What i’m up to

It’s rainy season here in Cambodia and I love listening to the music of rainfall and watching it pour down outside. So much of living in this country reminds me of my childhood and my island homeland. Fortunately for me, I haven’t had to worry too much about getting soaked or flooded out by it so far.

I’ve been working on a lot of creative projects lately, doing some design work for a place that is coming soon to Phnom Penh, as well as teaching myself some new software and systems. I’ve temporarily taken up the practice of yoga along with one of my sisters and I’ve also enjoyed swimming so much that my elbows have started to complain!

Besides that, I continue to spend time with friends, explore opportunities, meet new people, enjoy so much live music, and enjoy delicious food and drinks. Just yesterday, among other things, I spent the afternoon playing with cats at a cat cafe while getting things done on my computer, and then later I went bachata dancing with some new friends and then we went out to karaoke until, well, the wee hours of the morning. It was brilliant.

what i’m thinking

Today is my one year anniversary of arrival in Cambodia. Packing up a life in the middle of the pandemic was difficult, scary, and sad, particularly since throwing a large farewell party was entirely impossible and even getting to see and say goodbye to friends individually was implausible.

I knew what I was choosing to leave but I had no idea what I was flying towards. I didn’t know who I might never see again (and that’s still a reality I have to contend with) between the pandemic and life normally. I didn’t know how well I might be able to eat as a Celiac in the new place – knowing I wouldn’t likely go hungry for long, but as a foodie, realising I might nevertheless face a very restrictive plate of options. I knew that since I first went off to uni, I have consciously and consistently chosen to be physically near or in a place where I could at least visit with my siblings as much as possible over the years, but now I was choosing to go far away and with no concrete idea of when or how we will reunite. I knew that technology has increased since I moved all around the world as a kid and every move was a death, but I didn’t know if this would be different or not for all that the world has continued to evolve and devolve. I knew I was coming here for six months to a year, but also that *everything* could change in the span of a heartbeat; in a single breath.

I’ve said it before and I say it again now, I felt like Elsa from Frozen II who is haunted by this something that keeps her awake at night until she finally just has to run off into the unknown to find and face it. One of my friends and colleagues had actually randomly given me a little Elsa figurine for Christmas, before I had even accepted the job relocation – and she is one of the few items I slipped into my luggage to bring with me like a talisman.

Now twelve months later, I find myself still here and still facing the unknown – acknowledging perhaps just how much we all live alongside but ignore or hide from the vast unknown around us all the time. Much more comfortable in the space of unknown than perhaps I ever have felt before. I still don’t know when I will be able to see most of my family again, but I had the gift of seeing my brother and sister-in-law on this side of the world after years of pandemic-produced separation. And I hope that perhaps sometime sooner than later I will at least visit again with family, if not also friends. While the advance in technology doesn’t equal being physically present with people you love, what a difference it is to be able to video chat with high quality video and sound at whim, at no extra cost. To just pop in from around the world to read aloud to nieces and nephews; to do yoga or stationary bike or swim “together;” to call just to cry, laugh, or talk —or a combination thereof! I am so grateful for this advancement in technology that allows me to allay the sorrows of separation and still enjoy being present to a surprising degree even from afar.

As others who have lived in many different places growing up often understand, I find it quite difficult to imagine being any place for any long amount of time. There was a time in my life where I was a different place at least every month. It made a year long commitment to one place sound epic, and more than a year was unfathomable. After uni, I worked really hard to learn to stay in one place for five years despite how homesick I was for elsewhere, how foreign I felt, and how many things I found difficult or downright scary. And then I packed up my life and moved somewhere entirely different to try it out. I didn’t go there with a time in mind besides “I want to at least survive a year here.” And when I did, I created stability for myself in the construct of saying, “I’m here until I’m not.” Which let me actually, simply be there, in that place, and to root down and extend my arms out like tree branches; to grow and flourish.

Looking back at the last twelve months of rooting myself here, at the surprising choice to unleash myself from the security of the job that originally brought me here and would have led me away by now, I still find it impossible to quite say how long I’m looking at. I can’t do it any more now than before! But I will say this again for myself: I’m here until I’m not. And I will be. So, to the next and latest unknown; hello my strange friend and well met.

This post is a snippet from a newsletter I originally published on Substack. You can read the rest of the publication there. 

what i’m up to

June is whirling by here in Phnom Penh, my goodness, but wonderfully full of friends, music, and art. One night I went to a newish restaurant here for what was a fabulous jazz concert by a musician I have avidly followed, the next night I attended—and participated in – a late night jam session at her invitation, and at the end of the week before last, I attended a fashion show at the French Institute.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee has come and gone, and I was thrilled to attend a concert by the Phnom Penh Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the platinum celebrations!

Another treat has been the much-anticipated 3-week long visit of a dear friend, who once-upon-a-time worked for me and somewhere along the way a beautiful friendship was begun, aided no doubt by our mutual love of seizing life, of writing, of cooking and eating food, and of magic and mixed cultures. Long after those days and across the continents, we’ve stayed friends – and what a delight to rendezvous here in this city, where her now-husband is originally from and where they are finally visiting again after three years and the pandemic. Sharing a place with friends is always a great way to experience it anew, too – and that was a delightful thing to remember.

