The Rhythm of Taiwan

Life in Taiwan has become…so very cyclic.

This is surprising for several reasons. One is that I’m supposed to be traveling, aren’t I? (note the tag question please, teachers of ESL) If that is so, how can things become so routine? My new job, steady hours, yoga every morning,  a facial or massage or haircut here and there. Everything is very organized and very orderly. It almost feels like after two years of living here, things are…NORMAL. Back home seems like a dream. This is almost…SCARY.

How can this be? Waking up every morning with expectations, rituals that lay unchanged, the same places visited again and again. Is this my life? Is this reality? I’ve become perpetually complexed with the question of whether this IS really my life, and this is really normalcy. But it is. And of course, the second I recognize it, ponder it, and consider it, it’s gone. This CAN’T be real life. This CAN’T be all it is. There must be more. Why always so unsatisfied, even when the standards have been achieved?

In a regular life in Canada, I might be struggling. I might be a low-paid journalist or PR person, working the phones all day and writing meaningless crap to be published for whomever is interested. But that’s not for me. Writing is pleasure. Life is not writing. Life is living and teaching is a means to living. How many jobs can you have that you can take off two months or more every year? Dear ESL teachers, we’re living the good life. There are sacrifices but this is SWEET. You can’t tell me it’s not. I’ve finally learned to convince myself to “GET UP EARLY” and the “EARLY BIRD CATCHES THE WORM” and to work hard. But really, it’s so easy to do my job well. I walk into class, so happy after yoga and good food and mesmorized by the palm trees and landscape on the way. I am happy to be there regardless of whether my students have been in class for 12 hours that day. And I’m a bubble of positivity and energeticness. Glowing, even. This is it. This is my meaning of life! Or is it?

What happens when things become so stupidly easy or unchallenging that you have to mess them up ON PURPOSE? What is is with always thinking and dreaming of the ‘next big thing’ or the next ocean to dive? The secret is that the rhythm exists everywhere and it doesn’t matter if you’re in Taiwan or Timbuktu. It will find you, eventually.

~ by globalciti on July 14, 2009.