500 pounds and a room of one's own

what do joel kelly, jesus, and virginia woolf have in common? probably a lot of things, but one is for sure: their words have been on my mind lately.

i recently received a letter from joel, saying, "i can see how one might want to take an adventure, not so much to explore a specific place but to allow time to have a life, experience personal growth, have bad haircuts and eat spicy food etc etc etc." that's exactly what my time in guyana is all about. i was hired as an intern to work in youth leadership, but i am finding that my professional life is taking a backseat to my personal experience. and the personal exterior experience is taking a backseat to the personal interior experience.

i'm having this fantastic chance to step outside my life for a brief window of time, and take a look at it from the sidelines. "losing my life to gain it," to paraphrase j.c. my life is still kind of existing in edmonton: my apartment is there, and will be there when i get back; my family and friends continue being and growing; my u of a applications and registrations wait patiently in registrars' inboxes. my tubes of paint have not dried up; the pages in my books have not become aged and brittle; my clothes (hopefully) still fit and are still (somewhat) in style. i will go back to a life that is, for the most part, familiar. but i will have had some much-needed time to think about who i am and what i want.

v.w. posited that, given a dependable source of income and a personal physical space in which to work, aspiring female writers could create fiction on par with shakespeare. guyana has given me my equivalent of "500 pounds and a room of [my] own." i have a steady income; i don't have to worry about finding work or getting specific tasks done (thanks to a non-existent job description). i don't have a lot of personal space, but the rupununi savannahs lend more than enough physical space to serve all my intents and purposes.

this short-term international journey has become the vision quest of the middle-class white westerner*. of course, the last couple centuries have been marked by adventurous young travellers, finding their way around the world. but it seems that, thanks to government grants and the physical/financial ease of travel today, more young people than ever are taking these short adventures as rites of passage after high school or university. i've kind of felt pressured, ever since high school, to do something like this (ie. an internship, a DTS with YWAM, etc.). i don't know if i have a point to this post. i've just been reading about rites of passage in my anthro text, and this seems to be one of contemporary north america's broadly-defined culture.

in conclusion: if 500 pounds and a room of your own presents itself to you, in whatever form, be sure to take it and see what is has to teach you about yourself. even if you're not a recent graduate.



*when i say middle-class white westerner, i don't mean only people from that demographic. i know non-white, non-middle-class, non-westerners travel. mmkay? but most of the people in my circle who have done trips like this are middle-class white westerners, so i only feel comfortable talking about us/them.