sitting in my feelings

Sitting—it feels like an inherently opposite action to growing.

Y’all know by now that the theme I’ve placed on my time here is growth, and I want to do things that grow me while I’m here more than anything else.

But I think I’m recognizing this week that sitting can actually be a conductor of growth in certain senses.

Specifically, I’m noticing that the way I need to develop most is in my ability to process feelings and give myself the emotional time and space to do so.

Right now, for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways, I feel like I’m in between one feeling and another.

The past week or two has included some really, really fun moments and some really demoralizing ones, and the gap between the two has honestly been pretty mentally taxing and even confusing at times.

One of the best ways I can grow is to sit and engage with complicated feelings, so that process is what I’ll document today.

Visa things

My hand makes a guest appearance in my friend Joel’s picture from our Easter event at Ciudad de Refugio

One of the major reasons I’m feeling conflicted recently is the precipice I’ve been on regarding my visa status here.

I’ve been in the process of obtaining a new type of visa in order to stay in Bolivia beyond my three-month tourist status that I entered the country with.

For a myriad of geopolitical and socioeconomic reasons, it’s a very difficult process to obtain this visa, and for a while, it was about 50/50 as far as whether I’d be able to accomplish it before my time expired and I had to leave the country.

As of earlier this week, it’s almost surely official that I’ll get to stick around for my full 10-month grant length, which is really awesome news.

But at the same time, I was already starting to mentally steel myself for the reality that I might not get to stay and I’d have to regroup my plans for the rest of the year.

Now that I’m sure I get to stay, it feels like I’m almost starting over and resetting my plans, expectations, and desires for being here.

It might be fitting, then, that I recently had the chance to share the history and significance of Easter celebrations in the United States with my English students.

To be fair, I had to call my mom to get a full rundown on why we do things like egg hunts, family dinners, and bright-clothed church services. But thanks to her infinite wisdom, here’s some of what I was able to share with the students:

• Easter represents new life in just about all its iterations, and it’s why we celebrate with eggs, a literal iteration of new life in nature.

• The bright colors we wear and the springtime food we feast on is a reminder of the joy and excitement we feel when we consider the resurrection of Jesus and its significance.

• No one really knows why there’s a bunny involved; I’m sorry I can’t solve that mystery for you.

There’s always something

It’s also a strange feeling when the realization hits you that as much as you’ve grown, there’s still so much growth to be accomplished.

One of the things I’ve mentioned I really wanted to take advantage of was the presence of good friends around me, and something that characterizes a good friend is a willingness to call them out and help them get better.

And my friends are doing that for me, something I greatly appreciate.

At the same time, though, it’s tough to go through what can be a cyclical process of making progress, feeling a fleeting sense of pride, and then being handed a new plate of growth to tackle.

I have a few examples of this, but maybe the biggest one is one that a few people have recognized and reminded me of: I’m still not prioritizing myself as much as I should be.

I’ve taken big steps forward in a lot of other personal areas, from taking more risks and being more spontaneous to listening to being less competitive/perfectionistic in moments when it simply doesn’t matter.

And I even notice myself making small moves in the right direction when it comes to my self-value, and every forward movement is a useful one. But I’ve got multiple people gently reminding me that 1) I think less of myself than I should, and 2) that is not a good thing.

So that’s obviously a positive thing that I’m very thankful for, but it’s definitely causing some of the confliction I feel right now.

The more I grow, the more space there is for other growth spots to show themselves, so I’m trying to celebrate the steps forward I do take and equally appreciate the new opportunities to make myself better.

Sitting with it all

With all these thoughts and probably more swirling around, my typical response is to work hard enough to forget about those feelings and replace them with a temporary contentment that comes with earning praise from people.

Not a great solution, I’ve learned ;)

Instead of taking that route, I’m doing a lot of “sitting”. I started watching The Mandalorian at a friend’s request and I’ve watched nine episodes. A random Instagram DM turned into two and a half hours on a video call with a great friend from college who I’d not kept up with well enough. I’ve gone on a couple of dates with a girl I met recently and we recently spent a whole weekday together just getting to know each other (not gonna lie, I’m pretty proud of my little apartment as a bachelor pad).

Oh, and I went to a tribute concert to Bob Marley last week which was one of the coolest things ever.

Those types of things aren’t making up for the lost time with my visa struggles in the office at Apoyo.

They aren’t the most effective use of my off time as I set up what a website and regular updates for donors at my church will look like in multiple languages.

And they’re sure as heck not hand-washing my laundry for me every week.

They’re not actionable things. But they’re priorities nonetheless.

They’re allowing me to process my feelings in a way I’ve never felt comfortable doing or even willing to try before, and I’m already noticing that I can mentally process this weird between-the-lines feeling I’ve got much better than I thought I was capable of.

On the flip side of the coin, I’m here for a reason and there’s a lot left to do in terms of exploring my idea of what public relations can look like here.

To that end, I’m coming up on my first PR workshop to local community leaders in Santa Cruz, the easternmost and most culturally Western city Bolivia has to offer. That’s in just less than two weeks, so I should be able to recap that experience and what I learn from it at the next time of posting.

Santa Cruz is one of four new cities I’ll travel to in the next two weeks and one of the moments I’ve been building up to at Apoyo since my arrival back in early February. I’m elated to finally put it all together and also a little anxious to prove that it’s a worthwhile effort in the first place. A rousing success would be a lovely start!

Anyway, until then, I’m content sitting and feeling things while I also balance some big upcoming work deadlines and events. We’ll see where I land with all that here soon.

Thanks for following the journey as always!

Danny