Stranger in a Foreign Land

I wish I had the energy at the end of the day to do a better job of blogging but by the time I get home and cook something for dinner I'm so tired that all I want to do is eat, watch some TV and go to sleep. It's an incredibly pathetic routine for someone my age, even considering how much of a natural home body I am. However, I do have a new found respect for homemakers!

I have to admit that life here so far has been incredibly lonely. I don't know anyone except my co-workers and only a handful of those. I have no family here and no friends in the city. For the past few weeks I have been sort of moping around. Of course I've been back and forth between here and Atlanta so much that I've hardly been allowed a grand amount of social time. Thankfully things have turned around a little bit in the past few days.

Friday was a very difficult day for me. Our trainer was heading back to Atlanta at mid-day and my co-worker was taking a half-day. This left only me and one other person in Atlanta handling calls and things. There were so many issues coming up that I wasn't trained on how to handle, coupled with our copious technical difficulties, that I was feeling a little overwhelmed and ill-prepared. In addition to that, I was instructed over lunch by the two people up from Atlanta that I'm going to find myself having to take the reins and such because apparently I am increasingly becoming more of a coordinator in addition to just ordinary customer service responsibilities (even though the coordination extends only to myself and my co-worker).

The boss came by my cubicle during one of my more despondent moods and gave me a little pep-talk for no particular reason. He is a really sincere man, so my spirits improved. I know there are too few people doing too much work for not enough pay and that has made a lot of people here very bitter, and while I don't always agree with some of the methods that are employed (already) the work we're all doing is important. It's not some mundane job in some faceless corporation.

Later, one of my co-workers came by and invited me to the movies with some other Baha'i youth. My first reaction was to decline. I told myself I would decline because I have a lot of things to get done. I haven't unpacked a lot of things and I need to go grocery shopping, change my license to Illinois, get a library card, change my voter registration, pay bills, do the laundry, etc. but I think the real reason was anxiety and fear. That is sad to admit, but it's true. I have gone so long without interacting with people my own age that I think I may have forgotten how. I've become so accustomed to interacting with people 20 years older than me that sometimes people my own age make me nervous. And then again it could be that I'm too jaded and serious minded to loosen up.

It didn't take much persistence for me to give in. We went to see the movie "Juno" which was outstanding, much to my surprise. I enjoyed myself, and I enjoyed the movie. It's unfortunate I have to force myself to do these kinds of things, especially since it's rarely disastrous.

After the movie, I came back to Wilmette for the Nineteen Day Feast, which was postponed to this weekend because of the weather during the week. Mind you it's been snowing all day so we've probably received may 3-4 inches. I walked around the corner in the snow to the Baha'i Home for the Aged, which has sort of been converted into the Baha'i Center for Wilmette. The turnout was small because of the weather (maybe 15-20 people) but it was a nice enough Feast. It really made me miss the Baha'i community back in Little Rock, namely because I know everyone there. It seemed a little awkward to be in the new community attending an event for the first time and being met with stares of curiosity. I introduced myself and I got to socialize with a few people after the consultative portion.

One of the youth (I say "youth" but it's a loose term - I should say "people in their 20's" instead) invited me to come with a group of them to The Cheesecake Factory. I intended to decline but I couldn't turn down an opportunity to get to know people in my own community. We had such a diverse group! There were two Baha'is visiting from Switzerland and New Zealand and another here on a term of service from France, in addition to maybe 8 or so other local "people in their 20's." It was a true joy to get to know some of them better, and I'm glad I went. I feel myself slowly becoming better integrated into the community and some of the loneliness and longing for community life is slipping away.

Tomorrow I'm planning on going to the Baha'i Home for the Sunday shindig they have around here - a Baha'i "school" for children, classes for junior youth, study circles and a study class for adults. Hopefully I'll get to meet some more Baha'is there. I'm even mulling around in my mind teaching children's classes with one of the other youth in one of the suburbs. After you're engaged in Baha'i community life and you're away from it for a time, it feels like something is missing in your life.