The Forest and the Trees

On Monday, I was formally offered the job that I didn't want.

On Tuesday, I chatted with HR about the possibility of my NGO dreams - not good.  Afterward, I chatted with the supervisor of the job I didn't want.  I left his office wanting the job.

On Wednesday, I felt unmoored.  How could I flip so quickly, and so easily give up on my dream?

On Thursday, I chatted with a few folks and received some great advice.  I became excited about the position and the opportunity.

On Friday, I eagerly accepted the job that I hadn't wanted.  I grew excited about my work prospects and the financial impact on our family.

On Saturday, I woke up near tears at the realization that someone else will meet my kids at the bus stop every afternoon.  But this will have to be another blog post.

I faced a lot of mental and emotional gymnastics this week.  I went very quickly from a challenging dream to serve the broader NGO community in Mumbai to the harsh realization that this plan was impractical from many standpoints.  Within those same few hours, I went from disappointment at having even applied for a job I didn't want to honest excitement about that same position.  Such a shift made me feel fickle and unmoored.

But chats with Dave, with Mumbai friends both inside and outside the consulate, and with a childhood friend have made me realize that this is a great opportunity.  And that is how great opportunities sometimes occur - quickly, dramatically, and with the sudden confidence that this is absolutely right.

My old friend pointed out that any pressure I felt to live out my dreams had only come from myself.  As I thought about it, this seemed inevitable.  I've spent the past ten years focusing on my family, with the plan to focus on my career once all of my children were in school full time.  I've spent a decade looking forward to rejoining the work force.  I've been looking at my trajectory from afar and seeing the forest.


This week, I stepped into that forest and saw the trees.  That broad dream to serve NGOs became a number of trees with visa requirements and business plans and language skills and many, many qualified local workers.  Once I shifted from thinking about that forest and began looking closely at the trees, I realized that this job - this particular tree - looks very exciting.  I realized that this job sits snugly inside that same forest, moving me on toward my eventual and ever-changing goals.  With this job as my first few steps into the forest, I'm excited about the trek.

The Forest and the Trees

On Monday, I was formally offered the job that I didn't want.

On Tuesday, I chatted with HR about the possibility of my NGO dreams - not good.  Afterward, I chatted with the supervisor of the job I didn't want.  I left his office wanting the job.

On Wednesday, I felt unmoored.  How could I flip so quickly, and so easily give up on my dream?

On Thursday, I chatted with a few folks and received some great advice.  I became excited about the position and the opportunity.

On Friday, I eagerly accepted the job that I hadn't wanted.  I grew excited about my work prospects and the financial impact on our family.

On Saturday, I woke up near tears at the realization that someone else will meet my kids at the bus stop every afternoon.  But this will have to be another blog post.

I faced a lot of mental and emotional gymnastics this week.  I went very quickly from a challenging dream to serve the broader NGO community in Mumbai to the harsh realization that this plan was impractical from many standpoints.  Within those same few hours, I went from disappointment at having even applied for a job I didn't want to honest excitement about that same position.  Such a shift made me feel fickle and unmoored.

But chats with Dave, with Mumbai friends both inside and outside the consulate, and with a childhood friend have made me realize that this is a great opportunity.  And that is how great opportunities sometimes occur - quickly, dramatically, and with the sudden confidence that this is absolutely right.

My old friend pointed out that any pressure I felt to live out my dreams had only come from myself.  As I thought about it, this seemed inevitable.  I've spent the past ten years focusing on my family, with the plan to focus on my career once all of my children were in school full time.  I've spent a decade looking forward to rejoining the work force.  I've been looking at my trajectory from afar and seeing the forest.

This week, I stepped into that forest and saw the trees.  That broad dream to serve NGOs became a number of trees with visa requirements and business plans and language skills and many, many qualified local workers.  Once I shifted from thinking about that forest and began looking closely at the trees, I realized that this job - this particular tree - looks very exciting.  I realized that this job sits snugly inside that same forest, moving me on toward my eventual and ever-changing goals.  With this job as my first few steps into the forest, I'm excited about the trek.

Thursday's Story

The sky has been grey since we arrived, making the sea grey as well.  But, on Thursday, the sun came out and painted a tinge of blue in the sky, and the sky delivered some of that color to the sea.  I had the morning and so I took my camera for a walk.

