Sirens and Lights

And I’m learning that honesty in everything is best—being honest with
myself—what I expect from myself, what I am capable of, what is my nature… honesty that this year is as much about growing as a person, about immersing myself in new cultures, as it is about digital art and electronic music. And being honest in thinking and writing—because honestly, I am a semi-secretive person—I often don’t put in writing everything I am thinking because I don’t know how it will be received. But what I think is who I am, so I should put it forward for everyone to see. Publishing this on the internet, yanking it from the safety of my journal, is a step in that direction.

~Jen (another Watson fellow)

so, i’m not the only watson fellow with a weblog this year. as far as i know, there are about 6 of us who are blogging it up….i’ve been making an effort from time to time to keep updated on what everyone else is up to because, despite having never met one another, we’re all in this extremely amazing and bizarre situation together (we finally get to meet at the end of our Watson year next August…I’m ridiculously curious to meet the people with whom I’ve been sharing this incredible experience).

in reading jen’s blog yesterday, i came across this comment and just thought that it reminded me so much of how i’ve been feeling these days, as well as of who i am. i’ve been trying hard to push myself into being honest with myself about why i’m making the decisions i am. i’m out here to challenge myself in a respect that’s not academic… and it’s going to be a while before i ever have an opportunity like this again. so far, i’ve been filtering a lot of the emotions i’m feeling out of this blog, and i’ll probably continue to do it for the reasons jen listed above, but i just wanted to put out there a little of what i’ve learned. it’s an odd experience consciously putting yourself in situations you normally wouldn’t risk…being socially aggressive because otherwise you’re all alone, investing in people when you’re not sure how badly it might turn out or even having seen how badly it can turn out when it doesn’t work out. For as well as things are going for me in terms of traveling and good friends and pursuing my project, I’ve made so so so many mistakes thus far as well. Accepting those mistakes for what they were is probably one of the hardest things about being out here, because i know that a lot of the pain comes from situations I would normally have avoided had i been home. Being abroad is great in that I am relatively anonymous and i could just as well forget my mistakes and move on, and once this is all over, never have to be reminded of them again….but that would kind of defeat the point of what i’m trying to accomplish out here, and so I’ve been trying to be as honest with myself about the why and how of everything as well.

So, what have I learned so far? Well, fortunately, realization one is that of everything that has happened, my biggest regret about the risks I’ve taken is not having taken them in a bigger way (go hard or go home, right? :P). In fact, the best thing I’ve learned is that the consequences of my mistakes are all things that I can handle. Overall, still happy, healthy and feeling positive about my life, which is very good…I know that I’m not done yet.

ok. i think too much. gonna do some work before football practice.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2003 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Geneva. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.