Beginning the Austin Adventure

     Argh. One hour and five minutes left to enjoy the dregs of my twenty-second year. Five minutes left, back in North Carolina. Then I’ll be older again, or at least have to acknowledge it. Man—I’m pretty sure I got older last year, too. How long ago was that? It feels like only a handful of months ago…

     Ok. Well. I need a giant grandfather clock, or something to gong out the hours for dramatic effect, but my North Carolina self is now one year older than my Texas self, and is past the barely-entering-adulthood age of twenty-one—has entered the actually-undeniably-an-adult age of twenty-two. I’m not entirely sure what I think about that. With age comes experience, correct? And with experience, maturity? I think this is a misconception; I was better at handling myself a year ago. And, if I’ve regressed, I’ve also just lost one year of credibility for my “immature age” excuse. *makes a face* Woe is me.

     Okay, okay, in all seriousness, now is a fine time to be trying out this intriguing new stage called “adulthood,” to make my foray into the wild, wide world on my own, and see how well I can handle it. This is a totally different kind of adventure than the sort that invaded my life last semester, which (as you probably know, since I talked about it nonstop) involved not just the usual pre-graduation flurry of job and grad school applications, senior classes and theses, panicked soul-searching and identity crises, but also thieves, a battered damsel, the test for my black belt along with the shoulder injury immediately prior, and an interview with my now-current employer that took place after I missed my flight and got 3.5 hours of sleep. Dude—if I can handle all that, I can handle anything. 

     …except, perhaps, mundanity? The good news is, it only takes a touch of novelty to transform prosaic living into what feels like an adventure. (A tame, nobody-gets-hurt kind of adventure, which is admittedly more comfortable than the recent alternatives.) So my first several weeks were full of the excitement of navigating the roads; setting up my (first ever!) apartment; checking out local parks, dojangs, and grocery stores (all the important things, you know); introducing myself to a million and a half people at church, work, the airport, the apartment complex, the local branch of the SCA… My parents have gotta be so proud of me; I can handle everything from carless travel from the airport with a suitcase, to sleeping on the floor with no blanket; from preliminary house management (I would like AC, please) to cooking my own food in a disposable pie tin with some stolen Wendy’s utensils. Between living out of my carry-on for a week while I waited for my boxes to arrive and the theft of my backpack during spring break, I feel like this year has been an exercise in living minimalistically. Behold, capricious Fates: I rise to the challenge. 

     Once my boxes arrived, there were other interesting things to do. Unpacking, for one thing, with less than twenty-four hours before my first day of work. Buying preliminary furniture, some basic home-decoration items, and the start of my patio garden, for another. I know this all sounds trivial, but you cannot possibly underestimate my enthusiasm. I gave my parents regular updates: “Look! Here’s a picture of my mattress! Of my curtains, the Craigslist couch! I have such wild and crazy plans for my patio, you wouldn’t believe—and Mom, I went to the grocery store yesterday AND IT HAS REAL FOOD IN IT. Like, seriously, you can buy meat and vegetables. Duke did not prepare me for this awesomeness; I think I’m going to go cook something now.” My apartment has a gigantic living room, with huge glass sliding doors on one side and wide, wide mirrors on the other. The kitchen is open and airy, with large counters and an arched ceiling that provides great acoustics for all your happy working songs. The patio not only holds my herb pots, flower boxes and vegetable bins, but comes with two identical barn swallow nests on either side of the porch that mark our apartment as the preferred hang-out for fifteen or more adorable, tiny birds. Friendly barn swallows, I will take your poop without complaint, for the sharp, dainty way you cavort with your little blue wings. Maybe my patio could use a bird feeder as well. What think you? XD

     Some things don’t go quite so smoothly as my garden and my patio. I’m gratified to realize that I recognize at least seventy-five percent of all the terms my team lead uses to introduce me to the project, which makes me think (somewhat hopefully) that maybe I do have the background to qualify for this job. The folks there are really friendly, but despite everything, I can’t help but feel a bit intimidated. My training is self-guided, which is difficult because I don’t always know what it is that I’m ignorant about or who I’m supposed to ask for the answers. Plus, I’m also struggling to overcome the feeling that I used to have at my old summer job, back at Duke—that I’m really there only out of generosity, to get paid, and that no one expects me to actually contribute anything useful. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I was afraid that my productivity was of minimal importance next to the value of my teammates’ uninterrupted working time, and I wasted tedious days poring over convoluted manuals, trying to extract every esoteric detail available before I finally asked my team lead for a basic understanding of the way our unit works. Things improved significantly from there.

