12/7/18: dublin!

So far, Dublin has been terrific! I have interacted awkwardly with two different Irish people and I saw my first nun AND my first fistfight, all before I even got to the hotel.

I was also so excited to see Ireland that I must have been vibrating slightly and so I got these terrific pictures from the plane.

Finally!

Border patrol or whatever they’re called here surely has me flagged. I didn’t sleep on the plane so I was a little dazed but I still feel like it’s weird that after I said I was here for vacation the officer said 

“What’s the plan?”

“Pardon,” I replied stupidly.

“What’s the plan,” he repeated.

“The plan,” I repeated.

“What are you here to do?” he snapped, and by now he wasn’t in the mood at all, but at the same time, a) J, J, and I deliberately don’t have a plan, and b) I didn’t think he was looking for a run down of every item on an itinerary so how the heck I was supposed to answer appropriately I did not know, which is probably why I ended up saying “I’m going to buy some yarn!”

And I said it with the exclamation point and everything because it was the only other actually planned thing my brain dredged up that wasn’t “Drink a lot of Guinness.” I’m looking for some nice aran-weight or similar yarn that I can use to make some cozy thick socks—the kind you wear indoors in place of slippers. I didn’t tell the guy that, but if he really wanted to know my goddamn plan, I could for SURE get further into the details. I’m also prepared to engage in conversation about why people would ever choose to knit socks from the top down instead of from the toe up. I just don’t get it at all—you can make a perfectly good heel on a toe-up sock and you never have to worry about running out of yarn—you just finish the leg when the yarn is done. Can’t do that with the foot of a sock, now can you, and unless you have some kind of side hustle making voodoo dolls or such I don’t know what you would want with a bunch of left over sock yarn—knit it all up, baby! He waved me through before I had finished my sentence. FINE.

I took a bus from the airport and had another awkward interaction with the ticket vendor:

Him: Where are you going?

Me: City Center—the 747 bus please.

Him: Are you single?

Me: …

Him [getting impatient]: Is your SISTER single?

Me: …

Him: IS. THIS. A. SINGLE.

Me: Yes, please: one ticket.

Ugh, RELAX, Ireland. I am TRYING.

The nun sighting was great; the fistfight was just kind of okay. This one guy was trying to get the other guy in a headlock, but at the same time it became clear he didn’t have a post-headlock plan: He wasn’t a cop so he wasn’t going to cuff him, it didn’t look like he had the guts to actually choke the guy out on the sidewalk in front of all these people, and this wasn’t exactly a tap-out scenario where the head-locked guy could concede defeat and the other guy could have a reason to let him go. In the end, they tussled a bit on the (wet, icky) sidewalk and then they stumbled up and there was some yelling and then they limped away in opposite directions. It was only 10am, so I guess that was more of a warm-up than anything.

I have not figured out how to get my sleep situation under control—I keep thinking I’m back on track and then I have another bad night or I take an overnight flight and stay up watching the newest Mission Impossible film (spoiler: the mission was possible! Again!) and Delta wanted to serve us like 27 meals during a 5 ½ hour trip and so by the time I got to the hotel, tried and failed to nap, it was 3 pm and I was ready to give up and head out to the yarn store when I suddenly passed out and slept for a fabulous 13 hours. Which I didn’t necessarily need to fly to Ireland to do, but…I’ll take it.

The week I’ve been back from Australia was a mix of catatonic lying around and then getting tons of things done. I had a lot of house-keepy stuff to do after being away so long and so despite the catatonia all the puttering and making of lists and crossing items off left me feeling very accomplished.

This break I’m taking from the world of full-time employment is not something that initially occurred to me I could do—it was never on my list of ideas or options, even during early morning, snooze-fest fantasies. (My chief fantasy has always been giving it all up to work in a bakery, but yikes those people get up VERY early so even my fantasy has felt like a fantasy for some other person.) However, the plain facts are than I haven’t got any dependents or a mortgage or even a house plant, I do have a little money squirreled away, the ACA makes it possible for me to have excellent and not wildly expensive health insurance, and depending on what you count as a “job,” It’s been a very long time since I haven’t had one.

In addition to all the various part-time jobs I worked while in school (high school, college, grad school, so that’s 11 years right there), my full-time jobs have been: teaching English at a university, working for a publishing company, and then working in the world of test prep and supplemental educational content development.

