It's simple, easy to remember and no annoying (dot)blogspot(dot)com nonsense at the end anymore. And the best part is that now I won't have to hear my friends say: "Reannon, I'd visit your blog more, I would. But I can never remember what to type. Where do I put the hyphen again?"
I've been slaving away at it the last couple of weeks and I hope you like the new look. I made the move to Wordpress, which is a more advanced blog-hosting site. I've had to learn all about widgets and plug-ins and (blech!) HTML codes. Which is all just nerd-speak for a crap ton of work. I'm not the most computer-savy individual, so it took quite a few false starts, (whereby I accidentally deleted my entire blog) and about 10 hours of slugging through the internets, reading up on SEO's, CSS's and RSS's. My brain feels like it's going to explode.
But I like it. It's still a work in progress, but I think it looks sleeker, more professional and a lot more grown-up.
So please visit, bookmark the new address and let me know what you think.
“The world is but a canvas to the imagination.” — Henry David Thoreau
Lately I've been felt so uninspired...so stuck. It seems that every time I settle down in front of my computer with a cup of coffee and the resolution to work write something (anything!), I just end up spending the entire afternoon watching the screen cursor go blink, blink, blink as my mind mutinously continues to go blank, blank, blank. It's so frustrating! And I've tried all of the usual remedies, (reading, napping, going for a walk) but to no avail. It's like my well of creativity has dried up. And even though I know that's a horribly cliched comparison, it's all my uninventive brain can come up at the moment.
This was never a problem when I lived in Japan. Or in Austria or Germany either, for that matter. No, when I lived abroad, my mind seemed to be overflowing with an endless surplus of creative ideas. And not just ones that involved stories or blog posts either, but business ideas and art projects as well. My closet is stacked with notebooks outlining plans for the coffee shop I'd one day open or the design ideas for the youth hostel I'd eventually own. In Japan, I'd stay up late into the night painting and spend my weekends sitting in cafes knitting handbags for friends. But back at home in America, I spend most nights watching Project Runway; dazed and unmotivated.
Apparently though, it's not just me. Artists and writers have long been known to do some of their best work while living abroad. Just look at the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life, or Ernest Hemingway who was inspired to write The Sun Also Rises during after a trip to Spain. Irishman W.B. Yeats won the Nobel prize for the poetry he wrote while living abroad, as did Seamus Heany. And the Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, wrote Lolita while living in Manhattan.
Researchers William W. Maddux (INSEAD) and Adam D. Galinsky (Nortwestern University) attribute this to the psychological change one undergoes when adapting to a foreign culture. Learning a new language and struggling through culture shock cause a shift in perspective, which opens the mind to new ideas and sparks creativity. As explained in Cultural Borders and Mental Barriers: The Relationship Between Living Abroad and Creativity, not only are people who live abroad more creative than people who don't, but the longer they remain abroad, the more creative they become.
Interestingly enough though, the increase in creativity doesn't occur in those merely traveling abroad. Apparently, two weeks in Tahiti does not a Picasso make. You've actually got to live in another culture for an extended period of time, learn the language, embrace the customs and make an effort to assimilate in order for the change to happen. In other words, a year spent exploring the inside of the local Expat bar doesn't count.
So what's an uninspired writer/artist/composer to do? Country hopping every few years in search of inspiration may work for some, but most of us need a little more stability and structure in order to stay sane.
Well apparently the simple act of recalling time spent living abroad helps reactivate the experience and keeps the creative juices flowing. As does learning a new language, making foreign friends and living in multi-cultural cities within your own country.
Huh. It's hard to imagine how reminiscing about my life in Japan could possibly begin to compete with the experience of actually living there. But for now, I guess, that's all I've got. Although I want (need!) to finish this novel I've been working on since, like, forever and a half ago and right now I'm thinking that another long stint abroad might be my only hope.
Watch this interview with one of the researchers. I found this on Miss Move Abroad's blog, (which is also worth a visit, by the way). It's fascinating.
I used to be anti the mini-vaca. A long weekend in Aruba? No thanks. Five days in Athens? Naw, I'd rather stay home. A few days out of a lifetime to be thrown away at a seaside resort wasn't giving the city or country the respect it deserved. What could one possibly hope to absorb of a country's culture, history or language in such a short time frame?
