The Other Side of the World

Shakespeare penned the immortal words: "The course of true love never did run smooth."

I've reinterpreted their meaning over many years and through many relationships, and after all the heartache and heartbreak, dating, loving and marriage, all I can come up with is this:

No love story is normal.

I've mentioned before that B. and I have an unusual story.  We didn't meet in college. We didn't meet in school at all. Not at a bar or a party or even over facebook.  We weren't set up by friends. We met in a Bulgarian village called Stara Zagora.

She had landed only hours before and was still loopy and jet-lagged out of her mind.  At the time I had a haircut you normally don't see outside of 3rd grade class pictures from 1986.  It was summer, and the A/C wasn't great in the meetinghouse where we met to introduce ourselves.  We were both sweaty, greasy and exhausted.

No.  It was not love at first sight.

I think there's a primal part of your brain that gets activated once you reach the age where people get married.  That biological impulse that says, "I'm single and I'm looking to remedy that." - even if only subconsciously.  Anytime I met a pretty girl, that little part would activate in my brain and start analyzing her features, playing a short film in my brain featuring our future together. Funny how our minds keep themselves amused.

Well, I shook my sweet B.'s hand, completely ignorant of the new chapter in my life that had just begun.  I did my primal scan, sat back and enjoyed the feature, and continued getting to know her briefly before she left to get settled in her apartment and recover from her long flight. I found out later that she had a similar film festival going on in her brain.  Particularly when she heard my surname for the first time.  As she shook my hand, she groggily wondered, "Bugg?  Oh man, what if I marry him?"  I found out that little chestnut later on.

I should break here to mention that we were not in Bulgaria as some sort of bizarre, extreme off-site dating service.  We were volunteering as missionaries.  We set aside 18-24 months to humanitarian work, education, and religious proselytizing. It's a strict lifestyle that you enter into voluntarily, to focus only on the people you serve.  Boys room with boys, girls with girls in separate apartments in different parts of town.  You don't date.  You don't do anything for yourself.  The time you spend there is for the Bulgarian people, not you.  You learn the language and try to help people better their lives.

Not exactly fertile ground for love to blossom.  And it didn't at first.  But as I said, there is that primal part of your brain, constantly running that mating-match-up-meter, mission or no.

She slept a lot the first few weeks, crashing whenever she could.  But in her pockets of wakefulness, we developed a witty repartee. We got to know each other gradually, and eventually became very good friends.  We found we both share an enthusiastic adoration for a number of Michael Jackson songs, among other things.  But the admiration didn't really progress further than that whilst in Stara Zagora.

We kept tabs on each other after we left for separate assignments in other cities, and the rest, as they say, is history. But I will always remember that quiet village in the hills of Eastern Europe. I was meant to be there, just as she was meant to come there.  And we were meant to grow upon each other slowly in unusual circumstances.  Our love story would make a lousy romantic comedy.  But aren't there enough of those anyway?  Who wants normal?  Life can come up with something much more interesting and certainly less formulaic.

Call it fate, call it chaos theory, call it what you will, but I know I had to meet my sweetheart on the other side of the world.  Don't rail against life for forcing you down a path you don't know or approve of.  You don't know what's awaiting you at the next turn.


S

Late to Life

I had a job interview yesterday.  This is my last "college summer."  The last time I have to scramble for summer employment before impending fall classes engulf my time wholesale.  This time next year I'll be graduating and flying top speed into the workforce.  But now, as my graduation date approaches ever... so... slowly... I feel kind of stuck.

Truth is, I got a late start on life.

I graduated from high school younger than most - a respectable 17 years old, with plenty of opportunity to get a head start in college.  However, I had made other plans. As is common practice in my faith, I chose to devote two years of my life to preach, teach, and volunteer in an assigned location.  I'll write more about my experiences volunteering as a missionary in another post, but suffice it to say, my two years abroad, combined with the year and a half I took to save for my mission (yes, we pay our own way whenever possible) essentially destroyed any semblance of a head start.

Most of my peers in my graduating class of 2007 were finishing college when I was registering for my freshman year.  I try not to make comparisons, every life takes a different path.  But it's difficult not to feel behind somehow.

My interview didn't help.  This was a nice place offering a great job.  I pray I land the position, I would love to work there and it would give me tons of career-applicable experience.  Plus, it feels like a job.  I walked into the office building, greeted by the brooding stare of a burly security guard and the dazzlingly hygienic smile of a pleasant, blonde receptionist. A welcome equal parts intimidating and inviting, I was already overwhelmed.  The cavernous lobby lined with plasma screens and crisply printed promotional materials didn't help to quell my nerves either.

