Leaving Your Comfort Zone is Uncomfortable

There is a lizard loose in my apartment.

I left a fulfilling job, a comfy house and even my beloved puppy to come here to Panama.

Now I have a job that is really, really hard. I live in a small apartment with no dog. There is a small lizard that somehow got in through my bedroom window, and then scampered off to who-knows-where before I could take him back outside.

Back home I did have the occasional wild intruder. Mostly gigantic spiders nearly my hand-span in width. They were incredibly fast, and incredibly scary. One time a guy came to my door and told me they were hobo spiders. He then offered to exterminate them for a few hundred dollars, but I declined since my shoe worked just as good as any poison.

On the balance sheet of life, I suppose trading lizards for spiders is a plus. Trading a lizard for my puppy is a minus. Sometimes I play this accounting game to see if I came out a head or behind on my move to Panama. It's too early to tell.

I do know I left a very comfortable situation. 

I had life figured out where I was. 

Now I do not. 

That's part of the reason I wanted to move, to get out of my comfort zone and into the challenge zone where I'd be forced to learn, grow and adapt. That sounds awesome. And probably will be. But I forget that "leaving your comfort zone" also means "becoming uncomfortable."

So that is where I find myself at this moment. Work is hard. Very hard. I feel uncertainties as an educator that I haven't felt since I first started. 

Living in Panama is hard. It's much more than the driving I wrote about yesterday. My girlfriend and I are isolated from all the friends, family and community that give us a sense of identity. We left a small town where I could walk to the Saturday Market and have most people know the name of me and my dog. Panama City is a giant Latin metropolis where I'll never see the same person twice.

I do feel growth. And each day is usually better than the last. But I don't want this to be some motivational post about how "it was all worth it." There are a million of those.

I think it will be all worth it. I think I'll be very happy here. I sure hope it all works out. But maybe it just needs to be acknowledged that change is hard. If you really want to get out of your comfort zone, you'll be uncomfortable.

My Hero

Heroes are hard to come by.  And when you find one, invariably they let us down.  The fault lies in Human Nature.  We are irrational and emotional.  We keep secrets far from our public personas, and the information age increasingly brings them to light.  Heroes fall to earth and become as human as the rest of us.

Until now.  I've found my hero, and it's this man here:

Meet John Green.  I met him through his online Youtube series Crash Course World History, a channel of quick, funny and totally fresh takes on the story of man.  I loved it, devouring the episodes like a new series on Netflix.  This man has a unique ability to take very complex things and make them understandable.  Though my class couldn't handle too much of the fast paced videos, they enriched my understanding of world history, and made me a better teacher.

As I'm coming to learn, that's just a drop in the bucket of what this guy does.  There's a great primer here, that I won't retype.  He doesn't just make history fun, he's on a bigger mission to fight "world suck."  He does this largely by making videos that take confusing, contentious and often politicized issues and explaining them in a remarkably clear, and remarkably fact based way.  And that gives you hope, once you can grasp the issues and problems in your mind, you know you can find a solution.  This video on why health care in America costs so much opened my eyes, pissed me off, and cheered me up all at the same time.

John Green is who I want to be.  He is why I became a teacher.  Funny and engaging, he inspires me.  To learn.  To understand the world.  And to make the world a better place.  That's essentially what I've been hoping to impart to my students these last seven years.  Who knows if I've made an impact, but I've tried and will keep trying.  And now it's a little bit easier since I've got someone showing me the way.

Life is short, start living!

Life is short. That is the conclusion I arrive at when my mind starts to wander. Growing up I never wanted to live the typical middle class American life: go to school, get a good job, get married, have kids, retire and die. A futile lemming march into oblivion. I set for myself a more ambitious goal: to change the world!
But nonetheless society set me upon its course and this course I have followed thus far. Oh, I tried to deviate and my life hasn't been cookie cutter. I was the front man for a Christian rock band, but it turns out I have a horrible voice. We played 15 odd shows one summer, some good, some bad, and some that were the most embarassing moments of my life.
I also lived in Ecuador for a year, and that led to me starting and failing my own tourism business. Where am I now? I am a 24 year-old middle school social studies teacher. It's my first year, and to be honest, 90% of the time I love it. For one, I'm a history nerd and I get to talk about the Roman Republic and Robert E. Lee's brilliance on the battlefield on a daily basis. The best part though is the kids. Kids are special, and childhood is an amazing time. Their view of the world is innocent, and exciting, and often very goofy. They are very enjoyable to be around.
So what is this blog about? I'm happy where I'm at in life, being a teacher. I wanted to be a teacher since I was a junior in high school. I've also wanted to be a CIA agent, diplomat, billionaire entreprenuer, and travel writer. Though I'm happy WHERE I am in life I'm not happy with HOW I am living.
Let me catalogue my discontent:

1. Often I DO NOT change the world for the better though I am given ample opportunity every day.
2. I am fat. I always made fun of my dad for being fat and now I am fat. 6'3, 200 pounds.
3. I have neglected my body and am out of shape. The cause of the aforementioned chubbiness.
4. I fritter away days in a tired haze becuase I refuse to get 8 hours of sleep. I spend too much time watching T.V. or on the internet.
5. I have exactly zero friends in the town I'm living in becuase I haven't taken the time to integrate myself.

These are just a few things I'm going to fix. So this blog is about living life to its fullest. Now I know where I don't want to be, I know where I'm going. And that's where I'm heading today. April 29, 2008. God Bless