I’ve also gone to a number of industry networking events and meetings as I continue to explore what is next for me. There are many exciting possibilities and I’ve felt very privileged to be able to meet, speak with, and learn from so many interesting and kind professionals.

what i’m thinking

It’s Pride week here in Phnom Penh and I’ve been thinking a lot about how much more wonderful the world is when all people are treated with dignity and are free to live fully as themselves. How much better the world would be if people didn’t have to exhaust themselves in simply trying to live their lives; if we all recognised, promoted, and made good on the intrinsic, equal worth and value of all human beings? If we diligently ensured the same rights, ease, and access in life for all (and not as a chore or necessary evil, but out of mutual love and respect for one another) rather than the frequently inhumane treatment dished out by those who claim to somehow be better (?!) humans. I also want to recall to myself that humanity and dignity are promoted not only in the big sweeping actions like policies, rules, or regulations, but in everyday interactions, in the moment-by-moment of life, and even in our intonations, expressions, and words. We should all be choosing love, all the time.

what i’m learning

I’m having the time of my life learning about what all I could possibly do with my life. Admittedly, however, I find myself envying children playing pretend on playgrounds, able to act out possible future scenarios and experience a mild version of them. I find myself wishing that I could spin up a server and test site of my life in which to play out possible choices and new features or elements in a safe environment, just like we do before making major changes to websites. It feels very daunting to step out into something that is so unfamiliar; but as a result, I’m learning more about how my brain is mapped, how I might want to rewire or upgrade it, and what failure and success mean to me.

This post is a snippet from a newsletter I originally published on Substack. You can read the rest of the publication there. 

what i’m up to

I’m back in Cambodia after a monthish-long holiday abroad, and I appear to have finally gotten over the jet-lag. Somehow it always hits me hardest travelling westward. I spent half of April and most of May in Australia and New Zealand – both places I had planned to get to back in 2020 before life as we knew it was COVID-cancelled – and briefly in Singapore. It also ticked my bucket-list 6th continent item off at long last. I had the best time exploring Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, Christchurch, Kaikoura, and Singapore and would have made it to a few more places if I hadn’t caught COVID myself somewhere along the way and had to spend a week isolating.

While I didn’t get to see everything (like the Shire) or everyone (here’s looking at you, my friends in Auckland) I’d planned to in New Zealand, I had a wonderful, special, and certainly memorable visit (and isolation) with my brother and sister-in-law, who fortunately didn’t get sick along with me. We aren’t in a post-COVID world yet, but it is certainly nice that it is becoming more manageable and survivable (thank you vaccines!!) and that the world is slowly re-opening.

Amongst the LONG list of awesome experiences across the countries, some highlights (aside from all the time spent with friends and eating so much deliciousness) include:

• scootering around Brisbane and shopping
• seeing the ocean and relaxing in Gold Coast
• ferry rides and exploring Sydney (including bookstores as well as beaches)
• seeing a show at the Sydney Opera House
• visiting the International Antarctic Centre (and even getting to sit in on a lecture for a group who were heading down to the NZ station!)
• seeing whales and soaking up the ocean and mountain views in Kaikoura
• trivia night with my brother at his local pub
• lounging in hot springs in the foothills of the Southern Alps (or thereabouts)
• wine tasting in Marlborough and a gin tasting & tour at the foot of Mt. Fyffe
• Singapore marina by night

Returning to Cambodia has felt like such a homecoming, and as I look ahead at June and the coming months, I know I hope to continue calling it home for a while yet. We shall see what happens!

what i’m thinking

Much of my life, growing up as I did across cultures, countries, and continents, I’ve felt a keen sense of not-belonging, of exclusion and missing something everyone else seems to possess. Having an identity with roots in so many opposite and opposing cultures, traditions, and memories has been one of the greatest challenges in my life and remains something I still struggle with today. Oftentimes travelling for me has heightened that sense of being lost somewhere in between, of not belonging anywhere. But in the last month while messaging with a friend, I commented on how happy I was feeling and how obsessed I was at that moment with the stunning view out my window, and they laughingly commented that I might belong in the South Pacific. And without even pausing, no hesitation whatsoever, I wrote back, “haha I belong everywhere.”

And then I saw what I’d written, saw what I’d said, and realised it’s significance. Realised that somewhere in the last month of travelling, or perhaps in the past year since leaving the life I’d built up in Washington D.C. and the USA broadly, that it has come to be true. Because while I’ve said that before, I’ve always stated it wistfully, my insides twisted up with a longing for it to be real, to actually belong everywhere in a broad sense since I don’t belong somewhere specifically. But this didn’t feel wistful or sad. There was not even a sense of saudade. Instead, I don’t feel misfit; I don’t feel wrong; I don’t feel haunted by a sense of missing anything—including what I am or where I belong. Instead I truly feel home in myself and in the expanse of everywhere without the undertone of sadness.

