Time for a change

So Shawn told me out of the blue the other day that he really likes my blog. To me, this is a huge compliment, as I consider him The Writer of the family, kind of in the same way that I consider him The Actor of the family. Meaning, while I do enjoy both writing and acting and participate in both activities from time to time, I have never done either professionally and therefore am not as good as him. I guess that’s a very American attitude, huh? Money = success. Anyway, I think that his comment may have motivated me to write more frequently. You can all let me know if you think that’s a good thing or not.

Now to the change part: I start my new job this week. I will be spending 5 hours a day listening to the complaints of my fellow Americans here in Kyiv. (Well, hopefully at least part of that 5 hours will be devoted to actually helping solve their problems.) That’s right, you’re looking at one of the new Customer Service Reps for US Embassy, Kyiv. Maybe not my ideal job, but it’s something. And I hope that my naturally cheery disposition will help to alleviate the concerns of stressed out Foreign Service families. As with any change, it has it’s positive and negative consequences.

On the negative side: I had about a million things I wanted to do with myself after moving here. How am I possibly six months in – one quarter of the way through our tour – with nothing accomplished? I’m finding it very depressing. I was going to teach myself draping, take violin lessons, work on writing a book, take some steps toward staring a business, and the list goes on and on. I actually have this list written down…and nothing to show for it. So now I’m going to start work and I just know that means I’m not going to feel like accomplishing any of it. Working part-time sounded good in theory (“so I’ll still have time for myself,” I said), but I know that when it really comes down to it, I’m going to be just as busy as if I was working full-time. *Sigh* I’ve spent most of the past week dwelling on my inadequacies, so now I’ll move on to…

The positive side: I’ve realized in the past two weeks that I have entire conversations with the dog. Is this normal? I think it started as me conversing with her solely in the house, but it’s moved on to the public sphere now. I guess the combination of the fact that everyone here looks at me like I just jumped off my spaceship anyway and the knowledge that only about 10% of the people on the street can even understand the things I’m saying has led me to really stop caring about talking to her too much on the street. I’ve got to talk to someone, right? Okay, maybe getting out of the house for 5 hours a day is a good thing.