And, thus, a new story begins

 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I struggle to both start something and finish it.  Especially writing.  Maybe only writing.  But I guess also reading.  This little story of ours feels so much like that book that’s beside my bed, a page somewhere near the end turned down, sitting under a pile of papers…the story is written, it’s already been told, and for some reason I continue with my daily life, leaving it there, saving that ending for another day.

And such is the last four years of our lives.  It’s already been written.  And seemingly bound and placed somewhere out of reach under a pile of papers.  It’s its own story, unique and special from what’s to come.  I’ve contemplated this for a couple of weeks now, pondered many aspects of beginnings and endings, and have concluded this isn’t just the ending of a chapter; it’s the ending of one story and the beginning of another.

Being in the US for nearly a month was a very cathartic experience.  Much like a deep tissue massage, it felt so overdue, so necessary. . . at times so relaxing, then again at some points so deeply tight and strained as to be nearly unbearably painful.  There would be moments that felt like that was as much as I could tolerate, then so quickly after came the rewarding feeling of a sense of release. 

This is what happens when one is faced with fourteen plus years of possessions, memories and keepsakes, first in the shocking perspective of a semi truck, then piece by piece, box by box, opened lid by opened lid, every single item, individually evaluated, in some feeble attempt to decide what to allocate for the current life, what to save for a future life, and what no longer holds any place in your life all together. 

One thing for sure, no other reason would exist to honestly assess your life and personal memories and treasures to such a degree.  It was a physical, emotional and spiritual deep cleansing.  We reduced what we had by at least half, realizing what is truly worth keeping after living without it or forgetting it even existed as it sat in a storage for three years.  I, the admitted organizer and planner, wanted to do something like this for years. This is the epitome of beginning anew, a fresh start.

Of course, this is not just a personal goal met, but a necessity in the demands of the current lifestyle versus our American one.  I’m still not really sold on the concept that ‘less is more,’ but this is none the less the path we’ve chosen for now.  Yet, one thing that came from this, on top of just generally feeling quite therapeutic, is the feeling that I need to begin new in many areas of my life.  Some things I just need to sit aside and admit defeat on.  Other things I need to just wrap up and begin new.

And the ‘anew’ begins tomorrow with the first day of a new job, and the keys to a new apartment, which remains a bit of a cliff hanger for us as we’ve only seen the floor plan.  This is a time for me to start a new story here, a story of an American woman that actually found a job in Sweden, that has a “home” that we can decorate and paint and make all our own, that has a schedule, and most importantly, finally, my own personal “place” here.

So this is the ‘wrapping up' of a very beloved outlet for me.  A place to be able to share our experiences abroad with our family and friends in the US, and as it turned out many other people across the world that I had no expectations of following our lives in Sweden.  Yet, as the new story begins to unfold, and as the words turn to pages and then the pages to chapters, I promise a sequel to come.

Packing and moving…again…

 

Right now, we are just eight short days away from moving out of the big, luxurious, not-at-all-the-real-world apartment.  Nine days from going to the US.  Less than two months until the new, much smaller and most definitely real-world apartment.  And about ten minutes from me entirely losing my mind.

As wonderful as living abroad has been (is, going to be…), it has definitely come at a cost as well.  In less than four years, we have lived in four different apartments in Stockholm, and also back for that six period of time in our home in the US.  We’ll live in two more temporary apartments until we move to the permanent one; and if that counts, which I don’t know why it wouldn’t, we essentially move four times just this summer.  As if that isn’t enough, we have to move our things from where they are stored in the US to a different storage (which very luckily for us my parents own), and then some of those things will come over to Sweden in yet another container, most will be sold, and the rest will remain in the states until we come back. 

So at this moment, I’m not at all regretting or feeling the least bit guilty for the indulgent and relaxed summer I had last summer.  While others we know are traveling to exotic places for long vacations, we’ll have the great pleasure of going through crap we didn’t know what else to do with three years ago when we believed we would be back in only a year, and I’m sure wondering why the hell we thought that was worthy of storing.  Not to mention the 100 degree SE Colorado temperatures.  Or just the logistics of how we transport everything.  Of course, it will be fun to discover a lot of our old things, and great to spend time with our families and I am really looking forward to seeing my dog again, but at the same time it’s hard not to dread what is coming.

I think the worst part for me of this contract life is that everything, and I feel like I mean this literally, is out of my control.  I’m sure I’ve written about this before.  I really want to know what is happening, and how it is happening, but as much as I want to plan (or would have started finalizing plans weeks ago), I’m just at the mercy of waiting for someone to email someone else who is inevitably on vacation.  It will be a bit of an adjustment to not live the contract lifestyle, but from another perspective, we’ll finally just be “us” doing things for ourselves how we feel it is best done.  I’m looking forward to that part.

And as are a lot of things right now, I really sense a feeling of change.  I mean, of course I do.  So much is changing.  From moving, to “permanent,” to new job, to last year of high school for Meagan…this has gone from a fun little European experience, to our lives.  It just feels entirely different already, and I wonder how it will feel when we land at Arlanda at the end of July, coming back, to live here, like really, really live here. 