Maybe it’s just for now. Maybe it’s because I’m not a hidden immigrant anymore, expected to fit in and consistently failing, constantly surprising people by yet another thing I don’t know or didn’t understand, even years after relocation, even after adjusting my accent and my clothing and my cultural references. Now, I definitely do not and cannot blend in and so I can comfortably and simply be “other.” Be all the varied, many things I am, rolled up into the very unique and constantly evolving being that is me. It’s so grounding and also incredibly freeing. It’s so beautiful and crystaline. It is breathing easy after slowly suffocating for so very long. I’m here for it, I am so happy in it, and I don’t ever want to let this go.

This beautiful thought-image comes to my mind as I ponder all this; it’s an excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets (which I adore), specifically, “East Coker:”

Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

what i’m learning

Years ago, I worked really hard to learn how to create structure out of and/or despite the chaos in my life, resulting in a long-sought sense of some security; that feeling of finally being in control. This past year and especially the last month have helped me consider, though, that perhaps at some point structure started controlling me. I forgot that I don’t have to be afraid of chaos or be adverse to the unknown because I can handle them, because I can create structure for myself amid the chaos and I can navigate fluid and ambiguous circumstances—indeed, I have done. Importantly, I don’t need structure for structure’s own sake. I myself am solid, fluid, and most definitely ambiguous (for better and for worse)!

Travelling in general, and certainly travelling internationally with constantly changing and widely ranging rules and regulations in the post-pandemic world we are moving into, was really anxiety raising for me at first, because it’s so impossible to control or even predict. But when I remembered that I can be ok no matter what happens, that I can be fluid, too, it helped. Structure can be the palm tree that is built to bend in the hurricane winds. Structure can be the bicycle designed to ride on but that can also fold up and be carried with you on your back.

Structure can be deconstructed and reconstructed, and I find it refreshing to recall that sometimes our fragility as humans is merely manufactured and all we need to do is a little deconstructing, reframing, or shifting.

This post is a snippet from a newsletter I originally published on Substack. You can read the rest of the publication there. 

what i’m up to

It’s been a momentous last few weeks for me, leading up to and following a decision I’ve made to leave my job. I resigned about 2 weeks ago and have only a few days left with my org.

The last few weeks have been full of lots of reflection, of grieving in farewells and letting go, as well as of excitement and joy over the possibilities of the future, and some nerves about the technicalities of transitions like this.

I’ll be taking a bit of time to myself to rest and enjoy some time off, which I’m looking forward to!

But just call me Elsa, because once again I’m running into the unknown!

Aside from making monumental decisions and having so much to wrap up and transition and figure out, the past few weeks have also been full of so many wonderful things. Delightful and delicious brunches with friends. Girls’ nights out on the town. Fun networking opportunities IN PERSON again. Clothing swaps, night markets, seeing movies in theatres again, cat cuddles, massages, and manicures…

Last weekend was a very delightfully art-filled weekend, complete with visiting a gallery opening with friends that another friend’s work was featured in and painting, and I got to lead a workshop on ethical photography and storytelling, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

what i’m thinking

It feels in so many ways like the whole world is burning. Pandemic not yet over. Excruciatingly obvious and countless instances of racism and complicity near and far. Ongoing climate change impacts. War and devastation that is nearer to me in many ways than ever before, slapping up against a country I consider home; a place I grew up in; waged between two countries and two languages and two cultures that I have visited and lived in and speak and understand. Making the decision to leave my job and workplace of 3.5 years, and doing so while far from family, in a still new-to-me-country, amid the pandemic, witnessing climate change impacts, despite a war along my home borders and hearing questions of a potential WWIII – it feels in so many, many ways like the world is burning. My world is burning. So many peoples’ worlds are burning irrevocably, unretrievably, and in utterly horrifying and devastatingly ways that are entirely beyond my own insulated, privileged little life.

And yet every day there is something that is still somehow beautiful. Every day there are stories of light breaking through and of hope despite everything and people choosing to actively love and care for one another no matter what, despite everything happening around them.

While I wish resiliency didn’t have to be a badge that very tired, weary people who didn’t choose these terrible experiences wear; while I wish and I hope and I work for peace and equity and for brighter times and a better world, I’m not yet despairing. I wake up every day looking for the light and hoping to reflect it out again into the world like a disco ball or splice it into rainbows.

What I keep reminding myself as well is that life is deeply complex and full of things that seem impossible together; polar opposites. Like experiencing grief and loss and heartache and fear but also still enjoying beauty and having hope and bubbling with laughter and feeling joy. It’s strange and yet so possible. So while the world does in so many ways feel like it’s burning, my world has also been full of so many good things and I’m so grateful for this life we get to live.

what i’m learning

I’m learning a lot of things these days, about myself and about things that are larger than myself as well. But what I want to share today is this most excellent article on power and privilege. Wherever in the world, the article is still worth your time and attention.

what i’m making

I painted this last weekend and I’ve named it “Everything is Burning.” It’s not the best photo with some glare on it at the edge, but you get the picture!

This post is a snippet from a newsletter I originally published on Substack. You can read the complete publication there.