It seems to have been an eternity since the content I've placed here was a written post. There are various reasons for that, since I haven't been idle in the meantime, but I figured I'd preface this post anyway, as I usually do. The site has also been revamped in the meantime, with a continually evolving About page, cleaned up sidebars, and more visible options to follow what I'm doing elsewhere. I like the logotype better too, and who knows, perhaps I'll start to draw things for the site itself instead of just posts.
In my latest video, I make a disclaimer life update saying that I haven't been up to much of anything. That isn't entirely true; from the preface alone you can tell I've been busying myself with projects to improve my skills in the areas I enjoy most, but which can also be of use in the freelance world and perhaps eventually in a professional capacity as well. There is a lot that seems to have thrown itself up in the air since the end of my MA courses, and money is naturally the underlying factor in it. Or, well, a lack thereof. However, I have a hard time sitting still, so I have been creating and working on skills while trying to find work and freelance jobs and have been reflecting on this process of being more or less free as an adult to do so.
It is peculiar to arrive at 22 and suddenly be fully in charge of yourself, your finances and sustenance included. Living quite far from family helps to add emphasis to the point, since there is only a minimal, intangible connection that you can have with the people who can support you and help you through life's problems as a last resort. I have come to find myself in a place where the problems of life are made somewhat more difficult due to local conditions—the employment situation of Portugal is much worse than urban America—which offset the benefits of my choice to carve out a life in a new environment.
Yet it is precisely the freedom to make such a decision that comes perhaps as the greatest surprise, since it is not just one day that you wake up and a button has been pressed so that you are doing everything you want in your life. Many of the things we do before arriving at the age of majority set us up for what we will do afterward, as if the fluidity of time were only there to smack us in the face in retrospect. We grow up with binds that serve to imitate the responsible choices we have to make as adults: semesters that lead to progress toward a diploma, summer jobs that lead to experience for admissions, practice in extracurricular activities so that we might be able to perform them in front of others later. As an adult, there are no such structural binds, no inherent requirement to make sure that we do what we're doing with targeted points of accomplishment, we must simply do for ourselves lest we suffer the consequences of being homeless and living in a box down by the river.
So we work and do what we need to in order to eat and stay housed, but there are no limits to what is possible. In a way, this freedom has the opposite effect, creating an anarchy in which we have to set up routines and seemingly inevitable goals or marks of progress in order to have comfort. As a traveler, however, realizing that there is nothing tying you to to the place you have spent some time in, whether it is your childhood home or where you have studied or worked for a few years, is both liberating and terrifying. There may not be the comfort of home or any certainty of what lies ahead, but you're always free to change scenery and try things out somewhere else. Bureaucracy can be dealt with, languages can be learned, cultures can be absorbed, money can be earned. The only thing that can stop you from making that leap is a false sense of security in where you are and what you're doing simply because you have been there for some time and have been doing that for some time.
I have come to a similar point, feeling attached to and absorbed in Portuguese culture due to exposure and interaction, yet often find myself very decisively on the fringes of it. Thinking along these lines, it is hard to envision a future living elsewhere instead of just taking time to travel. Yet the requirements of work and establishing some form of a career for the sake of sustenance put a damper on travel, and so the question of mobility comes up. Where might there be new adventures, cultures, languages, and opportunities to be had in the face of pressure to stay put? For the time being, all signs point to Barcelona. But the path to get there has not been met without a hearty, perhaps arbitrary, resistance.
In my latest video, I make a disclaimer life update saying that I haven't been up to much of anything. That isn't entirely true; from the preface alone you can tell I've been busying myself with projects to improve my skills in the areas I enjoy most, but which can also be of use in the freelance world and perhaps eventually in a professional capacity as well. There is a lot that seems to have thrown itself up in the air since the end of my MA courses, and money is naturally the underlying factor in it. Or, well, a lack thereof. However, I have a hard time sitting still, so I have been creating and working on skills while trying to find work and freelance jobs and have been reflecting on this process of being more or less free as an adult to do so.
It is peculiar to arrive at 22 and suddenly be fully in charge of yourself, your finances and sustenance included. Living quite far from family helps to add emphasis to the point, since there is only a minimal, intangible connection that you can have with the people who can support you and help you through life's problems as a last resort. I have come to find myself in a place where the problems of life are made somewhat more difficult due to local conditions—the employment situation of Portugal is much worse than urban America—which offset the benefits of my choice to carve out a life in a new environment.
Yet it is precisely the freedom to make such a decision that comes perhaps as the greatest surprise, since it is not just one day that you wake up and a button has been pressed so that you are doing everything you want in your life. Many of the things we do before arriving at the age of majority set us up for what we will do afterward, as if the fluidity of time were only there to smack us in the face in retrospect. We grow up with binds that serve to imitate the responsible choices we have to make as adults: semesters that lead to progress toward a diploma, summer jobs that lead to experience for admissions, practice in extracurricular activities so that we might be able to perform them in front of others later. As an adult, there are no such structural binds, no inherent requirement to make sure that we do what we're doing with targeted points of accomplishment, we must simply do for ourselves lest we suffer the consequences of being homeless and living in a box down by the river.
So we work and do what we need to in order to eat and stay housed, but there are no limits to what is possible. In a way, this freedom has the opposite effect, creating an anarchy in which we have to set up routines and seemingly inevitable goals or marks of progress in order to have comfort. As a traveler, however, realizing that there is nothing tying you to to the place you have spent some time in, whether it is your childhood home or where you have studied or worked for a few years, is both liberating and terrifying. There may not be the comfort of home or any certainty of what lies ahead, but you're always free to change scenery and try things out somewhere else. Bureaucracy can be dealt with, languages can be learned, cultures can be absorbed, money can be earned. The only thing that can stop you from making that leap is a false sense of security in where you are and what you're doing simply because you have been there for some time and have been doing that for some time.
I have come to a similar point, feeling attached to and absorbed in Portuguese culture due to exposure and interaction, yet often find myself very decisively on the fringes of it. Thinking along these lines, it is hard to envision a future living elsewhere instead of just taking time to travel. Yet the requirements of work and establishing some form of a career for the sake of sustenance put a damper on travel, and so the question of mobility comes up. Where might there be new adventures, cultures, languages, and opportunities to be had in the face of pressure to stay put? For the time being, all signs point to Barcelona. But the path to get there has not been met without a hearty, perhaps arbitrary, resistance.
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