As my camera and I watched the water from across the road, a woman stopped to chat and to tell me that this particular day was Raksha Bandhan, the full moon day of the Hindu month of Shravan, a holy month.  She explained that this is a particularly auspicious day because it signals the end of the monsoon and the weather is usually clear and bright.  Raksha Bandhan is a celebration of the bond between brothers and sisters, where women tie a red thread called a rakhi around the wrist of their brother and pray for their well being while the brothers promise to care for their sisters.  She shared a legend that I also found on wikipedia:

When Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 BCE, Roxana (or Roshanak, his wife) sent a sacred thread to Porus, asking him not to harm her husband in battle. In accordance with tradition, Porus, the king of Kaikeya kingdom, gave full respect to the rakhi. On the battlefield, when Porus was about to deliver a final blow to Alexander, he saw the rakhi on his own wrist and restrained himself from attacking Alexander personally.

Before she left, she told me where she lived and asked me to stop in for tea soon.  She also told me where her daughter works, in a small library and community center tucked into the hill above us, and suggested I visit her as well.   Mumbai abounds with hidden places doing exciting things with fashion or tea or tradition or theater or food.

I find so much beauty in this city - in the waves of the sea, the brightly colored clothes, the red lakhis on men's wrists last week, the fresh produce piled on the street, the antique buses and rickshaws, and the warmth of the people.  Locals regularly stop to chat, asking where we are from and finding connections through past cities or current neighborhood or a shared school.  Mumbai is a mass of urban chaos, to be sure.  Garbage covers the beach when the tide goes out and rats turn up dead on the street after strong rains.  But this chaos hardly masks the charm and beauty on display.  Children selling peacock feathers on Linking Road captured this dissonance perfectly.  I did not photograph them because I chose not to buy their feathers, so you must use your imagination.  These children, near the age of my children, walked along one of the city's prime shopping roads, dodging rickshaws and goats as cars sped past.  They should not have been braving traffic to sell peacock feathers while my children go to school.  There is nothing romantic about their poverty.  But the fact remains that these laughing children, in their colorful clothes, with their tall and vibrant feathers, were beautiful.

Taking the Train to the Taj

Mumbai has much to see and do, but not many iconic sights.  The shortlist is the Gateway to India, the Taj Hotel, and the Indian Railway System with its classic stations and men hanging out the doors of the train cars.

Saturday morning, we took a rickshaw over to our nearest train station and railed it down to the old part of town.  We were the only girls and the only children in our train car.  We discovered en route that they reserve special cars for women, but saw only a few of them.  We boarded during rush hour and were immediately offered seats, so none of us complained.

A few photos from the day...

Outside our local train station

Inside the station - the opening into the train car has no doors

The Gateway to India on the left, the Taj Hotel on the right

Inside the Taj Hotel

Also inside the Taj.  It was full of bright, cheerful, yellow flowers.

The Two in the Bush

Earlier this week, I interviewed for a position that does not excite me.  I have not heard back yet either way, and my excitement for the position has not grown.  Dave and I discussed this last night, as we worked our way through a pile of 27kg book boxes.  Should I be offered the position, it is a bird in the hand.  The decision facing me would be, is a bird in the hand better than two in the bush?

We are lucky to live on a quiet street, but we do have a lot of birds noisemaking in our airspace. 
These two are not in a bush, but they are regularly on our balcony or bathroom windowsills.

I would love to work for an NGO, and I would love to write. 

Working for an NGO fits into my overall career plans - I received a Masters in Social Work and worked in my field until I had children.  I live in a city steeped in poverty and a nation full of people and organizations serving in amazing ways.  This seems possible. 

Writing may be the most mobile of professions, and arguably the most flexible.  I enjoy writing, and could couple the work with freelance editing jobs.  The global economy is tilting more toward freelance workers and I have over eight years of experience as an editor.  This seems possible.

A combination of the two excites me, and is my strategy for the next few months.  I plan to build my network within the world of NGOs in Mumbai.  The expat community has already proven warm and eager to help.  I have found networks for connecting to professionally paid writing and editing work, much of it in Asia.  And I have begun taking my writing more seriously.  Here's the goal: spend between two and four hours per day working at a desk - writing, finding editing work, editing, or researching the local development community;  and also, personally connect to someone at least three times per week, preferably daily.  These connections will begin as lunch with the school mom who has been here for 8 years and knows some people I should talk to, would develop into coffee with those folks, and could lead to involvement in a few organizations in town. 

