Dear Joe:

Regarding the air quality and wearing a mask: my last thoughts on that is to suggest that you find out the efficiency of those masks, do they make significant difference? And maybe find out what city you will be living there and research the air quality there and medical consequences on the population there.

I went back to your first post on tiny Buddha, a year and a month ago. This is parts of the posting of the younger Joe, that I thought especially relevant here:

“Life has been pretty uneventful for me ever since I graduated from university last September. The big wide scary world awaits. I have been unemployed for most of that time… Why do I keep beating myself up (figuratively speaking) for failing job interviews…

I’ve been taking night classes to gain a qualification in teaching. After graduation, I was skeptical about finding work in the illustration/art industry because it is very hard to break into, so I thought adult education and becoming an art teacher would be a better choice. Those that can’t do, teach…

I thought my luck was about to change a few months ago when I applied for a teaching job in another country – teaching English at a school. I got the job and I was so happy about it. I had to stay with a host-family and I thought things went really well to start off with. They had promised to do lots of fun things together… It got to the point where I wasn’t really enjoying staying with them and I was constantly on edge that they didn’t like me and they were beginning to resent me.

There was also the fact that this was the first time being on my own in a foreign country with no other native English speakers around and I just felt isolated most of the time. I also happen to be an introvert –

when the need arises, I have no problem speaking out in front of other people to do presentations – I had to teach loud schoolkids and nosy noisy teenagers. This drained a lot of my energy and after a day of trying to teach, the last thing I want to be doing is making meaningless small talk or watching things which have absolutely no interest to me on the television with the rest of the family. It got to the point where they were constantly complaining to my manager and the program co-ordinator that I wasn’t talking to them enough or involving myself – to put it simply, they wanted out of the program, there were no other accommodation arrangements so my time there was finished. Okay, maybe there was a lack of communication – I felt lonely, burned-out and there was of course the language barrier…

I had built up expectations about this placement, that I was going to have a blast, finish the placement and that it would open doors for me. By being dismissed from the program due to irreconcilable differences with the family, I sometimes feel that they had completely destroyed this and it’s all their fault…I was out of a job and I needed that money to repay my dad back for the flight.

I wanted to travel. Over the past year I built up this fantasy about travelling and working in as many different countries as I can and seeing all of these great things. I’m not sure if this is what I want anymore. Maybe I only felt these things because life at home without a job and without purpose is boring, and travelling would be a great escape from all of these feelings of insecurity and emptiness that I have. It would almost be like escaping from myself which sounds contradictory, I know…

if there is one burning question I want to ask – it’s this. When you feel as though you have gotten over something bad, why is it sometimes that this problem you thought you had exorcised comes back to bite you further down the line…”

I was going to do some analysis of then vs. now, but then, if you’d like, give it a shot and let me know if you want my (yet to be developed) thoughts.

anita