You know Internet, I’ve always harbored a miasmic stew of
resentment, annoyance and, most of all, seething jealousy for real bloggers.
People with lives and full-time jobs who somehow manage to foster weekly
litters of snarky entries, adeptly bred out of twitter soundbites and too much
coffee—people who have a faithful fanbase of Japanese men in their mothers’
basements and college students prolonging their analyses of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. As you’ve probably noticed, I
am not one of these bloggers, despite always secretly wishing I could be (and
by that I mean wishing I had an ounce, or even just a drop—hell, I’d take an
experimentally negligible vapor—of self-discipline, since that’s all that’s really
required to be a consistent blogger). But let’s look at the facts: my last post
was in March. My next post might be in September, maybe August if I
feel particularly motivated. And my mix-breeds don’t end up the perfect mélange
of cute and snarky, but rather somewhat demented and straggly, the kind of
hopeless mutt that incessantly gnaws door frames and only manages to “sit” when
you need him to move because his droopy butt is crushing your MacBook. Maybe
it’s time to accept that I’m not cut out for this line of non-work.
It’s not that I don’t like writing a blog—I genuinely do—but
my life just isn’t that exciting. There’s a certain hysterical narcissism that
allows other bloggers to provide a play-by-play narrative of their trip to
Ikea, or an in-depth exposé of a Subway footlong, that—fortunately for my
friends but unfortunately for my Internet infamy—I lack.
You see, the dirty little truth is that my life here, my
year of Fulbrighting in Poland, has been excruciatingly uneventful. I wake up.
I go to work. I read. I watch a soap opera about young Polish girls
getting scammed in London. I burn dinner. I eat burnt dinner. I go to sleep on my
left limbs, which fall asleep before I do. In the middle of the night I limp
with tingling limbs to bathroom to pee. I go back to sleep and dream that shrieking
geese on bath salts are chasing me in the Polish salt mines, only to realize milliseconds before the shrieking birds peck my eyelids off that the shrieking is my
morning alarm. I get up. I pick at burnt remains of dinner for breakfast. I momentarily
consider changing the sound of my alarm, but then immediately forget what I
wanted to do when I pick up my phone and unlock the screen. And so the
day continues…
Now I know what you’re thinking: But Elise, you’re ABROAD!
You’re doing a FULBRIGHT! You’re in EUROPE! Your life must be more exciting
than mine!
Nope.
Wroclaw is pretty equivalent to any Small Town USA (well,
Medium Town, really), except more gray.
Men drink beer and watch the game in the pub. Old ladies eternally seek the
perfect grapefruit for the best price at the supermarket. Boys race their bikes
along the river. Teenage girls wither away their youth and allowance at the
local mall. And everyone is white and everyone eats meat-and-potatoes for
dinner and everyone watches the same channel on TV narrated by right-wing nutjobs. Sound familiar?
Now don’t get me wrong—I’ve enjoyed living here, and I’ve
gained a lot from the past year. I’ve made wonderful friends, eaten wonderful
food and ogled wonderfully attractive women. But I think the most surprising
aspect of my year abroad has been the fact that it hasn’t surprised me much at
all. I experienced much more culture
shock moving to Los Angeles than I’ve ever come close to in Wroclaw. The only difference
between Wroclaw and Springfield, USA, is that Springfield has more vowels and
obesity. And sometimes beer in Wroclaw is served with a straw (either to avoid
the inconvenience of spillage when customers are too drunk to hold their glass
upright or to be more child-friendly…I’m not sure which). Anyway, the point is
that my expat routine, like the many boiled potatoes I’ve consumed this year,
has been fulfilling but not particularly flavorful.
That being said, I plan to post more from now on, and to mix
things up. That’s right, for the next few weeks I’m swirling some cheesy
goodness and smelly chives on these potato blogs, with short stories, articles,
pictures and more. Why, you ask? Well, starting next week, I will no longer
have this distracting burden called a job. Yep, starting next week, I’ll no longer have to
deal with the energy-consuming responsibilities of conversing in 3 dimensional
social settings, where others can actually smell whether you’ve showered and can
actually taste the coffee you’ve posted in a black-and-white Walden filter on
Instagram. Clothes, hygiene, verbal exchanges, money…soon they’ll all just be
fleeting memories of a time long past. Which means, assuming I don’t suddenly
create a World of Warcraft avatar or start watching Game of Thrones this
weekend, this blog will be the sole center of my energies.
Namaste bitches.
