6-month doldrums

While everyone experiences their first post in the Foreign Service very differently, there are some major thresholds that seem to apply across family structures and personality types. For instance, upon first arriving, one experiences great intensity. This intensity is a raucous mixture of excitement, fear, adventurousness, and anxiety. While different people experience this phenomenon in different combinations, your senses are heightened, you are very alert, and every moment of every day carries some sort of weighted importance.

At about the four-month mark, everyone has a little nervous breakdown. Right after the initial excitement has begun to wear off and right before one actually feels at home, there are a few stutter-steps of complete confusion, disbelief, and shock. You find yourself unable to understand where the hell you are, how you got there, and what it is that you are supposed to be doing. And for about a week, you just can't function.

Now we have just passed the infamous six-month threshold. This piece of the timetable is just boring as all hell. Nothing is new anymore, you know your way around and there is nothing new to see, and you already know everybody that you are probably going to know for the next year and a half. For those of us who are unemployed, the fun and excitement of going on adventures every day has worn off and we are far happier to sit at home and read all day long. This breeds a profound lethargy. So while I have not been busy and, in fact, I have been sitting at the computer throughout this long hiatus, I simply could not make myself write anything for the website. Instead, I stared out the window, thought some thoughts, and doodled on pieces of paper.

Now, quite miraculously, the rains have started early and I am rejuvenated. The six-month period has passed and I am now looking forward to the one-year mark, when we get to go on a big vacation and feel all buoyant and giggly. Or so rumor has it . . .