Optional vs Obligatory

I've been thinking this morning on the stress of commitment and why the older I get, the less I want to commit to anything optional, even something as benign as lunch. It's becoming a thing with me, a 'quirk' which is a nice way of saying an irritating personality trait, that I need an escape hatch for any social/optional activities and I avoid making those kinds of plans if at all possible. Before I stopped making social plans or commitments, it wasn't unusual for me to flake on them, canceling at the next to last minute. Most of the time it was because it didn't seem worth the trouble and I felt I would get more satisfaction from attacking my to-do list than I would from hanging out. That felt terrible and pissed off my friends so I just decided it was better for us both that I just not make plans. Nobody expects me there so no one is disappointed. Or maybe now they are just disappointed that I don't make plans with them. Being friends with me is disappointing one way or another. I am however, good for the spontaneous adventure. If I don't have time to dread it and the moons are just right, I'm your girl. Again, not understanding why I have any friends at all and why the friends I have are so incredible. Probably takes someone exceptional to dig all that is Ava enough to put up with the extra delightful stuff like rare visits and inability/unwillingness to make plans to do the same. Having my girlfriends (most of them) on the east coast has been awesome because I don't have to plan. I just jump in the car or on the train. I can decide that morning.

I didn't grow up making optional trips so it's not something that comes naturally. The one vacation we did take when I was growing up was a shopping trip to Korea which wasn't really a kid vacation. I got some knock-off sneakers that fell apart and smelled like death after I wore them in the rain and my mom bought a lot of shoes. Before we left on that trip, our neighbor's plumbing backed up into our tub and it felt like a sign we should have never planned to leave the house. The only other family trip was every 3-4 years we would spend 30 days sitting around and eating in the stifling sticky heat of a Memphis summer shuttling between grandparents. Understandably my point of reference for vacation is the misery of the journey compounded by a stressful un-fun destination. The destination never seemed worth the journey.

But I chose my nomadic lifestyle because I want to experience new things and places and I know that I need an obligation to force that into my life. I love the feeling of being forced into something new; the sense of adventure and possibility, the potential, the people, the experiences. But I know I'm not the person who will endure the cost, discomfort, and disruption to see the world on my own time and on my own dime. There is a part of me I think that needs to abdicate some of the responsibility for my own happiness, that needs a fall guy for my misery or an excuse not to try to have fun and I get that through obligations. The must-do is my security blanket from the potential disappointment of could-do. Maybe I expect too much from fun or as Lodo has pointed out, think other people are having a much better go of it than I am. There is always an obligation or a task on the to do list that seems like a good enough reason to not go to some faraway place that might not even be fun.

Maybe I'm more delicate and sensitive, so the stress of the journey bloodies me more than most. Maybe I'm just lazy. I just know all misfortune encountered during optional excursions feel like punishment for being somewhere I didn't have to be. Misfortune encountered during obligatory trips doesn't really distress me as much, it's part of the challenge of getting through a task and it's not optional so I don't have any sense of 'if only I hadn't come to this place, if only I had booked this earlier, if only whatever...' Everything I experience outside of the mandatory reason I'm there is lovely. Some of my favorite moments are on the margins of obligatory trips. Walking the beach in Savannah, GA (training exercise), the sunrise on the beach in Florida on my birthday (training), napping in the sun in San Diego (conference), visiting Michigan (training exercise), having diwaniya (kind of a picnic kind of gathering) in Kuwait (deployment), the Grand Canyon (work trip). When my mother visited me in Arizona, we didn't go to the Grand Canyon because it didn't seem worth the drive. I know it sounds ridiculous to be within hours of one of the great wonders of the world and think, eh, it's 5 hours away and it's only one thing, how grand could it be? Worth a 10 hour round trip drive? Probably not. I come by my vacation calculus honestly.

Even the lovely of this time in Philadelphia has been during the exercise of my obligations. Walking the dog and running into a street fair or parade, having to find restaurants for meetings and discovering a lovely place, being forced to work with people I would never hang out with and making a great friend. I do however have a spirit of adventure in me; I've accepted a position in a developing eastern European country. There is no good reason for me to go there, I don't know anything about it and I will definitely be a stranger in a strange land. But my job is paying my freight and giving me work to do so I get to live somewhere I would definitely never ever visit. There will be some misery, both of a new place and of whatever developing nation blues there are to be had (brownouts, lack of produce, quality brands...etc) but it will be a great no pressure adventure. I have to be there, anything fun or good that comes of it is a bonus, anything bad just has be be dealt with. I like that. I think I'm much better at making good of a shitty situation; earning my happiness, appreciating the simple gifts, than I am at enjoying the things touted as a traditional good time.