So, I’ve thought a lot about this.  I feel like I’m/we’re at a different point than when I began this blog.  It’s hard for me to think about interesting little Swedish anecdotes, because over nearly four years, this has just evolved to normalcy.  Of course, we travel occasionally and do interesting things outside of Sweden, but I’m finding time is also an issue.  This blog was a great source for a sense of self for me.  It helped make sense of all of my free time here, and it helped me feel like I had some semblance of a purpose.  But so much changed so quickly.  Real life actually happened for me here.

So, I have a feeling this blog is reaching its end.  This isn’t to say I won’t do another blog.  I actually think I will, after some time probably.  But, I think I want the next one to be anonymous.  There are many things I’ve observed, and to be perfectly honest, they aren’t necessarily about Sweden.  But, this isn’t quite over yet.  There are still a few things I’ve wanted to say.  There are several “I want to blog about this” ideas.  So we’ll see how the next few days go, and if I can manage to squeeze in a few posts before the real fun begins.

How quickly things change…

 

It’s hard to believe what has happened since the last time I wrote, which yes, has been a long time.  But, there’s a good reason for that:  I’ve finally been busy!  I’ve finally had somewhere to get up for and somewhere to go in the days.  I can’t even believe how quickly it happened, but I found a job and began working last Monday.

It’s crazy how it all worked together, and how it now really feels like we did the right thing by deciding to stay.  Of course, the flip side is, I’m sure I would have found a job I liked in the US and things would have worked out there just fine too, but at least it doesn’t feel like we did the wrong thing.  But, really and truly, this feels right.

It all happened because it snowed one day in the middle of May.  Interestingly, I didn’t even mind.  Surprisingly I guess.  I’ve minded nearly every other snowy day, but for some reason this day was like “ha. ok. again, here we go.”  Middle of May after many spring days; it was almost just amusing.  But, the short story is, I was planning to go along with Bryan on a business trip; yet, with the snow, I decided I would prefer to just stay home instead of wandering around in the cold while we was in meetings.  While killing some time, I wondered, out of curiosity, if there were any job listings that looked interesting on our English online paper.  First one—hmmm, a preschool.  I looked at the ad, found out it was 10 minutes away from our new apartment.  I emailed about it.  The next day I had an interview scheduled, a few days later the interview, and less than a week later I was actually working. 

And, the best part, I really really like it.  I mean, I really like the job itself, and the kids and the people I work with.  However, I especially like waking up early, getting ready, picking out what I’ll wear, riding on the subway and just feeling like I’m a part of something.  It feels so great to be riding along listening to my iPod with everyone else doing the same thing, all having places to be because they need to be there, instead of just going somewhere for the sake of actually leaving the apartment.

That said, it will take a little to get used to such a schedule.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my life as I was last week when I got home in the evenings.  There were a few morning I had to be there by 7:30 and it’s nearly 45 minutes away right now.  Not to mention, it’s just been a long time since I’ve had a true schedule; so it’s ultimately really good for me, but will take a while to adjust to it.  Also, it’s very physically demanding since this time of the year the kids are outside about 6 hours a day, and I’m just standing and walking around this whole time.  But, I’m not complaining about this since the last four years I’ve felt such a lack of physical activity since anything I do to be physical is forced instead of just naturally part of my routine.  I much prefer this.

There were two hesitations, or maybe concerns, worries, I don’t know, I had about us staying here: me finding a job and my ability to learn Swedish.  First, check.  Second, quickly check.  Even though this is a bilingual school and my job requires me to speak English with the kids, they primarily do not speak English yet, so I have to understand them in Swedish and occasionally repeat instructions in Swedish.  It just feels like such a safe and natural environment to learn a language, with children.  It isn’t like a handful of other times where I decided to speak Swedish and just felt humiliated or even as though they were condescending regarding what I said.  The kids seem to understand me just fine, even though I’m sure I say some of the most ridiculous things—wrong verb tenses, or turn ett words to en words or whatever.  But, it was though I needed to be in a Swedish environment to learn, and even more so, in a beginning Swedish environment.  Also, my two co-teachers speak Swedish with me all the time, so even though I tend to respond in English, it has been so encouraging to see how much I actually do understand, and how quickly I will learn even more.

I don’t know.  I just feel like I needed this.  One, because I just felt like I couldn’t go much longer in the state of just entertaining myself until my family came home, but also just because we’ve had a lot of crap to deal with lately, and I just needed something good.  Moving is stressful, but it’s even more insane when there are a few moves over a short period of time, and one being the rest of our thing from the US.  Coordinating all of these logistics with our storage, moving here, selling our things, etc, has been very stressful.  Then we tried to go to Chernobyl and at the airport, the security man accidentally tore Bryan’s passport making it an “invalid document” so we couldn’t go, which was very disappointing.  Yet, on top of this, we had a nightmare situation with letting the owner of our apartment do a staging here for photography to list this apartment for sale.  This has been the worst of it all and actually just deserves a post all its own.  I was honestly hoping for a little resolution with that, but I can see not that will not happen, so I think it’s fair to tell the story.  Which I will.

So, for now, I can say that a day off feels better than a day like this has ever felt.  For now, I am subbing in the class I’ll teach in, but I officially start in the fall, so I’m grateful for the chance to transition gradually to the real world.  One thing I really appreciate about Swedes is their concern of others not being stressed, and doing anything to avoid stressful situations, so they’ve reiterated many times they want me to just move and do what I need to do over the summer and not feel stressed.  They clearly don’t know me very well yet