I did okay teaching, depending on who you ask: most of my students rated me highly though some found me unyielding/tough/unapproachable (what?!); the department itself was probably 50/50 on me: I got good ratings and wasn’t a pain in the ass in terms of cancelling classes or sleeping with students or both; on the other hand I was a pain in the ass in committees, constantly wanting us to DO something, or to do something FASTER.  It once took us some six months of meetings and planning and reviews to develop a three-sentence writing prompt. Three. Sentences.

When I got to the for-profit world, I did a little better because I could size up a situation quickly and was willing to make decisions about what to do next—though these traits didn’t always pay off until I moved into managerial roles. Until then I got by more on being smart and working hard, the kind of person not everyone likes but you can’t fault her work so you are grudgingly glad to have her around.

A former boss once told me my strength was my ability to synthesize a ton of information and then ruthlessly apply common sense—that feels like too much of a compliment but I’ll take it. That said, I’ve long been a firm believer that one’s greatest strengths can often be one’s greatest weaknesses, and I think I believe so ardently this in this because it is VERY true for me: I tend to be a person of extremes in my behavior and I how react to things. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about whether I want to invest in trying to move my various sliders more toward the middle of the scale or whether I’m okay with where they are. (zero, TEN, - 5, TWENTY-SEVEN, etc.)

Then I listened to this episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Revisionist History” podcast which was about free will, and while that is a complicated conversation to say the least the thing I found interesting in this episode was the point he made about how everything we do happens, essentially, because neurons fire in reaction to stimuli (this is a slight oversimplification but directionally correct). The argument is since it’s neurons all the way down, there’s no such thing as free will because there’s nothing that can step in and direct or interfere with the process.  

Bear with me here (or don’t), but where all of these thoughts took me was to a place where I’m starting to think my neurons are interested in moving toward different stimuli—the same way your neurons tell you to move toward warmth if you are cold or food if you are hungry, my neurons are like “Don’t think about how to get along with people you don’t want to get along with, go away from people you don’t want to get along with.” (For example.) Gotta tell you, neurons, this isn’t exactly what I learned in school but I’m kind of digging it.

I also know I come from a place of enormous privilege where my neurons get to do this, and they’re probably reacting at a bit of an extreme, and on and on and on, BUT: I’m living in the neuron moment right now. I’m listening to stimuli like sonar and making course corrections based on the elemental inputs I’m getting: if it feels good I’m going towards it; if it doesn’t, I’m moving away. Long may I run!

Took all the NZ/AUS gear back to the garage where it belongs and gave my beloved lots of affectionate pats. The garage is jam-packed with extra bikes in for winter storage. It smells SO good in here.

Saw this at the Duane Reade and can’t decide if it is a deliberate typo or not: does Santa Claus have a TM or something?

I love to find drunk octopuses who want to fight me—this one is in the ladies’ room at MoMA and looks disappointingly sober.

I do not love always love to see displays of military might in my everyday life—SWAT guys just standing around chatting in Grand Central Station, enormous what the HECKS parked curbside at JFK, etc. Seriously—look at the size of the normal car behind this. What is happening that we need things like this? (Do NOT answer that question.)

I’m sure I will learn some fun facts about what in the heck this thing is, but so far I believe it to be a very very tall pole. Enlighten me, Dublin! (I was just looking at a map to find the nearest yarn store and discovered this is called “The Spire,” but that still doesn’t tell me much…)

I was researching motorcycling in Patagonia (I do not think it is for me) and I came across this attempt at conveying the experience. Can you guarantee I won’t be stuck at “the part at the end with the cows”? What if I WANT the part at the end with the cows??

‘Bout time to go see what Dublin thinks coffee is and then pace outside the yarn shop until it opens. Have a good feeling about this town, and hopefully once J and J get into town later today I can convince them to go check out this place with me.

(Finally, there is a bar in Dublin called Fibber McGee’s and here are the names of 6 of the last 8 people who have written reviews: Conal Jacob Harpur, Sean Doohan, Tommy McIntyre, David Cathcart, Gavan Duffy, and Niall Torris. Mr. Cathcart’s review includes this line: “I was there at lunchtime—afternoon—(needed a cure). Definitely be back.” I can’t decide if I should go there immediately or NEVER.)

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