Personally, it's not treating me so bad. But it's devastating plans for Sloph and Bee in the UK. There are no few chances to start a proper job and a career, and temping provides only short term opportunities, which has played havoc with travel plans on a gap year. How to survive? Sitting it out somehow, which feels like doing nothing, seems the only answer.
I just reread the page Why Wu Wei?
I began this blog when I had a period without work in Greece at the end of my contract and didn't know what to do with myself. I had to make decisions about where my daughter finished her education and there were no clear solutions. The answer seemed to be to do nothing and wait to see what happened.
Well, not exactly "do nothing":
Of course I was still looking for work, improving my web skills, trying to improve the management of my daughter's school, making other friends now I had more time, doing more exercise with regular swimming and generally enjoying the bits of life in Athens that I did enjoy. Both Bee and I were ready for a move to another country even if we didn't know where it would be.
Tao philosophy:
When you feel lost and life doesn't seem to be working out, it is because you have lost the Tao (the Way), the river of life, which will lead you where you need to go. Forcing things does not help to get back to the Way. Sometimes it is necessary to go in the opposite way to that you would expect.
Hence the rubric on the top left of the blog.
Eventually something did turn up: a job in Kosovo. No chance for Bee to live there with me, and only two weeks work a month, for 12 months. So it seemed, no alternative but to bite the bullet and go back to England where Sloph was just due to start university in Oxford.
Not our favourite idea, a bit safe and dull, but it's been a success for everyone but me.
Looking back, it was exactly the right thing to do, even for me. The kids have got their education over, or at least for Bee, university is settled for next year. They have had 4 years of stable life with friends, and for Bee, reconnection with her English roots.
For me, after a brief period feeling depressed by property prices in Oxford and gloom at the lack of attractive property in Ljubljana, I am happily settled in a beautiful flat in Vilnius, meeting new and old friends, and able easily to commute to work in Georgia. I'm glad I'm not locked into a mortgage on an overpriced tiny terraced house in East Oxford.
Even Georgia is coming out of the recession caused by war and global financial crisis. Banks have started competing again. Customers do not want to borrow at current interest rates. So banks, sitting on huge deposits (10% on deposits in hard currency if you leave it there for a year) are slashing interest rates. So there is more work to do here, even though it's been a bit boring for a while.
But it's hard for Bee and Sloph without a home to fall back on in the UK. On top of all the uncertainty of jobs and money and somewhere to live, they have to find solutions to where to put stuff, when there is no attic or garage at home to dump them in. No quick and easy way to come home to Mum when it is all too much. Thank God for Skype and the internet to keep in touch.
Hard to believe it will come right in the end. But for me it always has, so far.
