Mana's Musings

This Friday I’ll be getting on a 10 hour flight out of Vancouver International Airport, bound for Tokyo’s Narita Airport, on a trip that will take me through Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and likely Kyoto.

I’ve been all over Canada and the US before, and quite a few countries in western Europe – England, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Sweden. But never before have I travelled outside of the “western world.” Asia is a whole ‘notha ballgame. I’ve spent some time reading up on these cities, the culture, all of that. But until you actually find yourself in a destination, you just can’t truly know what it will “feel” like.

There are so many subtle nuances that colour the feeling, the vibe, the flavour of a destination. The subtleties in the architecture. The current fashion trends you see in the streets. The way the locals walk. The way they interact with you (or don’t). The local cuisine. The way the air smells. The way the air feels.

Take Los Angeles. When I think of LA I think of the hot California sun beating down on my skin. I think of the humid air and all the ferns and other foliage you see as soon as you step out of the terminal and onto World Way. I think of the unmistakable smell of the salty ocean air. I think of the Mexican-influenced cuisine everywhere, with huevos rancheros, salsa and beans invading the menus of nearly any restaurant you might walk into. And I think of that underlying vibe that everyone there either knows someone, is someone, or is fighting like mad to be someone.

And as I get ready for my trip to Japan I can’t help but wonder what the feeling of these places will be like. What does Tokyo smell like? What’s it like on their local metro system? What are the people like? Will my blond hair make me stand out in a crowd, or has globalization made that sort of thing irrelevant?

I can’t wait to find out.

A friend of mine recently opened an account on Ancestry.com and started poking around family trees. After poring over birth, marriage and census records she uncovered a goldmine of interesting connections including American presidents, British royalty and Walt Disney himself. Dig far enough and one can find Mayflower passengers and even connections to Charlemagne.

This got me thinking about my own family history. I sat down and sketched a quick tree, going back to the last generation where I knew anything at all: my great-grandparents. It soon became apparent that I know precious little about those people. I never met any of them that I can recall. Only one of their lifetimes intersected with mine – a Ukranian great grandmother on my mom’s side of tree – and she passed away before my second birthday. Through my parents I’ve managed to fill in many of the blanks including maiden names, years and countries of birth, and years of death. But beyond these basic facts, I know absolutely nothing.

And I find it fascinating to stare at these names sketched in pencil on a sheet of paper and envision each name belonging to an actual, complex human being, someone who lead a full life and went on to have children of their own. Who were these people? They had childhoods and favourite foods, personality traits and physical attributes, and yet I know nothing. Consider Annie Lipinski. She was my great-grandmother and all I know is that she was born in the Ukraine and married a Polish man by the name of Mike Worobetz. But who was she as a person? What was her life like? What was she like at my age? How did she meet my great-grandfather?

And, whatever happened to her many siblings? I’m fairly certain none of my great-grandparents were from single-child families. So all these faceless names are themselves branches of trees in familes that often included five or more children, many of whom went on to marry and have children of their own. Assuming a conservative estimate of three siblings per great-grandparent (since I haven’t yet organized the actual numbers) that’s 32 different individuals who may have headed their own families and created lines of countless people to whom I share quite close family ties, all things considered; direct family ties. And yet I don’t know any of these people. And this is only four generations. These eight great-grandparents obviously had parents of their own – sixteen different people who are my great-great grandparents, and I don’t even know their names. And those 16 people had parents and likely siblings of their own – and on, and on, and on.

Within four generations I’m directly descended from people who spent most of their lives in at least five different countries, speaking five different languages (none of which are English) and leading lives that I can’t even begin to comprehend. These people exist in my genes, in my DNA.

Just four generations and their lives are reduced to nothing but names and dates sketched in pencil on a sheet of paper. And in four generations hence, I’m sure nothing will have changed.

You get a job. You show up for work. Immediately you’re given a series of tasks to complete – the responsibilities of your role. And over time, you learn how to prioritize. You learn which requests should be dealt with first, which ones can wait, which ones can be completed in a short time frame and which ones will require more effort. I think prioritizing is a learned skill, but one that can indeed be nurtured with time.

But how do you apply that to life as a whole?

As I write this, I’m 25 years old. At 25, there are a lot of items on my to-do list for the next, say, 10 years. And after reflecting on it for the past while I’m starting to realize that by not prioritizing the things I want to accomplish/achieve/experience, I’m merely staying in neutral.

I want to get into a career that I genuinely enjoy. Call me a princess but I’ve had the experiene of waking up in the morning and wishing I was going in for dental surgery rather than going to my job, and I don’t particularly want to find myself in that situation again. I’m starting to get an idea of the sort of career I might really enjoy and succeed in, but it’s not something that happens overnight. And it could involve working for years at quite a low rate of pay. But then I have to consider what’s best from a purely financial perspective. While we lead a relatively comfortable lifestyle, my husband and I have financial goals we haven’t met yet. Financial goals that would benefit from me making as much money as possible in whatever sort of work I can find, even if it’s just to pay the bills and isn’t what I really want to do. So right off the bat I have career dreams conflicting with financial goals.

Then there’s geography. I don’t want to keep living in the same city – the same 15km radius – that I’ve lived my whole life. My husband and I want to move abroad. Which, of course, is a huge financial concern in its own right, and obviously affects our careers as well. On one hand it would be more financially responsible to stay put in this city where we already own a condo and have established roots. On the other hand, the idea of staying in this lifeless city with barely a fledgling cultural scene feels like it’s stifling me. The idea of waking up at age 40 still here in this city makes my stomach turn.

And then you add kids to the equation. My husband and I both want kids someday. Although we’re both quite certain that today isn’t the day for that, we’re aware that it’s something we’ll have to start thinking seriously about within the next five years or so. And kids affect all of the above considerations: career, finances, and geography. If we’re going to move somewhere we will want to be financially stable and settled before having kids. But we don’t exactly have all the time in the world for that.

Career, money, kids, geography. All important, all interconnected. How to prioritize? I don’t want to stay in neutral, but I’m also not ready to accept the idea of settling.

I’ve blogged before. I’ve used online blogging sites, I’ve used social networking sites. But somehow those usually seem to end up in one of two categories; endless diatribe about nuances of my not-so-unordinary life, or random thoughts without any cohesion whatsover.

So what’s this blog about? Well, it’s a sandbox. Wanna play? *hands readers a shovel*

This is my sandbox, my soapbox, my soapy sandbox to wax about… well, topics. A place for my often overly-opinionated self to discuss whatever comes to mind at any given time; as a wise man once put it, “through my lens.”

I might voice opinions on things. I’ll likely discuss current events, issues, and such. And some days I may just ramble about nothing in particular. I hope you enjoy the ride.