enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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What are you going to do?

Fifi is right, you know: thinking is difficult. I have a lot of thinking, UGH, ruminating to do before I move anywhere.

With respect to this change/decision, I know that it has to be slow. I know this instinctively. When I quit my job in Canada in 1998 and moved to Australia to be with S., it was really, really quick. I decided to move. I contacted a woman at Foreign Affairs whom I knew. She gave me a contact. I called him. He referred me. I got a job. I moved. I think it all happened in three weeks.

Moving to Europe would not be so simple. This is mostly because the "job" right now is less important than the "career."

I wish that that weren't true, but it is partly true. And my language skills aren't up to snuff, unless I were to move to Britain. :) SOOoo...I need to be patient.

Actually, if I'm honest about it, what is causing me to hesitate/complicate this is that deep, deep down in some primal part of me I don't want to be an economist anymore. More than moving to Europe to be in an environment that makes me feel better, I want to be doing something every day that lights me on fire. I need to figure out what that will be, and at which I can make money, and that is DIFFICULT. I suppose that one could argue that I coudl tolerate being an economist as long as I were around art and beauty. And maybe that is true. I will have to figure that out.

It's a slow process for me. It will be a slow process for me.

So today is a pretty, sunny day.

The one thing that I will miss about Canada if I move is the silence. It is so quiet. It's that space thing; the distance between people. I live right in the city and yet with the trees and the lots and no through traffic in my neighbourhood, if I were to turn off my radio all I would hear is birds and the occasional squirrel (but don't get me started on SUIRRELS).

I wish I had waited and gone to Florence in October. But then I suppose I would not have met wonderful Joan. I would love to be there right now.

I have realized that Canada is not for me, given that as much as I do love the outdoors, I don't need to be in it all the time. Outdoors in Europe may be closer to indoors, but there is still lots of it and it is beautiful. I found the countryside in Sussex near Rye to be very peaceful, for example, and Tuscany is lovely. I'm sure that I would feel the same way about rural France. When I was in Belgium with my friend Eric, we cycled (well, I ran) from his house in Leuven to Brussels. We ran along a little river to a castle! It was wonderful. I don't care if people were popping out of the bush here and there, and if we could stop for a beer at any km along the route if we looked around hard enough! Who cares! It was beautiful!

It seems cruel that I was not born in Europe! Although I do know that to be born in Canada is no hardship. I am free to go anywhere, really, and I have safety and security and a prudently-managed economy to which to go home. And although the US is pretty messed up right now, in general it has been a great neighbour to us.

Well, except when they tried to annex us repeatedly in the 1890s. Oh, and when they try to refill their depleted aquifers by rerouting our massive northern rivers to go south. Oh and the not respecting our sovereignty in the northwest passage. Other than that, the only real complaint that I have is that it would be nice if when I met people on my trips they didn't stare blankly at me when I said I was from Ottawa. This time it was a woman from New Jersey. "I'm sorry; I don't know anything about foreign countries."

UGH!

Well, that's all I can say.

I think that this is the only point of dispute that I have with Fifi in what she wrote re. 9/11. My experience with Americans has been that in general they ARE kind and well-meaning people.

But the problem is that BECAUSE America is so big and has had so much economic and political clout in the world for so long, willful ignorance of things EXTERNAL to the day-to-day in the US on the part of the American electorate can be so damaging to the rest of the world. It's why the American economy is tanking; it's why Bush is president; it's why several times the GDP of Canada will be spent on the Ir@q war. It seems unfair to hold the American electorate to a higher standard than I do my own collectivity of useless and ignorant rabble, but it's true. And when you wander in parts of the world other than North America, you'll find people knowledgeable and aware of other parts. Even my own hopeless countrymen for sure are vastly better informed about the U.S. than is the average American about any other country but his own. And we've been voting in people over at least the last fifteen years largely on the basis of sound economic management (in this we are partly unique, as Canadians have historically been poor, and also are paranoid). It's just the way of the world, and of small countries. So as much as I love the U.S., its people, and many of its values and achievements, I have to say that it is a very dangerous country because of the stubborn insularity of a majority of its citizens. You don't have to travel to be informed, either. You just have to care.

But these days, interestingly, I've stopped caring about my own country and the problems that used to haunt me at night. I've actually become a useless citizen on my own part. I'm going through the motions, but what I am really interested in is my own health and wellbeing and fun. I'm sliding down a slippery slope of lack of social responsibility. I hope that once I figure out what I want, I will start doing something useful for other people. It's not easy to be responsible for anyone but yourself, especially when you have it so good. We're relatively rich in North America, and we have land. No one is treading on our toes. We can easily slide into an steady laziness about all of the problems of the world, and call ourselves good people because we are not personally, actively hurting anyone. I know. I am there.

So WHAT happened to this entry. It got hijacked by something stupid! Maybe guilt? Confusion?

I wish I still felt passionately about something work-related. These days all I wake up thinking about is painting. I woke up this morning thinking about Giotto. What a lovely way to wake up.

But it is hardly going to solve the world's problems.

When I was working on my Ph.D. thesis that I did not finish, I was interested in migration issues. Coincidentally, or not coincidentally, the jobs at the OECD are in migration. If I had only finished! If I had only finished. But it's so difficult for me to sustain passionate interest in the subject, as much as I care about the well-being of individual people. I'm much more of a one-on-one person. I would have been a better counsellor or teacher than what I am, which is a useless economist.

Yes. Very confused. At least I'm well-rested today. I HAVE HAD SUCH bad jetlag this week. I have been sleeping through to the morning, relatively, but have been so tired and spinny in the head all week. I really didn't get any work done at work. It was pretty dreadful. My French classes were nice though, I am happy to report. If you can believe it, I actually like them this time. Knock on wood this will persist.

Well that was a long, meandering, hopeless note. I think I should turn all of this off, anyhow, except inasmuch as I need to apply to the foreign service before October 10, and so should get started on the application this weekend. And I need to go to the art school to sign up for a course. I need to not slide back into doing nothing out of fear.

SO difficult. It is difficult to be a a good person, a good citizen. It is easy to worry and to feel guilty. It is difficult to do good things for others consistently. I am a self-centred animal, really.

So what else is new? You know, one of my favourite parts of my art course was thinking about the fact that most of the great art in Florence was paid for because people like the Medici were worried that they'd go to hell for making all of their money out of extortionate lending. People are so predictable. Herd-like, really. If only we could harness guilt and fear to create useful energy and not things like war.

9:02 a.m. - 2008-10-04

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