The dream?  A few of those organizations would pay me to write grants for them, implement evaluations for them, or edit donor materials for them.  Supplemented with freelance corporate work paid at a professional level, this could work.  I set the example as a working mother for my children while still being available for open house and home after school.

The challenge?  Well, there are loads of challenges.  High reward / high risk.  The largest on my mind?  This is the status quo, only with more money and more fulfillment, which makes it prone to failure.  I know how to do  status quo - how to work from home and not make money.  Am I able to take that a few steps further and build a fulfilling and service-minded career?  And am I able to do that without becoming depressed by the lack of regular interaction?  The job interview earlier this week may not have excited me, but having lunch in the cafeteria did leave me energized.

And is it responsible at this stage in my life to choose fulfillment over money?  We didn't return to Virginia this tour because we couldn't afford to live there.  Do we want to so limit ourselves for our next post?  Also, our children continue to grow, and are becoming more expensive rather than less, with new cleats every year and outfits for dance and computers for school and the cost to fly ourselves to the big soccer tournament for the weekend.  Selling out would hardly be foolish.

I have no conclusions for you, I'm afraid.  We will just have to see where God leads.

Interviewing for a Job that I Don't Really Want

I had a job interview this morning.  It went well.  I looked sharp, had good answers to all but one question, and enjoyed all of the interviewers.  They plan to make a decision very soon.

The only problem is that I don't really want the job.  I realize that I am breaking the rules of common sense by posting this fact online - fingers crossed that it won't be my first post to go viral.  I feel that I am more than qualified for that job, making me a strong candidate.  I feel that I could do the job well.  I feel like I would work for a good manager and in an interesting environment.  But I have no real interest in the position.  I feel overqualified and don't see this job fitting into an exciting career ladder - neither being a step up from any of my previous work, nor leading me to more interesting and complex work in the future.

It is a strange thing, interviewing for a position that I don't particularly want.  I enjoy the process of an interview - I am always happy to meet new people, and to talk about myself for an hour.  Not wanting the job removed all performance anxiety.  I walked in cool and confident.  Bombing one question had no major impact on the rest of my interview, because I just couldn't be bothered.  No doubt my confidence shone through, potentially making not caring a useful strategy.

If I take this job, I am selling out.  I have other plans in this city - plans that excite me, energize me, and offer both high career risk and great career reward.  I'll share those with you later in the week.  But none of those plans are likely to offer a Western salary.  Accepting a salary for the next four years would open a lot of options for us when we leave this post.

The money pushes me toward accepting the job, if offered, as does this:  After the interview, I joined Dave for lunch.  We chatted with people about school and housing and settling in and SIM cards.  We popped into a few offices to ask questions.  And I enjoyed this part.  I've worked independently from home as long as I have had children, and although I love the flexibility and availability of this lifestyle, I also love being in an office full of interactions.

I am not sure they will offer me the job. 

I am not sure I will accept, if offered.

I worry that I have only a few days or weeks to decide.

A Bright New Day

I got to the gym this morning and I was able to Skype with my friend Karoline; the girls left happily for school and the sun shone all day.  It was a great day for Paulina and I to walk to the market so she could show her favorite shops and I could buy some housekeeping supplies for her.  Paulina is our housekeeper and she has made this move so much easier than it could have been.  I brought my camera along and she was very patient with me.

The dal she made for lunch, with some chapatis leftover from last night.

It Is Well

This move has kept my emotions on high, and even though things keep moving fairly smoothly, I sometimes need to cry.  I'm not typically a crier, but something in the air has been sending my emotions straight to my face lately.

It didn't bother me when the power went out last night and it didn't bother me that the air conditioning went out at the same time.  It didn't bother me to wake the kids up for school this morning or to drive away from home with them.  Their smiles and levels of excitement were contagious.  It didn't bother me to enter the school or to walk my 1st grader to her classroom.  It didn't bother me when she entered with confidence or when she crumpled because the other kids were  playing Legos and she didn't want to play Legos.  It didn't bother me when she left the classroom with her sister and I, or when she turned on her heels and walked back in alone and confident a few minutes later.  My fourth grader walked me to her room and we felt good talking to her teacher, finding her cubby, and picking up her first project.  It didn't bother me to kiss her good-bye or to walk away.  But when I turned around and saw her take her seat and wipe a quick tear from her eye, well, that's been bothering me all day.

I may have spent a minute crying in the bathroom, and may have walked into the parent coffee showing clear evidence of tears on my face.  I may have stood on the edge of the crowd searching the group for a familiar face for longer than felt comfortable. 

