it's the little things

I saw a quote the other day that said something to the effect of, if you don't change your direction, you might end up where you are headed. This quote hit me a bit too hard in quite a few places for a lot of reasons, but I think the most important is that there are some days when I forget where I'm headed, but there are also some days when I forget the importance of the journey. I get a little too caught up in the day to day, the rat race. I get a little too worried about little things despite knowing that they are just that, little things, little things on a road to big things, or perhaps little things that just make up a big road, and maybe, just maybe, that's the point. At the same time though, there are many days when I get too caught up the future, and I forget that the little things are important. It's important to make a life, but it's also important, and sometimes, perhaps more important, to live.

I made fish tacos. 10/10 recommend and 10/10 recommend homemade tortillas.

So the other day I caught myself yearning for the end of several things in my life. I was frustrated. I felt overstretched, over committed, under prepared, under qualified. I felt tired. It was a moment when I realized how much time and effort I sink into people and things that often goes unnoticed. I realized how much energy I expend worrying about being better for others in ways that I am hardly prepared to excel. Because regardless of how much I want it, I wasn't built or educated to be a teacher. I realized how much of my heart I pour into the people around me, and how much trust and loyalty I give to those who may not deserve it. I realized how much people know this about me, and how easy it is to be taken for granted.

This little guy is one of my old neighbors from up lart. He was always a bright light in my day, a fact I remembered the other day when I walked into the town's new lokali and was soon ambushed by him, asked for gum, thieved of my phone for gaming purposes, and reminded to not take the little happy things for granted.

Then there was this moment when I was at my lowest, I was angry, hurt, confused, and lost, but I realized that my road is my road, I alone get to claim it. So despite the things I cannot control, it's the things I can control that matter to my journey. In the end, regardless of the what ifs in the reaction of others, my time spent working with students is the time where I really feel like I am doing something with my service. In the end, I would feel guilty if I hadn't sat and waited for the students who decided that today felt like a good day to skive off tutoring and forget to tell the tutor. In the end, it's my dedication that I get to claim.

In a few short months, I will be able to go into my office during normal work hours. In fact, hopefully, I'll actually know when I can and cannot go into the office in advance. I mean, honestly, what a concept. In about one month, I will actually finish my workdays at a normal hour. I won't leave the office just to start teaching until long after the sun has gone down. I do, I yearn for this. However, I also understand that the days that I show up to a locked office are the days I have gotten to make and share some of the foods I miss most from home or drink a coffee with some of the people that make this place home. I understand that the moments I have spent whiling away the sunlit hours poring over test prep manuals have the power to fundamentally change lives. I understand that I'm giving it my all, and that makes me happy. So as long as I choose to take ownership of my side of the road instead of the whole thing, in the end, I will be proud of the journey that got me to where I was headed all along, wherever that turns out to be.

This is the new preschool in town and it's so cute. There is literally no reason for me to have this photo on my blog post, but I didn't take many pictures this week, and this place is super cute.

At the same time though, I often find myself focusing a bit too hard on that elusive outcome at the end of this little journey of mine. It's so easy to talk about the past and present as if they are sections on a resume to get... somewhere. That "somewhere" being the actual place of supposed happiness and fulfillment, as if your whole life leads up to the utopia at the end of the journey in the form of the perfect job, house, city, salary, what have you; whereas, everything along the way, is just the dues you have to pay on the utopia toll road. I've found myself justifying letting the negative feelings overflow about the little things that bug me in the day to day as, well, it will be better someday, but I have to experience the ugly first. However, it is so easy to let that negativity disguised as hopefulness overshadow the little things that make this journey so great, like listening to my student perfectly read a dialogue then ask me to bring more readings to lessons so she could practice even more, or another student finish reading a piece, only to look at me and say, "One more time, I can do better".

So the point is, who knows what it is I'm looking for in life? Who really knows where they are headed, or what that utopia really looks like? In the end, do people ever actually get there? Do people ever really feel like their "done" or that they have "made it"? Who knows? What I do know though, is that I waste a ton of time waiting for what feels like storms to pass with what feels like a promise of a reward at the end of the tunnel, but I don't think that's the point. I don't think the point is to get to the end, I think the point is to make the in between less miserable, or even, perhaps, a utopia of its own.

I found cream cheese and I made an Oreo cheesecake because there are no graham crackers here. It was amazing, and despite not having a pretty icing plopper, looked pretty pretty.

I'll leave you with this encounter I had the other day with one of my favorite humans, who soon herself, will embark on the Peace Corps journey. She posed all of the same questions and voiced all of the same concerns that kept me up at night when I was counting down my own days to departure. It's hard for me to describe Peace Corps to people who haven't been through it. It's hard to explain how and how much you grow to choose happiness, because a lot of times you just have to or you will go crazy. However, at the end of the day, that power is such a gift. No, a rich woman does not the Peace Corps make. No, being away from family and things like maple syrup aisles at the grocery store isn't easy. Yes, some days I feel professionally behind. Yes, I also sometimes worry that I am personally behind. But as soon as I remember that that elusive utopia is a fallacy that these 27 months in Albania are not going to delay, I can remember that these months in Albania have taught me how to do the journey rather than reach the destination. I do know how to be happy. I know how to be happy with whatever life decides to toss my way, and that's what Peace Corps is.