Culture Shock: Real Life

It turns out that adjusting to real life after being a bum/vagabond for four months is actually a little bit hard. It's not so much that I dislike being back at work or having to think about real life responsibilities such as mortgage, bills, or the precipitous decline of my already meager net worth. It's more...the constraints on my freedom caused by all of the above, as well as the comparative monotony of real life when compared to life as a vagabond. It's both comforting and a wee bit boring to wake up in the same bed (my bed) every morning, instead of a new hotel or hostel. It's both happiness-inducing and slight-attack-of-boredom-inducing to find myself in San Francisco for the foreseeable short and long term. It's both wonderful and really kind of not to have all my "stuff" again - my outrageously large collection of clothes (especially the J. Crew favorite tank, which I literally have over 40 of - 15 white, 15 black, and one of every other shade ever made), shoes, accessories, books, wines, iTunes songs, candles (why I felt the need to have 20 or 30 candles of various shapes, sizes and scents all over my apartment, I don't know - what a stupendous waste of money and wax), etc. It's both anchoring (in that solid, safe way) and tiring to be back in close proximity (and just a phone call away) from my family.

Life as a vagabond was simple. I was more relaxed, infinitely less anal retentive or OCD and generally healthier while traveling. I slept 8-9 hours every night, ate whenever and whatever I wanted, walked around all day without forcing myself to stick to an itinerary, and wore the same 5 or 6 outfits over and over again. I watched the news sporadically, completely ignored the stock market and spent hours doing absolutely nothing. I rarely checked my investments and thus was not concerned about its decline. I found that the decision of what to wear for the day is much easier when you have a very limited selection (why is it that now that I have a closetful of clothes I feel like I have nothing to wear??). My days didn't need to be planned down to the hour or minute because each day everyday I had complete freedom to do whatever I wanted.

But now that I'm home, the continual decline of the market is stress-inducing. I have major stress knots in my upper back and neck again (which miraculously disappeared when I was not working, surprise surprise). And because my free time and freedom are now constricted by the everyday reality of that annoying thing called a job, I find myself maniacally making plans to fill every hour of my free time with activities, because I don't want it to go to waste.

That being said, there are the wonderful, routine things in life I missed while traveling, and which I would not trade to travel off on my own again. Being able to see my friends on a daily or weekly basis, and being here for all the little and big things that go on in their lives. Dinners at home with my grandma, even if she can never resist nagging me about something or other. Being able to spend hours and days with El Hombre without having to count down his departure or the next time I'll see him. Sleeping in my big, comfy bed and not living out of a backpack. On the whole, being home is exponentially more wonderful than traveling the world on my own. But if I could find a way to travel with all my friends and El Hombre, sleep only in 4-5 star hotels and somehow zap myself home to my grandma once a week, I think I could be a vagabond for an indefinite amount of time.

In the two weeks I've been back, I've reached the following conclusions: 1) I am a little stress case in my normal life and 2) using your brain (i.e. pursuing a career) is SO overrated. The women's liberation movement was such a bad idea. Why the hell are we fighting to be treated equally as men? In doing so, we're doing a disservice to ourselves. Why should women work when they have, by nature, been given the spectacularly arduous task of carrying forward the human race?? Women now share the burden of bringing home the bacon with men, but pretty much every study out there shows that men have not equally stepped up to share the burden of cooking the bacon, washing the dishes after the bacon is cooked, or doing other housework. And of course physiologically, they can never share the hardest burden of all - carrying human life inside of you and then pushing it out through a teeny tiny hole. Isn't it enough that women have to suffer the monthly feminine injustice and have their bodies completely invaded and ravaged by pregnancy? Why are we fighting to also be burdened with making a living? Feminine emancipation? Such a farce.

And there is my rambling/rant for the day.