Interestingly enough, I found myself a different person while I was overseas, away from my parents and my friends from high school and my collection of computer games and movies and things. New environment, new person, in my case. I became more outgoing, even to an outlandish degree, but I never once regretted it. I’m starting to think it was the new group of people I started hanging out with, or the battle with the language, or maybe I felt I was the underdog and had something to prove. I worked harder. I was proud of myself again. I wasn’t just an engineer, but a linguist and an anthropologist and a photographer and a lover.
But now I’m back to that same place where I started. I’ve fallen back into the trap that computer games and movies take up every inch of free time. I’m starting to turn into the same person again, with the exception that now I know I have to get the fuck out of dodge. If your identity is divorced from your environment, I’d see that as a good thing. Perhaps it’s a sign of maturity, or even of sanity. But not everyone can do it, and I’m certainly not to that point.
There are certain things I hate about my “America self” but at the same time it’s where my origins are. Without a doubt, I still love my family and my friends. But I have this fear that if I disappeared across the world again while trying to keep one hand on things here, my old self here would somehow contaminate the new person I was creating over there.
I’m not really sure what my purpose in writing this was, or whether these ideas will make any sense to anyone but myself. Originally I was trying to answer Lane’s post (which won’t even be readable for most of you) and now I have no idea where it’s going. Well, here goes; publish.