All the glass-paned, polished ambiance of professionalism brought those gnawing doubts hurtling back to me.  I was supposed to get a head start, I graduated young!  I could be 3 years into a career now instead of juggling part-time jobs (no one offers full-time if they can avoid giving health insurance benefits). I could have a bachelor's, an MBA, and be starting my own business instead of fenagling my class schedule so that I don't overwhelm myself again with 18 credits a semester.  I could be climbing the corporate ladder and watching my financial portfolio diversify rather than blindly searching for professors' soft spots and catering my design portfolio to their tastes.  I could move on from the "school game" and finally get my hands dirty.

Here, in the opulence of this lobby, was a taste of the life I was missing out on.  This was where I could have been 3 years ago, a successful, industrious provider. Someone my wife could rely on to cover expenses while she prepares for grad school.  Someone to alleviate pressure from her end and allow her to focus entirely on her studies. The key to happiness.  The solution.  The life of professional ambition, of career planning, of weekends and summer trips and Saturdays spent with my wife instead of my homework.

But I shouldn't regret my choice to volunteer.  I met wonderful people, saw foreign lands, learned a strange language, and expanded my horizons in ways college couldn't accomplish (and hasn't). Perhaps most importantly, I met my wife there, on the other side of the world.  It was a wonderful, enriching experience and I wouldn't trade it for the world, let alone a head start in the job market.

The coulds and insteads and rathers of life can drown you in a flood of woulda-coulda-shoulda.  The fact is, that life, the life you're missing out on, the life you pine after - it will always be there.  It's ambition's great mirage.

Timing has nothing to do with it.  Education and career happen in their own time, at their own pace.  I know a man who is a successful provider, husband and father who never went to college.  I have a friend who's been all over the world doing volunteer work after graduating from college; he's home and currently works at Starbucks.  Another friend of mine graduated the same year I did and is still taking writing classes as he prepares to compose what I fully expect will be the great American novel. Some end up in the CEO's chair. Others choose to stay home with the kids (and not just the mothers; stay-at-home dads are out there working hard, too).  Regardless of what your life's timeline is, I think as long as your moving forward, you're on the right track.

Maybe I'm not late after all.  I just took the scenic route.


S

In Between

This is going to be a little different.

Normally these posts are updates on the milestones in our lives.  I got a new job, we got a new house, she had a birthday, a promotion, a vacation, some inspired self-realization I'm compelled to share with everyone.

Not this time.

This time I'm celebrating.

This semester is nearly over and there is no respite in view.  This summer is going to only make life busier.  B. is taking more courses immediately after this semester ends, further shortening her summer.  She's desperately trying to master organic chemistry, statistics, genetics, calculus, anatomy, and countless other classes I can't even begin to fathom, all while working full-time in a high-pressure job.

Deadline has been the name of the game for me.  Lately I've averaged four or five hours of sleep a night as I scramble to illustrate books and projects before their impending deadlines, finalize the manuscript for my own children's book so I can move on to those illustrations and get published before that impending deadline.  I'm looking for more freelance work hoping that on the off chance someone does hire me I can find the time somewhere between deadlines.  Meanwhile, I just finished a major revision of my website, portfolio and resume and filled out nearly a dozen job applications for graphic design positions within biking distance throughout the area.

There's been a lot of buildup to impending milestones, but none of them have happened yet.  And when they do, I'm never that impressed.  My mind is usually focused on the next task.

But what has gotten B. and me through this insanity hasn't been the milestones or the promise of a check-mark on our cosmic to-do list - it's been the in-betweeners.

The little moments in between deadlines.  Between shifts at work.  Between filing applications and filing rejections.  Between paychecks.  The little gasps for air before we plunge back down into the abyss.

Sometimes we run.  B. and I go running at least three times a week, even if only for a mile at 11 at night.  We talk, we walk, we hold hands, we reacquaint ourselves with that button nose normally wedged in a book or those eyes normally glazed over staring at a screen.  We wade through the dead air, the dull mute of homework and listen to the silence instead.  It doesn't make us work better.  Homework isn't done any quicker.  The deadlines are still there, looming.  But I relish our in-betweeners.  So does she.  It has made a distinct difference in our moods and our marriage.

Oh, and sometimes we just make out.

The man with the five dollar face once said:

"We can complain that rose bushes have thorns 

or rejoice that thorn bushes have roses."

Stop reaching for the next slab of milestone.  Celebrate what's in between.


S