Hi everybody. This is the handy new blog that I've made to help you all follow my exploits, triumphs, tragedies and adventures-by-motorbike while living abroad in Vietnam.
So here's an introduction.
A significant portion of my life has been spent in the world of mental health. Whether my own mental health or the mental health of others, treatment and medication and health and wellness and goals and work have been the centerpoint of my professional and by extension personal existence since I graduated from college (It may not surprise you to learn that nearly all of these things were far from my priorities while actually in college). I've learned some very important things. The test is remembering them and putting them into practice on the other side of the world.
I chose to teach English because I needed to change my direction--the Health and Human Services sector is notorious for facilitating professional burnout, and the ground level is usually where people decide if this is their career, or if this is a lesson in what they don't want to do. Even at this point, one square week from leaving my job, I can say I land safely in the middle. Whatever my misgivings have been, it's an indisputable fact that I wouldn't be the kind of person I am without the experiences I've had, and that counts for a lot.
Incidentally, a lot of those experiences have directly involved my work with the Hennepin County Medical Center (hereafter referred to as HCMC). Almost every day of my life for the past six years I've been there, going to there, just getting back from there, actively avoiding there, preparing for there, stuffing my lunch frantically into my mouth there, or trying to get people jobs there. It's...made a mark.
When I made my decision to pursue jobs abroad, I found that, ironically, my work at Rise and HCMC as an Employment Specialist had prepared me far too well for this sort of thing. A job search, on a global scale, was almost too perfect a challenge for someone who job searches for a living, and now that it's come through, it's made a tidy little capstone as well. The challenges were many, and some of them were expensive. But of course, this is all just the beginning in terms of challenges.
Now, I chose Vietnam because the economic outlook for teachers seemed more promising than other countries--at least for a new "teacher" without a lot of classroom experience. I'm not really harboring any romantic delusions about finding a shiny new life in a new country--in fact, several times a day I find myself fluctuating between boundless excitement and mind-boggling terror. I don't think this is going to be easy at all.
But that's kind of the point.
In the past few weeks, I have eliminated most of my belongings, left my apartment, left my job, and started settling into the fact that the fairly comfortable set-up I have here in suburbia is disturbingly temporary. Which might actually be a good thing--turns out, too much space makes me misplace things at an alarming rate. There are so many places for things to end up. Also, there are too many nice things to tarnish. For example, earlier today I ran over one of my parents' carefully placed driveway markers. Almost immediately after doing this, I locked my keys in my car.
Nice things. Too many places. Though I suppose you could argue that maybe it's my mind that's in too many places.
But I digress. All I really wanted to do in this post is explain my title. Haunted By Acronyms. We all speak our own language, making slight adjustments here and there to accommodate the understanding of others, but what we're really trying to do is establish meaning through what we say or write--trying to make sense of our thoughts. Sometimes we get tunnel vision, thinking our way of saying or turns of phrase are somehow unique in a world where the real cynics would argue nothing is. Sometimes we just get in a hurry, and make abbreviations. Life is short--we can't be expected to spell everything out all the time, right?
By that token, it isn't reasonable to expect that Hennepin County Medical Center is the only institution in the world known as HCMC.
When I get on a plane in 1.5 weeks, I will disembark and make my living in Ho Chi Minh City (hereafter referred to as HCMC).
Haunted by acronyms.