Luckily, another fourth grade mom recognized me and we chatted until we finished our masala tea.  Luckily, Dave called when I got in the car.  He had walked to school with our new middle schooler and her old friend from Virginia.  He watched her react to the mixed blessing of having an old friend at her new school, as she watched her old friend greet the many school friends she missed over the summer.

Each of our girls had a quick stumble this morning, and no doubt each of them recovered fully and quickly.  But those stumbles have followed me all day as I worry for them because being new is hard and this is why moving never seems to get easier - because just as I begin to learn my process, my children have to independently begin to learn theirs.

Between the power outage and the broken a/c and the dry cleaner who disconnected his phone and the painter and the cable guy and the internet folks, I've been blessedly distracted today.  I only just sat down to make sure the school had up to date information for us.  I logged in to the website and saw pictures of each of my girls smiling back to me.  Next to each photo, it said Current Location and with a click, I could see what class she is currently in.  A wave of peace flooded over me.  Each girl is exactly where she should be.

One of those new songs we sang in church last week is a riff on the hymn It Is Well with My Soul and I've been listening to it because it is both lovely and on point.  India is tremendously developed in some ways and amazingly difficult in others and I still can't figure out the simplest things, but it will all come.  Maybe its God speaking through the music, or maybe its just that cup of Kaldi's coffee, but I'm at peace now.  We are in the place we have prayed for and meeting the people we have prayed to meet. 

We are at home.  And it is well.

Feeling the Fool

Moving inevitably brings those fish out of water moments, those times when everyone seems to know the correct action that you simply can not intuit.  We study the songs at a new church for a few weeks until we begin to recognize them.  We watch whether or not people bus their own tables in the cafeteria, and where they go to do it.  We spy on other tables to see if they leave tips.  These add to the adventure of moving, especially in a foreign country.  Of course things will be different.  Of course.

Our air conditioners have not worked since we arrived.  It seems likely that they worked when Dave arrived, but they have not worked since the rest of us arrived over a week ago.  We are in Mumbai during the monsoon season.  The temperatures have been in the middle to lower eighties with  humidity in the upper 80s and the chance of rain hovering around 97% most of the time.  We live near enough to the water that we frequently have a strong sea breeze swirling around our building and battering our doors and windows, but the mosquitoes carry malaria and so we live with our windows and door shut.

We really did not know that the air conditioners weren't working.  The units were operating in the appropriate rooms, blowing air that didn't feel particularly cold, but didn't feel hot, either.  We had each unit set to 25, which is a comfortable but not chilly 77 degrees.  It seemed possible that the aircon was breathing at room temperature.  It seemed possible that the aircon was breathing at room temperature and that most people were perpetually sweating in their homes.  This is India during the monsoon - what did we expect?

It was a great relief, then, when our housekeeper pointed out that standing before an a/c unit felt no different than standing underneath a ceiling fan.  They are both simply moving around the air in the house.  Neither actually cools the air. 

Dave submitted the work order this morning and some dude with filthy bare feet and smart casual clothes appeared at the door and then disappeared into the apartment.  He stayed for a few hours and never once spoke to me.  While he was here, other workers came and went to address other problems in the house.  They all spoke Hindi and none of them spoke to me.  They all spoke with our housekeeper, who frequently asked my opinion - of which I had none.  I felt thankful for her, but also overwhelmed.  How to manage this well?

With all of these people whirling around me, I received an email from HR.  I recently applied for a position at the consulate.  It is a low level position, a bit of a glorified secretary, and I am  overqualified.  So when the email chastised me for not attaching my transcripts, I felt foolish.  And when I attached my transcript from my Masters degree for this position requiring two years of post-high school education, I felt even more foolish.  I sent in the transcripts and then went into the bathroom for a quick cry.

I've realized today that I've dropped a few other things as well.  Moving is hard, and international moves over a series of months with a family of five are logistically challenging.  That I would miss a few things is inevitable, but feels no less foolish for its inevitability.  Each slip up costs something, and sometimes they cost a lot of money. 

The air conditioning seems to be working well tonight.  The dude with the dirty feet seems to have been a legitimate HVAC repairman and I expect to sleep well tonight.  I'm feeling a pleasant sense of accomplishment over that one.  We also seem on the right track for plugging in our microwave, painting some of the walls, and getting our television to work.  Chalk these up as wins for my team as well. 

