France

So I've decided to move to France in a year. Paris. It's not 100% but it's about 99% to be sure. I'm approaching the dreaded 5 year mark here in the Czech Republic. FIVE YEARS. That's a long time. In expatriate land, 5 years is the final make or break point before you simply become permanent. Typically the life of expats goes in cycles, 6 months, 1 year, two years and five years. At every cycle everyone simple leaves. Everyone who arrived at one time, simultaneous leaves at one time, at these interval periods. Most of the friends I had were from about two years ago, and yep- they are all cycling out. Most of the other people I knew cycled out a while ago. There are a few hanger-oners. Like myself. And as I come up to that five year mark, I know exactly what I have to do. Leave. Past five years and your no longer and expat, your just an immigrant. Expats keep calling themselves expats, but really they aren't. If you stay after five years, you stay forever. The reason is, that after five years all the youth and restless energy that you had which initially made you leave home and come to this place: is gone. Nobody wakes up eight and a half, or thirteen and three quarters years later and says, "huh, let me change my whole life entirely again". It doesn't happen.

As strange as it's going to sound, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that it was a mistake to come back to this place. Not this time, but years ago. When I moved back to Pittsburgh to finish school, I should really have stayed. I left only because my girlfriend whom I was living with in Pittsburgh at the time, had left me for school in Ohio. At the time I didn't have many or my own friends and certainly no life outside of my relationship, (Although I must say that Sara Doll was always there for me) and when my girlfriend decided to leave, I was so scared at the prospect of starting all over, in Pittsburgh, that I just left again- back to Prague.

Countless life altering decisions later, I attribute this moment as the decisive one that inevitably lead me to where I am now. Why was it a mistake? Well, because I think as much as I've spent the last years developing who I am as a photographer, as an expatriate, I've simultaneously pushed myself away from where I came from and who I was. This is of course a natural process, but only now can I really look back and see how many doors have been closed if only for the psychological reason that they only open 'one way'. If for example I wanted to go back to school and be an engineer, it's technically possible. Psychologically however, I simply don't have it in me to 'go back' and do it. In fact, I've become so Europeanized that I simply don't have it in me to 'go back' at all.

The expats out here that you meet whom have been away from more than 5 years talk about a feeling of homelesness. You expatriate long enough, and you become AN EXPATRIATE. Not an expat- expats are people who just dole around in bars wasting money, getting drunk, rewriting the introduction to their first novel a trillion times and generally losing years off their life with little or nothing to show for it. Expatriates though are people who give up on the idea of ever returning. They don't give up on their homes, they just give up ever having the psychological strength to 'get back'. Realizing the street you grew up on as a child is more foreign to you than a remote bullet torn village in Kosovo is an incredibly intense emotion. Essentially, you end up leaving your society behind. And by society, I mean dreams, holidays, norms, cultural aspects, slang, accents, vocabulary, dress, hobbies, etc... Everything. I have no idea anymore when Labor day is. Or mothers day. Or fathers day or Easter or even thanksgiving. (Although expats are quite strong holiday makers, the dates are generally irrelevant to us. Thanksgiving falls on whatever end of November weekend day we feel is convenient. Ask anyone and no one can tell you exactly when.) These things have no meaning outside your on society. I haven't had a fourth of July in almost half a decade. My parents haven't seen me for my birthday since I was 18 and some years send me cards with the wrong age!

But why is this a bad thing? It's not. It's natural. It's progression. The mistake is that you don't realize what comes AFTER all this. What happens is that you find a new life. You become a new person. Without the fourth of July, you find new holidays. Without clear guidance about your future, (highschool, college, gradschool, internship, PhD, professional practice) your future is something you stubble onto. It is much more difficult to make it as an expatriate. Societies are not fond of people who leave their everything for something they know nothing about. Expatriate bars are filled with failed dreamers. People spend fifteen years without ever managing to save one cent. Hospitals are nightmares you avoid. Dentists are visits you never make. Do you know what happens to expatriates who develop mental illnesses while abroad? Nothing. I've seen it happen. Able minded and adept individuals who simply one day fall off the cart, and then disappear. They aren't gone. Because we run into them occasionally and they are homeless and they are wearing clothing that doesn't fit. Borrowing money they will never return.

