Fishbowl

While I’ve written about some of it, the past month and a half has been filled with a lot of pure, genuine fun. I’ve been establishing deeper friendships (or as deep as they can be after living in a place for four months), hanging out way too much, getting out on the water, golfing (my newest hobby), and looking forward to learning how to fish and going up the mighty Stikine River (so I can finally know what everyone means when they say ‘up the river’ in such a way that denotes a little piece of heaven).

But with that, I've also been thinking about what I'm doing with my life, what this fun actually amounts to, and where I could possibly go after this. I hate how I think about that every day. This is the first time in my life where there hasn’t been an ingrained end date (like graduation, or my maximum two year contract at Lingnan) and I’m having troubles finding that for myself, figuring it out. I know I don’t have to know now, but I wish I could just tell myself I’ll be here until ---- (blank) and be done with it so I can just enjoy as completely as I can the time I am here. The not knowing is what gets me the most. Or perhaps it’s the freedom I have on this matter, total control, that absolutely terrifies me.

Small town life is so much more intense than I thought it would be. I suppose one can make it whatever one wants, but I do want to be 'part' of it as much as I can, involved, as opposed to being more inward, reclusive. There’s no such thing as anonymity here, no layers of protection or supposition, which makes every day occurrences so potent. It’s like everything you do is being examined whether it's grocery shopping or checking mail or taking a walk. Everything gets put on display as opposed to everything being private, unknown, like how they are when you live in a bigger town or city.

In Hong Kong I could spend whole days doing things without anyone really knowing – people would be there to witness it but they wouldn’t care or remember or care to remember. In Hong Kong, I could get breakfast, take the west rail and mtr to the city, go to volunteering, walk around for hours shopping, perusing, travel back home, go to bed, and despite the fact that I was surrounded the whole day by a countless number of people, no one would ever know what I was doing unless I informed them of it. Having a mobile there was essential because if you didn’t have it to stay connected to someone or a few people, most likely through texting, you’d feel so cut off.

I’m not lying when I recount all the good times I had in Hong Kong or how much I loved, love, it. But on many levels, it’s one of the loneliest cities in the world, probably because of all the unfamiliar, unknown faces brushing by you, bumping into you. With the (sometimes) added component of a language barrier, it’s not hard to feel completely estranged.

Living in a small town is comforting in a way that's difficult to describe in words because it's wholly a feeling – a feeling of contentment and ease and family. It’s this awareness of a shared appreciation, of understanding what it's like to live on an island in southeast Alaska. It’s the most unique feeling I’ve ever felt. With the fishbowl syndrome comes also a sense that someone is watching over you, looking out for your best interests.

Life is more different here than I could have ever imagined. Or perhaps it's just me. I’m more different than I could've ever imagined.

In a lot of ways, it scares me how much I’ve adapted. I fear the security I feel living here, and at the same time feel this pull to escape, to travel, to return to the unknown which is a lot more familiar to me than this.