backlog: feely losery

In the hazy, crazy frenetic moments of life in the west I rarely have time to process these feelings of solitude and an incessant internal boredom. He said I was one of his most social friends; people here say I have a lot of energy. Is it that I know not how to be slow and patient and relaxed and therefore know not how to function here? When the generator is cut, and the droning chorus of frogs – sometimes pierced with the sound of rats and bats rummaging through the ceiling and with the shrill crack of canings from the neighbouring army barracks – subsides, and I’ve finished wasting time on the internet without accomplishing much of anything, and my book is boring, and it’s two AM but I can’t sleep, I feel broken down.

Today I cried for the first time since arriving in Africa. Sharing with Titus the doubts of my efficacy and seeming inability to aid in the creation of change, my frustrations began to well up. There are far too many moments of self-doubt and wonder as to what I’m doing here, and when I start analyzing my usefulness I feel it all spiral.

It’s hard to believe that I’m returning to NY a month from today. I get to fill my brain with the pleasantly distracting desires for a new apartment, maybe a visit to Florida, a hopeful concert or two before the sun leaves Manhattan for the winter. But these are all merely cursory wants – which in the face of my surroundings are outrageous. Panic about bio-statistics and econometrics coursework then floats in. Panic. I am here for scholastic purposes of course, but the idea of such scholarly pursuits finds me feeling paralyzed.

What’s worse is that I don’t have a vision of what I do want as the alternative. If I were to quit this community development and public health route, what would I possibly find for myself? A move backwards to photojournalism? This despondency would follow me there, for sure. It would be better if I was craving a particular something, someone, some place. Instead, I just feel tired and irritable.

Inner-personal stimulation is the pits. I have too much time to sit and think, but I don’t have anywhere productive to pit those thoughts and then I come full circle into frustration. Unlike other friends interning in the 4th-world, who claim to enjoy the downtime, thinking about the meaning of the world and getting to know themselves more, I hate this slowness. And then I realize the implications of such. And then I feel ridiculous.