But then I started working for an airline and now I have a dilemma. Because in the aviation industry the Mini-vaca is king. In fact, when you can fly anywhere you want for free and only have a limited number of days off, it's really all you have.
Rome may've not been built in a day but if you work for an airline, visiting it for the day isn't uncommon. I've talked to co-workers who've taken the red-eye to Paris or Hong Kong, sight-seed during the day, partied all night and then hopped back on a flight home the following morning.
It's also not unheard of for airline employees to live lives that span multiple states, or even countries, for that matter. A flight attendant might, for example, live in Texas and commute to Los Angeles for work. Her boyfriend may live in Chicago, her hairstylist in New York and her dentist in Seattle. For the average person, this is might be mind-boggling. Because to the average person, a ride in an airplane is a special treat; a once or twice a year event that's exciting and perhaps a little fear-inducing. To an airline employee though, an airplane is seen as nothing more than an employee shuttle bus or air taxi service.
A few weeks ago, I spoke with a customer service agent in New York who regularly uses the few hours he has in between work shifts to head to the beach to sunbathe...in Puerto Rico. Another one of my co-workers frequently flies to Las Vegas from where we're stationed in San Francisco for dinner. It sounds crazy but it actually makes sense when you consider that it only takes an hour to fly to Vegas and another ten minutes to take the employee shuttle from the airport to the strip of casinos. And if you factor in California rush hour traffic and the fact that he lives two hours from the airport, it's actually faster (not to mention cheaper), for him to grab a bite at an all-you-can-eat casino buffet in Vegas than for him to drive to his neighborhood Wendy's.
What this all amounts to is an industry of workers accustomed to warp-speed, wam-bam travel. It's ADD, Tasmanian Devil, whirlwind travel and it's bizarre...and it makes me wonder: What's the point? It's like, "Well, I guess I can squeeze in a trip to Barbados in between my orthodontist appointment in Tuscon and my cousin's bachelorette party in Boston. Might as well cross that one of the list while I've got the time." In fact, some of my co-workers could list you off a list a mile long of cities or country's they've visited over the years. But does 24 hours in Honolulu count as a visit to Hawaii, if you never ventured away from Waikiki beach? And does 30 hours at an airport hotel in Sydney constitute stepping foot in Australia?
Two months ago, I met a grounds crew member who claimed to have visited all 50 states in the United States. An impressive feat for anyone, sure..that is until he revealed that he'd knocked all 50 off his list in a span of a few days. The icing on the cake was that he never as much as stepped foot outside a single one of the airports and only stayed in each state long enough to chat with the gate agents and buy a souvenir magnet from one of airport gift shops.
In traveling this way, yes we see the world, but is it worth it when our only view is a jet-lagged, blurry one from the airport freeway? If we're not gaining some insight or perspective from the experience or learning something new, then aren't we missing the point the point of travel entirely?
That said, it's cold enough in San Francisco right now to make a field trip to Florida look pretty damn appealing....Who knows, maybe I'll hop down to Miami for a few hours on my day off next week?
“Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one’s own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live ... in our wanderlust, we are lovers looking for consummation.” - Anatole Broyard
I once visited a zoo in Kathmandu, Nepal. The zoo was like a poorly-tended hospice; a wasteland of sickly, under-nourished animals who'd been abandoned to die. The lion cage was lined with garbage and the hippos waded through a thick soup of sewage. But perhaps the worst off, were two twin black bears who'd gone insane from being trapped in a six by six foot cell. They paced their cage, back and forth and back and forth and each time they paced past the barred window that faced the entrance of the zoo, they'd bash their heads against it.
This morning I woke up thinking about those bears. Sometimes I feel so trapped here in the US; so stuck. 'Clawing-at-the-walls desperate to escape' sorta stuck. And it's frustrating because I can't pin-point why. There's nothing specific about my life here that I dislike, it's more just this general feeling of unease; this haunting need to break free.