If only I knew why power just went out in the living room, I'd be feeling pretty good.

The Walk to the Grocery Store

We have landed quite softly in Mumbai, and for that I feel thankful.  Our home is lovely - although we have begun to realize that the air conditioners do actually cool other people's homes, so our apartment is not perfect.  Our housekeeper is amazing, which has done wonders for my stress level and the general nourishment of our household.  Our neighborhood is charming rather than overwhelming, although still remarkably different from anywhere I've ever been.

We have been walking a lot since we arrived - to the seaside promenade, to a local park, to church, and to the shopping.  We pass very few things we recognize, although we have stopped at a Krispy Kreme on the way to church and we did discover this McDonalds hiding on the second floor of one of our many crumbling mansions.

The thing that I'm having the hardest time adjusting to is the grocery shopping.  In Mumbai, anything can be delivered, which is a tremendous convenience.  But I still need to figure out which items are available and where.  This is our primary grocery store:

It is on a market street called Pali Hill, and we are lucky to live so close.  People come from across town to Pali Hill and when we remember what we are looking for, we generally find it here.  This housewares shop next door to the grocer had the hangers and the laundry drying rack that we needed, hidden somewhere in the many recesses of their small space:  

We have never relied so heavily on a housekeeper for cooking, but I've only prepared one meal here since we arrived.  Grocery shopping continues to overwhelm me and it will be quite a while before we have a fully stocked kitchen.  Happily, our housekeeper has kept our bellies quite happy with her  cooking.

Bonus photo:  We got some serious monsoon weather this morning, mostly during the school orientations.  I sat in a 5th floor corner conference room watching the rain fall in torrents out the plate glass windows and forced myself to concentrate on communication strategies rather than begin taking photos.  But I did grab a shot on the way home.  Not every street was full of water, but plenty were ankle deep.  The rain stopped by 3pm or so, allowing many of the waters to recede.  Apparently the waters have stayed under control so far this monsoon season, but many worried about flooding today.

Also, the school is amazing.  Orientation was a very positive experience for everyone, and the girls are counting the minutes until class begins next week.

The Firehose

These are the firehose days, where new information comes blasting at me from every direction and nearly all the time.  There is the formal dissemination of information - today was the middle school orientation, tomorrow will be the security briefing and the health orientation at the consulate, and Friday will be the elementary school orientation.  And surrounding those blasts of information, the new city gives its novice no rest.  Its also time to figure out how the meter works on the rickshaw, how to cross the street, how to cross that next and busier street, and which outlet I can plug the tea kettle into.  Its exhilarating and all of the information has been good so far - with the exception of the outlets, which are insane - but its also physically and mentally exhausting.  I'm still falling asleep at 8pm, and I think jetlag is only partly to blame.  And although the big things don't make me fall apart, the little things sometimes do.

Yesterday was exciting.  Lilly, Annika, and I went for an excursion - the first time I left the house without Dave leading me.  We found the route to the import grocery and we walked it without hurting ourselves.  Even further, we enjoyed the walk with its views of the sea and the nearby fish stalls, and with all of the interesting and charming things tucked into the nooks and crannies of this city.  We enjoyed our destination, although it was not what we expected.  And when we left, I felt a bit overwhelmed.

We grabbed our bags and walked out into pouring rain.  We walked up to a row of rickshaws, and they all drove away.  We stood in the driving rain amid the hectic traffic and tried to hail a new rickshaw.  One came fairly soon, and we managed to pile ourselves into the back without losing any bags or staying dry.

With the knowledge the rickshaw drivers will take advantage of newbies, I pulled out my phone and mapped the route home.  We followed the little blue dot along the roads and we followed the meter in the rickshaw - would this cost 30 cents, 3 USD, or 30 USD?

We arrived home and I collapsed on the couch ready to read something for a bit and leave the city outside.  This is when I learned that our housekeeper - who is a real blessing, truly - had washed a large load of clothes that would not go in the dryer.  Problem: we had nowhere to hang those clothes and we are in the monsoon. 

And that's what made me cry.  The challenges of the day I could handle, and even enjoy.  But the lack of control over my laundry, and how and when it was done brought my frustration over the boiling point.

After a good cry, Sophia and I donned our rain coats and raced through the rains to the local market for a laundry drying rack, which I carried over my head as an umbrella on the way home.  Overall a positive excursion, and now all of my gentle clothes are dry.  Wins all around.