Throwing Away the Tissue Box

I guess there comes a time in every writers life where they just can't seem to make their writing work. Although I only recently started to take my writing a bit more seriously, the past month or two has been that time for me. Like a doozy of a cold, I felt the first inklings of it coming on right before I left Ecuador. As my A1 students shared their incredible written life stories I realized, once again, how fortunate I was to meet and know them. Being the teacher that I am I promised them my own story, in Spanish, yet I just couldn't get past the first page. As with any cold, my focus was the first to go. I wanted to write down everything, not miss one iota of my experiences in Ecuador. Even more so I wanted to remember the people; my close friends, taxi drivers, students, the children of the streets, the boy killed by a bus, the Colombian empanada lady, Piedad and Andrea, and fellow volunteers in their truest form rather than a nostalgic memory reconstructed from my desk in the US. This posed a problem as there was just too much to do as I closed out my year, so I kept notes-sides of pages, backs of books. Anytime I had a thought I wrote it down and many a bar napkin was filled to the brim. Yet every time I sat down to put these notes together my words would sneeze all over the page.

So I did as any new writer does and set a goal for myself. In my last few blog posts I wanted to move away from the seemingly narcissistic musings of my blogs past and develop a common theme that would connect the vignettes I wanted to tell. It was at this point that I wrote and published the introduction to this venture.  In all reality I was doing what I normally do with a cold, ignoring the overarching problem, that of writers block. Who knows what it was, the end of my time in Quito or the integration back into the Bay Area lifestyle but the words were most definitely not dripping out of my nose as mucus does in the middle of a bad cold.

After many false remedies and pages of beginnings with no ends and ends with no beginnings, I awoke last night in the wee hours of the morning and felt the urge to put ink to paper, actually fingers to keyboard. Maybe it was the quiet hours of the morning and the anticipation of the first glimpses of the morning sun or maybe it was the familiarity of returning to a ritual long since past that let the words flow and connect. It was invigorating to finally be able to breath words again.

Not wanting to relapse I am going to take recovery slow. With my original challenge still in tact I am going to delve even deeper into the stories I want to tell. Actually do my background research and maybe even write second and third drafts. I want to tell, not only the story of the Ecuador that I came to know, but the stories of people that can give us all hope. Seeing as this California girl has what looks like a few months of unemployment to tackle, nothing could be better for a writer recovering from her first cold.

The Happiness of Success

I recently read two things that intrigued me. One was an article about Denmark. Apparently they are the happiest people in the world. The second was Malcolm Gladwell's most recent book, Outliers. He outlines the sociological factors that create a successful person, such as the Beatles or Bill Gates. Both of these concepts, happiness and success have always intrigued me. In fact I even wrote a personal narrative, with the same title as this, in my high school creative writing class. It is the only writing I have kept from my junior high and high school days (this was before I had a personal computer of course). I wrote it at a time when I was not very happy nor was I on a traditional path to success. I've come a long way.

I consider myself to be a happy person. Although they may be extremely different than me, I have a strong and healthy family. My closest friends span the world, from Italy to Ecuador to the Bay Area. I also have been given and created multiple opportunities, all of which allow me to follow my personal dreams on a daily basis. In terms of success, I'd say I've had some of that as well. I've spent the years post high school educating myself; obtaining two bachelors and a masters. I've worked for a national nonprofit where I was the youngest person to receive an award in management. More recently I was honored with a Congressional recognition for my teaching. In short, I've made my loved ones proud.

But this is not about me nor is it about the type of happiness and success that the developed world clings so tightly too. Rather, I want to discuss these ideas from my understanding (biased as it may be) of the developing world, and specifically Ecuador. I plan to take the discussion across a couple of posts (if my computer, who is dying a slow death, can handle it) and interject personal examples from the people I have had the privilege of knowing here. This will serve to conclude my time here, reflect my opinions on my experiences, good and bad, and thank those that have supported me from near and far. I hope to intrigue you even more than the Denmark article and Gladwell's book,coupled with my experiences in Ecuador, have intrigued me.

The past and future of Ecuador.