I think Bill Bryson described it best in I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after 20 Years Away, when he wrote:
"I felt as if we'd made a terrible mistake. I had nothing against America, you understand. It's a wonderful country, splendid in every way. But this felt uncomfortably like a backward step - like moving in with one's parents in middle age. They may be perfectly delightful people, but you just don't want to live with them any longer. Your life has moved on. I felt like that about a nation."
Recently, I visited in an old friend from high school. As teenagers, we had a lot in common. Our mutual love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example, our crush on Ben Afleck and our shared habit of cutting class to watch tapings of MTV'sTotal Request Live in Times Square...These were the bonds that held teenage friendships together.
But about 20 minutes into our lunch in New York two weeks ago, it became clear that our lives had diverged in two completely opposite directions. And after playing catch-up and reminiscing about some of crazy shenanigans we'd gotten ourselves into back then, we found we had nothing to say. The friendship was familiar and comfortable, but at some point over the years it'd gone stale. It had expired.
And that's precisely how I feel about my relationship with America. It's expired and no matter how hard I try to breathe new life into it, it's too late. We're just too different.
According to Oprah Magazine, a spontaneous, risk-taking personality type is:
"Action oriented, curious, outgoing and lives for new experiences. You are drawn to risk-taking and aren't afraid to fail. Generally restless, you tend to job-hop or choose a field that offers constant novelty."
When I first stumbled across this in an article entitled "Who are you meant to be?" in this month's O magazine, I was floored. That last sentence completely stopped me in my tracks. It was like Wait a second. You mean to tell me that not only is my one-of-a-kind personality actually one of seven personality types but there are others like me out there, too?
I was simultaneously relieved to learn that I wasn't alone and dumbfounded that my unique, complicated and wholly incomprehensible inner motivations could be summed up so easily into three paragraphs. Apparently I'm not as original as I thought.
Curious, I started to research the risk-taking personality type and apparently not only is there a sub-species of risk-taking types walking (or free-falling, paragliding, rock climbing) the planet as I type, but they've been doing so since our ancestors first dared to venture out of the safety of their caves 100,000 years ago.
I can just imagine what my tribal role in life would've been back then. I'd probably be "Chief Food Taster", as in, "Here, try this weird looking plant and tell me if tastes poisonous, mmmkay?" or possibly "Chief Sketchy-Looking Cave Explorer", as in "Hey, do me a favor and scope out yonder cave for saber tooth tigers, will ya?"
For obvious reasons, the risk-takers of yore didn't live very long. But as Salvadore Maddi of the University of California-Davis pointed out, "It's better for one person to eat a poisonous fruit than for everybody," so they served a vital role in the evolution of mankind. And traces of that adventurous trait is still evident in people today.
Because apparently risk-taking is not only a personality trait but an inherited one. It's called the "high-risk gene" and through twin-studies, scientists have discovered that it's 60 percent genetic.
Which explains so much. It explains why, for example, although completely different an every other way, my brothers and I all share the same impulsive, irrational desire to repeatedly throw ourselves in harms way. Our methods may be different (they do it through cliff jumping, sky-diving, motor-cross racing and high stakes gambling and I do it through travel), but the driving force is the same. We hail from a long-line of risk-takers, starting with our unconventional, hippie, Harley Davidson-riding parents and going back to our great-grandparents who immigrated to the US 100 years ago.
The fact though that modern society has evolved in a way that we no longer need to spend our days hunting buffalo or outruning rhinos, makes some scientists wonder if the risk-taking gene has become obsolete. Or at worst, harmful.
Because the same gene that motivates high-risk personalities to bungee jump or move to Mongolia, also makes them prone to stranger sex, drug abuse, reckless driving and crime.As Maddi put it, healthy, well-adjusted people are "good at turning every day experiences into something interesting. My guess is that the safe-cracker and the mountain climber can't do that as well. They have to do something exciting to get a sense of vitality. It's the only way they have of getting away from the sense that life sucks."
He went on to say that high-risk takers "have a hard time deriving meaning and purpose from every day life." A psychologist from the university of Michigan, Randy Larsen, even went as far to state that risk-takers are "a little sociopathic".
Watching this video of people base-jumping off of cliffs superman style certainly makes me think that he may have a point. A very small one, but still. What do you think? Are risk-takers an inspiration to society or a hindrance?
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