The method to my madness

The ideas were flowing through my mind last night (er, this morning at around 2:30 AM) as to what I would write in this entry. Now they’re gone. This is another reason I don’t like writing. I often forget what I wanted to say. I’ve mentioned this before. In fact, come to think of it, I’m realizing that my recent entries are just repeating stuff I’ve said before. Not all of it, but, enough.

I think I was going to write about the thought process I went through that led me to travel and live overseas on my own in the first place and give some insight as to why I’m still single. I think some people are wondering. The latter is a bit more difficult to answer, but I can say that since the days of my last one or two years in university, it’s been a pretty conscience decision.

In this entry, I can pretty much kill two birds with one stone, answering both things in one, linear story. The question is, will I be telling the truth, or just justifying my actions with excuses. Well, if it’s not the truth, then this is what I fooled myself into believing was the truth.

So, like, in university I attended a lot of biology seminars (I was a bio major as you know, or can see in my profile). And at one seminar, a guy was talking about some research he was doing on, well, some sort of songbird. In fact, I think it may have been a song sparrow. He was comparing variations in songs individual males used to attract females and the mating success.

By the way, this has nothing to with answering why I’m single. I only mention it because I thought the research was interesting.

But what did have a profound effect on my thinking towards relationships, specifically marriage, was what he said at the end of his presentation. Someone asked a question about…well, I don’t remember exactly what it was, but something that would have required more research to answer…something that was within the speaker’s grasp had he continued to work on that project. But he answered that he hadn’t continued with the project because he got married and couldn’t spend that much time in the field anymore. That’s what hit me.

Now mind you, I don’t think he was using that as an excuse or that he regretted not continuing. But to me, I thought, “What a waste. Here he was doing this work that few people, if any, were doing, and he gave it up to do something that everyone does.” That was a turning point for me.

Well, I guess I need to give a bit more information. That by itself couldn’t have been a turning point if I wasn’t already losing faith in relationships. So let me go back a bit. I know I said this would be a linear story, but come on, you’ve read my posts before.

Ok, so like, from jr. high to high school…well, wait. No before that. My parents told me I should never go steady (I know. No one says steady. Whatever, ‘go out’) with anyone when you’re young (ie: jr. high/high school). As it was, in jr. high and in high school, I never saw much point to it. I watched other relationships. The same thing kept happening over and over again. Two people were attracted to each other, they went out, got tired of each other, then broke up. It didn’t matter how long they lasted, a month, a year, a few years…it all ended the same. So what was the point?

Still, though, I became interested in girls along the way. By around university, I kinda thought, ‘well, I’m young, but not that young. Other people are going out. People even get married when they’re college age.’ But I don’t know. Nothing really worked out.

Towards my remaining years in university, leading up to the above mentioned seminar, I just gave up, realizing I was wasting my time. Better to do something that I wanted than to chase after nothing. I was really busy in those last years of university anyway. ‘Last year’…hell, I was busy for all the years. Anyway, I just focused on my studies because I wanted to make it out alive.

But going back to that seminar, when that guy couldn’t (or didn’t) continue his research because of marriage, to me that equated to marriage being the end of a person’s dreams. I considered that I might be able to accomplish more with my life if I stayed single.

There was another important factor, too. The fact that all my life it’s taken me on average, twice as long to do something as others (from tying my shoes to taking exams). I figured I’m not going to be able to do everything I want in my life, so I’m going to have to choose some things and not others. I decided to be happy with being single and do what I could during that time. And I guess that pretty much sets the stage (and answers the second question: why I’m single).

So, why did I decide to live overseas? Well, part of it was because I decided that as long as I was single, it would be easier to travel. There was no one to question me or keep me in the US.

Hmm, you know, surprisingly this is the more difficult question. I thought the other one would be. But the traveling thing has really evolved between my decision to go to Japan and where I am now. I don’t just mean ‘now’ as in I’m in Taiwan now. I mean as in where I am in my feeling about traveling and living overseas. Because I think I mentioned in the second epiphany entry in Season 1, whatever got the ball rolling more than four years ago is slowing down.

In fact, I don’t think I’m even going to answer that first question, at least not the long version. How much do I need to say?
I traveled to Japan because I’d studied Japanese for three years in high school. I wanted to learn the language better by living in the culture (a linguistics class I took in university inspired me as well as a former student of my high school Japanese teacher).
I was tired of the usual thing in America; graduate, get a job, get married, get a family (I think I already discussed this above). I wanted to live day to day in another culture, not as a tourist.

That was Japan.

Taiwan was quite different. And I’ve probably already addressed why I’m here in Season 1 (beyond just wanting to see my Japanese students graduate). But I can’t remember if I mentioned everything, and one reason I came to Taiwan was because when I returned to America from Japan, I missed living the less than ordinary life. But certainly, you can never recapture that feeling of visiting another country for the first time. Still, I’m glad I’m here, but as I told my co-worker in Singapore, it’s losing its novelty. And to tie this in with my realization from that biology seminar, I’m not so sure I’m actually accomplishing more as a single person than a married person or someone in a relationship. And, yeah. I’ll end it there.