     Socializing is another thing that started off beautifully and then began to hit bumps. Austin is a city with its own character; its reputation is a motley combination of hippy and nerdy and it claims to live by the motto, “Keep Austin Weird.” Well, that’s all well and good, I thought. When I arrive, they’ll probably crown me queen. Oh my goodness, did I underestimate this place! Yes, it has everything—from its own SCA chapter to a circus school at the end of the famous 6^th Street. But I did not even know the definition of nerdy until I came here. At church, the engineers are in the majority—I think I’m going to have an identity crisis—and someone made a legitimate Star Trek reference during a Sunday School lesson. In a way, it’s fantastic. In a way, I don’t know how to handle it. It’s sort of confusing to think that you have a lot in common with a group of people, to hit it off immediately, and realize a while later that there’s still no substitute for good, old-fashioned time to truly cement a friendship with a person. I’m also dealing with culture shock in a way that I didn’t expect—when everyone is unashamedly abnormal, what is left to make sure that we’re all still sane? I used to joke that sanity was overrated, but back then I had friends who would keep me from bouncing off the walls. Now, it seems like I may have to be the voice of normalcy in a crowd, which is sort of a shocker, and frankly, requires a lot of effort. As much as I like people, socializing with them can be draining, and I never get enough time afterwards to recharge. I think that maybe, during college, I got so comfortable with my friends that I forgot that I’m naturally an introvert—now I’m relearning. 

     Another issue that eats at me is scheduling: how on earth am I going to enjoy all my hobbies and keep up with all my old friends when I have so little time? Eight hours is a third of a day, but it sits smack dab in the center of everything and leaves remarkably little around the edges. I’m too excited with all my house projects to miss my old life too much just yet, but I hate the idea of abandoning anything and there are definitely some hobbies of which I immediately feel deprived. Taekwondo is the first. A lot of my free time the first week or two goes into exploring the local dojangs, but it’s surprisingly difficult to tell which one is going to fit. There’s a kung fu place that reminds me of my old dojo, but I can’t tell if the casual atmosphere translates into casual technique. There’s a jujitsu place that offers a free intro lesson, but my shoulder still isn’t all the way recovered and besides, I want an art that’s not only functional, but beautiful as well. I didn’t realize how important to me the aesthetic aspect of martial arts was until I saw myself surrounded by people who are all trapped in the same poor habits that I’m susceptible to. Dojo after dojo contains people kicking stiffly or standing with necks jutted forward, computer-posture style. Is this the downside to living in a town full of engineers and nerds? I adapt to my surroundings, so I need people whose behavior doesn’t encourage my disproportionality but instead helps keep me balanced. After two months of searching, I’ve still not found a place I’m satisfied with, and my fast from exercise is killing me. Sometimes, if I really can’t stand it, I jog around my apartment complex for a while before bed, but I’m a terrible jogger, and so mostly I just get super fidgety and turn the occasional cartwheel. The Fates are trying to turn me into a runner. I obdurately refuse; if martial arts falls through, I’m switching to parkour. =P

     (Random funny story: I was walking around work early on, just to stretch my legs, and thought I might get my blood moving up to my head faster if I went upside down in a cartwheel. I might be the only new hire who’s accidentally put a sneaker streak on the wall—at head level. Oops. When I said I was going to be normal now, what sort of expectations did you get? *googly eyes*)

     …It’s been several months since I’ve talked with most of the people I know—in fact, today marks the fourth month since I left North Carolina. (No, it’s not my birthday anymore. I wish I could write this much in a day, but that time issue that I mentioned before keeps getting in the way.) I have a lot of your names on a list in my planner, staring plaintively at me and waiting for me to write you a letter; if you look half as pitiable as they do, then I sincerely apologize for my slowness. Poke me with another letter of yours and tell me you miss me; I promise I’ll get back to you twice as fast. =) In the meantime, though, I wanted to sketch out some of the things that have been occupying my time here in the land of sun and gnarled oaks. Four months is a long enough time to have a few good, stand-alone stories; prepare yourself, ‘cause they’ll be coming up. Soon. I think. ^_^

—Jara