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| www.redpoe.comI've gone and done it. I've taken the leap.
www.redpoe.com is where it's at.
"It" being my new blog.
Please update your links; I'll catch y'all over there.
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| An Open Letter to EveryoneHi Everyone,
The powers that be have decided that Xanga is not worth my time, or anyone else's. Since their reach only extends so far, they were only able to block all Xanga sites inside this country. There are ways around their mighty reach, but I would never do something like that. I'm emailing this post in, and it's my last post to this site. Well, until the powers that be decide that Xanga is acceptable, or until I move to a place where the powers that be are not as wise or all-knowing.
Until that day I will be posting on my old blog ~ chinadoug.blogspot.com. I moved from there to here for the same reason I am now moving back. Good times. I hope to see you all soon on my new (old) site.
Peace,
Doug | | |
| The First QuestionWhat am I doing here?
I’m not questioning my existence (not yet), but I am
questioning why I am sitting in a coffee shop in Beijing, China.
Well, I’m in a coffee shop because my internet is down in my apartment. That
was relatively easy. The hard part is “why am I in Beijing?” This is the sticky part of
the question. I am asked this question every Sunday at church, and any other
time I meet new people. I have a simple answer that I’ve memorized and that I
say as quickly as possible to hopefully eliminate all follow-up questions:
“WellI’mteachingEnglishatauniversityandrunningaconsultingbusinessthathelpssmalltomediumsizedAmericanbusinessesgetinvolvedinChina.”
And that’s what I do here. But it’s not an answer to the
question that gnaws at me. I could be anywhere in China and do this. Thanks to the wonder that is the internet, I could be almost anywhere in the world and do this (with only a few small and mostly insignificant problems.) I'm not involved in the culture at all. I’m
spending the majority of my time by myself, apart from China. I eat Western
food almost exclusively, spend lots of time in this café drinking coffee and
surfing the web, and when I go somewhere I make sure I have my ipod and my
wonderful headphones that block out all ambient noise. I’ve done almost everything
I can to isolate myself from Beijing. Why am I here? Why haven't I moved to Shanghai? Why haven't I gone back to the States? Why haven't I moved to London? Why haven't I moved on? What is keeping me here? As near as I can tell it's a mixture of things. There are so many more opportunities here in Beijing than there are back home. That's a big part of it. I have a great support network of friends here in China. That's a part of it as well. I've settled down and gotten far too comfortable here in Beijing. Sadly, that's part of it too. Beijing was supposed to be a step in a process, but I've lost my focus. I've taken my eyes off of my goal and stopped moving on. Well, that's not entirely true, since my goals now are different from the goals I had when I arrived.
This question has lost a little of importance since the first time I tried to answer it three weeks ago (this is draft #6 for those of you keeping score at home) since I've decided to move on after this semester. I've taken the GMAT and I am applying to B-schools for the fall. If I was debating whether or not to stay, this question would be irritating me to no end. But now I'm more concerned with learning from this so I don't end up in this situation again. | | |
| Before I get to the first question, I need to give out a few
props and make a few clarifications. I should have done this in my last post,
but I was in a hurry and overlooked this. I apologize profusely. I have the Q&A ready to go, but I'm going to sleep on it before I post it. While I don't have a sense of shame or decency, I have been blessed with an overabundance of prudence.
First, the props:
Props to Jared and Maria for putting me up and putting up
with me. Special props to Maria for making the best brownies I’ve ever eaten. Maybe
it’s because I’ve been brownie withdrawal since the Brasser’s went to Australia, but these
brownies with their peanut butter chips, caramel goo and rich chocolate
goodness were almost a religious experience. Kudos.
Special props to Jared for dealing with the trouncing I gave
him in our first game of Acquire in a magnanimous way. He managed to both eek
out a win in the second game and only spend ten minutes or so doing the happy
dance. I’m impressed with the amount of personal growth shown, I really am.
Next, the clarification:
I didn’t make this clear earlier, but my “Gadget Guy”
segments are available online. Click on the link provided, and at the bottom of
the page you’ll see a section labeled “Archives.” My segments run on Tuesdays
in the second hour of the program. (I managed to make it work with IE7, but it
doesn’t seem to like Firefox or Opera.) This needs no explanation: 
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| There’s a long list of
questions I have that if a student asks I will not answer directly. For
example, if a student was to ask, “do you think Chinese women are beautiful?” I
would respond with a cagey, “there are beautiful women in every country” and
thus answer the question while ducking the questioner’s intent. I’ve gotten
pretty good at not painting myself into a corner; I always leave myself a way
out. I don’t want to look stupid, and I really don’t want to offend any of my
students by giving an insensitive answer. So I’ll answer the question without
really answering the question. For those of you who knew me at Calvin or know
the metaphor, I have been practicing, and I can now use the BS cannon with
amazing surgical precision.
There’s also a short list of really hard questions that I
don’t like to think about. These questions are primarily focused on who I am,
and I am afraid that if I answer them I’ll be forced to make big changes that I
won’t enjoy. Also, I am afraid that I
might not be able to answer some of these questions, and the lack of an answer
would be worse than a life-changing answer. The questions are mental acid, so I
keep them quarantined in the back of my mind. I try to keep myself distracted
so that I won’t have the time to deal with them. Sometimes, when it’s late and
I feel a little guilty, depressed, and in need of a change, I might reach deep,
pull out one of the questions, and then spend a few minutes lightly contemplating
it. I usually have a sketch pad or a notebook to doodle on while I think about
these questions; it seems to help me put my thoughts in order.
Over this break from teaching I’ve been filled with a
desire to change, to reinvent myself. I think if I am able to deal with these
questions I’ll be a different person. I’m a writer at heart, and I think I’m
going to type out most of what I think rather than write and doodle.
In
the past two weeks all of the questions I have locked away have been brought up
in one-on-one conversations (face-to-face, over Skype, through email, and on
the phone) with friends, fellow teachers and family. I know that other people
are struggling with these questions as well. Most of these questions are
personal, (and I guarantee that my answers will be personal) but three years of
teaching in China
has managed to completely remove my sense of shame and privacy. Now that I have explained what I am going to do, it’s
time for the disclaimer. With one or two exceptions, this blog has been about
sharing “China
war stories” with my friends and family back home. Now, it’ll still be about
that, but I’ll be adding the occasional personal growth post. Before I tried to
keep this blog like marshmallow fluff, but I’m going to forgo that rule
starting now. It could get messy and dark and depressing in here; please don’t
freak out. I’ll post the first Q&A tomorrow.
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