The alternative is immigration, assimilation. You pick a place, a society, and you join it. You don't spend a decade in bars drinking cheap beer. You learn the language. You get your papers. You marry. You buy property. You have children. You raise them. And you never look back.

When we leave our homes because we want to escape the predetermined order one is supposed to follow to success in America: highschool, college, masters, internship, post-grad, PhD., professional practice, marriage, house, children, college, retirement, old age. We do it out of a precocious naivete that tricks us into thinking we can actually get 'outside' the box. But the truth is, there is no 'outside' the box. No, 'outside' of society. You either fail miserably and die poor, penniless and alone of some affliction easily cured or treated by your native health care system, or you merely pick the predetermined life order set by the cultural norms of some other society and deal with that. You'll never get out of having your dreams and ideals bound by the society in which you live. In America, you'll make more money and enjoy less of it. In Europe you'll make less but enjoy it more. The poison is the same, the only difference, the only semblance of freedom you will ever get, is that as an expatriate you're blessed with the insipid choice of picking exactly which poison you wish to take.

The trick is, and what one would hope that the entire experience of 'living' would impress upon you, is that the poison really isn't all that bad. Out here, everyone you meet is an extraordinary person simply because they are extra-ordinary. There are very few people who are extraordinary because they are amazing. The people that expatriates condescend to when drunk at bars- family back home, old girlfriends married and pregnant, at the truly extraordinary. They are extraordinary because they are amazing. Not because they are extra-ordinary. The thing is, the poison isn't all that bad because being normal, really just isn't all that bad. That roadmap we get as kids? The one with education through a PhD and a job as a professional? That's simply, not a bad life. The difference between the people who stay at home and the people who leave, is that while the people at home look up to us as glamorous, as courageous, as interesting. The truth is, we just weren't smart enough to realize happiness is not a place, but rather a state of mind. Oh this does occur to us. Eventually. That's why most expatriates spend their twenties and thirties drunk and in a cloud of Mary-Jane. We're the ones that missed the boat on the most obvious epiphany in our entire lives. For all those women expatriates I've meet in bars who don't need marriage and don't want kids: die alone in underfunded foreign institutionalized government care. To all those male expatriates I've meet in bars who can't commit and don't want kids: die alone in underfunded foreign institutionalized government care. The truth is, when this party does eventually stop- there won't be a single person around who remebers your name or even cares.

And so, to come full circle and bring this epic blog post to a close, the answer is that we move on. We might be escapee's of normalcy in our own society, but this doesn't mean we can avoid normalcy forever. Eventually we must become something of what our, or another society expects of us. We must marry, procreate, save, invest, live, eat, and grow older. The other thing, is that we must come to this conclusion fairly early on, and begin the process before it's psychologically too late. Just as foreign expatriates in the USA can't jump in and start at 'highschool', we can't just move to a new place and 'jump right in'. In every society there are certain 'benchmarks' we are expected to have attained by a certain age. It is difficult or impossible to 'go back' and 'catch up' on what we lost or let pass us by. Time is a river that flows but one way.

What this means for me, is that it is time for me to move on. Probably Paris. Possibly London. Maybe Spain (although not so likely). What weighs heavily on me is that the next place will likely be at least another half-decade odyssey. In my line of work, fame is for middle age, and up till thirty or fourth its all blood, sweat and tears. I'm okay with that of course, but it does mean I'll need to dig my heels in and keep my head down. It also means that I'll need to assimilate. As home is pretty unlikely, I will have to pick a place, and then become it. Language, life and all. But that's okay. When you can't go home, you've got to go somewhere; and when you go somewhere, it might as well be home.