very few really go there and see them. A lot of Mormans in between. It's easier on some level to live at the poverty level rurally, rather than an urban center, like DC. When you are in the middle of SE Utah, you are seriously in the middle of nowhere. And most of us who chose to live there were there for a reason, mostly religious. The VISTAs all came from somewhere else and in Blanding, you are born, you go to school, you get married and you stay and build a family. Or you are an archeologist. There are more doctorate and masters degrees in Bluff Utah per capita, than anywhere else in the country. Of course only 300 people live in Bluff Utah, so the math is pretty easy.
I wanted to experience something completely different from what I was used to. I wanted to do something with my life that most people would give me 10 really good reasons why I shouldn't do it. By 40, I'd learned a few things and the biggest thing was something had to give and this was an opportunity, a dream I've had since I was 10, to actually get out there and do it.
So I did. In six weeks, I gave my notice, sold, donated or gave away an entire life, stored what was really important in my brother's attic, pointed the car and the dog west and we were off to begin the first chapter of the second volume in my book of stories. The first volumn was sent to the heavens in a ceremony with my best friend and my son and a bottle of tequila. For the adults. Ok, for me.
We burned 20 years of journals before I left. My son wasn't very happy about it, but I journaled to vent and to whine and complain. I wasn't going to be journaliing like that again (or at least for a long time) and if if something happened to me, I didn't want those journals to be a reflection of a life that wasn't really what it was supposed to be.
Next installment: Road Tripping
Thanks for reading!
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