I don't know why I stopped writing so much. It's been two and a half years since... Since. Lots of boxes of Kleenex. One case of poison oak. Some very, very bad dates. Over a thousand miles run in bitterness, frustration, anger, release, pride, pain, joy, despair. Three rough birthdays. Six rougher anniversaries. A few friends made. A whole lot more lost. A PhD dissertation, defense and piece of sheepskin. Writen half a journal stolen from a certain office supply establishment two days after my world came crashing down. And not anyone that has replaced what I lost. No laughs like those. But maybe a good goal for the next two-point-five years.
So Taiwan. I'm moving there, you know. It started with an application. I needed one last one for my weekly unemployment check quota. I had been wicked lazy about it and had to get just one out. So I saw a job posted on the Science website for a scientific editor at Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. I responded with a CV and cover letter. They returned the serve with an editing test. I completed it scarce in the nick of time just as I was at the height of suffering with poison oak over the better part of my body. I cared more for calamine than commas and was ruthless in my revisions. They scheduled an interview that I nearly missed. But they persisted in trying to contact me. This was, of course, knowing me, very confusing. Me? No. They weren't interested. It was wasting time. But the persistence.... Huh. No. Not doing it.
Now I know that drinking never really led to anything good, but I'm out with a friend one night and I see an full half page add in the local alternative news rag. "The Year of Taiwan." Unbeknownst to anyone in the SA metropolitan area, the city had acquired a sister in Taiwan. Not Taipei. But still. "The Year of Taiwan." So from the get-go of this little adventure I like to call wydodom, I've felt strongly that widows should conscientiously avoid the tendency to read symbols into the more prosaic bullshit of life. Newspaper ads AREN'T talking to you. Avril Lavigne is NOT conveying a message from dearly beloved. You probably DID just forget to put the ketchup away. Your alphabet soup does NOT aspire to act as a flavorless-yet-wholesome ouija. But still, maybe the universe DOES sometimes get tired of you screwing up. Or maybe...
This felt different. Plus the weeks of job hunting and itchy poison oak rash paired with watching every facebook contact get married or have twins or buy a house or get a beetle named after them had left me silently, but belligerently, reminding Paul that as he was responsible for wrecking the Good Ship Lollipop here HE WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR SETTING HER AFLOAT AGAIN. An awesome life. This was the original order made silently and repeatedly over the last crappy two years. Fix things. Make things not suck. And through all the unpleasantness, I'd warmed to an idea. An idea that awesome was around the corner. An awesome job. An awesome opportunity. I'd had MORE than my share of funny/interesting/bizarro. Ok, well, an especially heavy dose of bizarro. Anyway. It was time for awesome. And through the absolute crap of it, I felt like maybe it wasn't really around the corner, but it was in the works. Like The Universe/Personal Casper was shuffling through the files looking for an acceptable situation. Something more than "good story - worthy." Or maybe the placement had been found, but wasn't quite yet available. My patience/faith was wearing Kate Moss-thin, though.
The Year of Taiwan. Nothing to loose. I went into the interview with that attitude. I didn't mince words or try to play nice; I was just me. Eff it all. But they were so eager to tell me about the benefits of working at AS, of living in Taiwan. Huh. Weird. Ok. But why are they talking compensa.... Two to three week?!?!? You want me to let you know in two to three weeks?!?! Um.
I grabbed my sports bra, boy shorts, shoes and my ipod. Run. A hard run. The one and only thing that I've found could bring things back to rational. I ran and wanted to cry. But you try crying when every muscle INSISTS on complete oxygen exchange! It quiets your emotion and your brain and it sets your heart to a rhythmic beat that ignores all pain and heartache, anxiety and sadness, indecision and impracticalities. I poured the salt into the sweat, denying the tears. And I knew what I was to do. Over the next days I talked to a few people, ran the numbers, pondered the practicalities. But lying there, drenched in sweat, I already knew. Two days later I accepted. And that's how it was begun.
